Which acoustic effect is caused by sound waves reflecting within a room, creating a lingering sound after the source stops?

Which acoustic effect is caused by sound waves reflecting within a room, creating a lingering sound after the source stops?

• A. Reverberation
• B. Echo
• C. Noise
• D. Interference

Answer: (A)

Reverberation is the effect created when sound waves bounce around a room and reach your ears from many different paths after the source has stopped. Those multiple reflections blend together into a continuous, decaying tail of sound, so you hear a lingering sense of the source even though it’s no longer producing anything. An echo, by contrast, is a single, distinct repetition of the sound that returns after a noticeable delay, not a dense, overlapping tail. Noise is random unwanted sound, and interference is the blending of waves that can boost or cancel certain frequencies, not the lingering room sound.

Reverberation is the effect created when sound waves bounce around a room and reach your ears from many different paths after the source has stopped. Those multiple reflections blend together into a continuous, decaying tail of sound, so you hear a lingering sense of the source even though it’s no longer producing anything. An echo, by contrast, is a single, distinct repetition of the sound that returns after a noticeable delay, not a dense, overlapping tail. Noise is random unwanted sound, and interference is the blending of waves that can boost or cancel certain frequencies, not the lingering room sound.