nonechoed

Nonechoed is a term used to describe audio, environments, or media that exhibit no audible echoes. The word blends none- with echo, signaling the absence of reflected sound. While not a formal technical standard, nonechoed is used in acoustics and audio engineering to convey the goal of eliminating reverberation, whether by physical design or digital processing.

Physical nonechoed spaces are achieved through architectural choices and materials that absorb sound: high absorption coefficients, porous and irregular surfaces, and layouts that minimize reflections. Anechoic chambers are the canonical example, constructed to absorb most sound across a wide frequency range, yielding very low residual noise and an impression of near-silence. In typical rooms, achieving true nonechoed conditions is impractical, but engineers may pursue reduced reverberation to improve speech intelligibility or measurement accuracy.

Digital nonechoed processing refers to methods that remove or suppress reverberation in recordings. Dereverberation algorithms, Wiener filtering, and impulse response deconvolution are among the techniques used to approximate a nonechoed signal. Results depend on the input and the model’s assumptions, and artifacts can emerge when echoes are complex or overlapping.

In practice, nonechoed concepts appear in research on room acoustics, hearing aid signal processing, and voice-over production. Some artists and sound designers also employ extremely dry, echo-free timbres as an aesthetic choice.

Etymology: nonechoed derives from the prefix none- plus echo, formed in modern English to describe absence of echo in a given context.

See also: anechoic chamber, dereverberation, acoustic treatment, reverberation time.