Reverberation - part 2

A reflected sound wave like this will arrive a little later than the direct sound, since it travels a longer distance, and is generally a little weaker, as the walls and other surfaces in the room will absorb some of the sound energy. Of course, these reflected waves can again bounce off another wall before arriving at your ears, and so on. This series of delayed and attenuated sound waves is what we call reverb and this is what creates the 'spaciousness' of a room. It's very tempting to say that reverb a series of echoes, but this isn't quite correct. 'Echo' generally implies a distinct, delayed version of a sound, as you would hear with a delay more than one or two-tenths of a second. With reverb, each delayed sound wave arrives in such a short period of time that we do not perceive each reflection as a copy of the original sound. Even though we can't discern every reflection, we still hear the effect that the entire series of reflections has.