Room acoustics design criteria are determined according to

Adam Lyons, Magoosh Tutor

Hey there!
"Ubiquitous" means everywhere, omnipresent, or universal. While it's tempting to think of sound as being all over, it's not quite universal if it is confined to a single room. And since we don't really think of speech as having a location, it's not really appropriate to define its location as everywhere. Finally, the text doesn't give us any clues about the commonness or rarity of speech.
Hope that helps!

Jun 19, 2019 • Reply

David Recine, Magoosh Tutor

"Controlled" really is a tempting answer. I would evne argue that the word "controlled" could work in blank i.

However, controlled doesn't work *perfectly* in blank i, and therefor isn't the very best choice. The problem here is that "controlled" has two possible meanings in this blank.

You could say that music is being "controlled" in the sense that it is being silenced or muted, so it's harder to hear. When a room is designed to control music in this way, it is treating music as a noise and a nuisance. (You might see this, for instance, in a room where people listen to personal radios or CD players. Here, the music needs to be controlled so everyone can listen to their own music without being distracted by others' music.)

At the same time, you could say that the music is being "controlled" by the acoustics of the room so that the sound of the music is amplified and directed in a way that makes the music as loud and clear as possible throughout the room. This second meaning of controlled is the correct one for the purposes of the sentence, since that part of the sentence is talking about rooms that are designed for the public playing of music to an audience.

But the word "controlled" itself is unclear here, because it could either have the right meaning, or a meaning that's incorrect. Thus "appreciated" works better, because the sentence is saying that reverberant rooms allow everyone in the room to enjoy loud, clear music, to *appreciate* music.

Dec 5, 2018 • Reply

Mihir Gada

The general connotation in the sentence is quite flat. Room acoustics..DESIGNED..according to room's INTENDED USE. It does not say anything about how ones feels post playing the music. I see it as - Music is best played/deployed/executed/employed in spaces that are reverberant. If we see the parallel continuation about speech, it says that it makes speech less INTELLIGIBLE/COMPREHENSIBLE, as against less ENJOYABLE.

Nov 17, 2015 • Reply

Selena Zheng

Can you explain why "employed" does not work in the 1st blank?

Sep 15, 2015 • Reply

Adam

Hi Mihir,

In fact, this sentence isn't referring to how someone feels during or after playing music. Rather, it's talking about what kinds of rooms are best for music to be heard in.

As Hannah noted, we are not talking about how music is "employed" or "used" -- this choice doesn't make sense here. We're talking about spaces in which music is best heard.

To "appreciate" something doesn't just mean to "enjoy" it -- it also means "to fully understand something." So, here we're saying that music is best understood in reverberant rooms. In contrast, speech is not understood very well in this type of room.

Nov 19, 2015 • Reply