Aalto Acoustics Lab Facilities
Aalto Acoustics Lab houses three anechoic chambers (built in 1970; renovated in 2019), a variable acoustics room (built in 2019), a listening test room, which meets the standards of subjective audio testing (built in 1999), and three independent sound-insulated booths for headphone listening tests (built in 2011). In addition to the facilities, the Acoustics Lab has state-of-the-art equipment, such as measurement microphones and amplifiers, accelerometers, signal analyzers, sound level meters, an acoustic impedance measurement system, a laser Doppler vibrometer, and a dummy head. The Aalto Acoustics Lab also provides excellent audio reproduction systems for research and demonstrations, including reference-quality headphones and many Genelec loudspeakers.
The anechoic chambers were renovated during 2017-2019, and were reopened for use in December 2019. The wedges in the anechoic chambers were replaced, with the new ones being shorter than the previous ones, making the chambers more spacious than before. The wedges absorb mainly high frequencies whereas the low frequencies are absorbed using damped metallic plates behind the wedges. This modern design is both more efficient than traditional techniques in terms of the use of space and absorption at low frequencies. The renovation also improved the sound insulation of the anechoic chambers, where the ambient noise level is now below 0 decibels.
The renovation also saw the overhaul of the reverberation chamber, which was turned into the varechoic chamber in use today.
After the renovation in 2019, the various special rooms were named after Finnish pioneers of acoustics and audio technology. The large anechoic chamber is called Lampio (after Dr. Eero Lampio, who designed the room in the 1960s), the multichannel chamber was named Wilska (after Dr. Alvar Wilska), the small anechoic chamber Köykkä (after Tapio M. Köykkä), the listening room Otala (after Prof. Matti Otala), and the varechoic chamber Arni (after Paavo Arni).
The seminar room of the Aalto Acoustics Lab is called Karjalainen and the meeting room Martikainen. These names remind us of the first professor of acoustics, Matti Karjalainen, and of Ilpo Martikainen, an alum of the Acoustics Lab, who later founded a loudspeaker company in Iisalmi. Martikainen has also been named an Honorary Doctor of Aalto (formerly Helsinki University of Technology).
Acoustics Lab Links
News
Visit the electrical engineering laboratories in spring 2026
Welcome to visit the Robotics Lab, the Acoustics Lab, the Electronics-ICT laboratory, and the ePowerHub laboratory!
Postdoctoral researcher Eloi Moliner makes history as a 5-time award winner
Eloi Moliner is one of the most decorated doctoral researchers in Aalto University's history – we would like to highlight his success and contributions to the field of audio signal processing
Double triumph: Aalto acoustics researchers win big in Italy
The International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx) 2025 witnessed a remarkable achievement by researchers from the Aalto University Acoustics Lab, as Eloi Moliner and Professor Vesa Välimäki brought home two prestigious paper awards, showcasing cutting-edge innovation in audio signal processing.