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Dr Bill Davies
Senior Lecturer in Acoustics
Email: W.Davies@salford.ac.uk
Telephone: 0161 295 5986
Location: Newton Building
Profile
I currently teach courses to undergraduate and postgraduate students on introductory acoustics, environmental noise and room acoustics. I supervise many student dissertations, mainly in room acoustics and environmental noise.
I have research interests in room acoustics, perception and environmental sound/soundscapes. I'm always interested in hearing from potential research students in any of these areas. The procedure we like applicants to follow is outlined here.
In environmental acoustics, I'm currently principal investigator of a large consortium project to develop new ways of evaluating soundscapes. The Positive Soundscape Project (PSP) is a £1M, three-year effort involving five universities. Unusually for an EPSRC project, it involves artists and social scientists as well as acoustics researchers. The outputs from the project will include new scientific methods for measuring soundscape perception, advice and help for urban planners, a major new exhibition of soundscape art, soundscape radio programmes, and a soundscape sequencer toy for anyone to play with and gain a greater understanding of their aural environment. PSP has spun off a smaller project investigating how to apply soundscape techniques to UK noise policy. Prior to the soundscapes work, I ran a project to evaluate noise from pubs and clubs and another using social science methods to capture the effects of poor acoustics on older people with a hearing loss.
In room acoustics, I have researched the acoustic absorption of concert hall seating and audiences, validating a test technique which is now used in our commercial tests. I have also led projects to develop a method for measuring auditory spaciousness in reproduced sound, to assess diffusion on stages, to control low-frequency reponse in small rooms and to measure the difference limen of reverberation time and level with music.
My current research students are Neil Bruce, David Foale and Ben Shirley.
Links
Where's Bill? Find out if I'm in the department on this calendar