hello this is my 1st post here, i hope i'm in the right forum:
it would be great if someone could answer a few questions i have?

to get the acoustic signature of an acoustic space can you use a loud
burst of pink noise as the stimulus, would this be better then say using
a balloon burst or starter pistol?
i remember in college my lecturer
telling me this was far more accurate then the latter.
would pink noise be better then a swept sine wave?

and finally he told me the only way to get the correct
signature was to use MLS, from MLSSA, or similar.
does any of this make sense, can anyone
shed some light on this for me!
thanks in advance
jim.

I forget the properties off the top of my head, but a lot of it has to do with signal to noise ratio. Even better than maximal length sequences in some cases is something called a Golay code. Google around about using Golay codes for finding impulse responses of acoustic spaces, and you're sure to find some discussion of both. Just be prepared to read!

thanks for that: have you heard of using a pink noise burst?

There are many allpass sequences you can use and get a good SNR.

You might look in old (i.e. released) radar and sonar papers to start.

In theory, noise or MLS can give you a very good measurement of the acoustic impulse response. In practice, not so much because of one main problem: distortion. It's actually counter-intuitive that the higher you crank the volume (higher SNR), the worse your results will be because of distortion (I've been hit by that before). However, I've seen a very good method using a log sweep instead of noise/MLS:
A. Farina, Simultaneous measurement of impulse response and distortion with a swept-sine technique, 108th AES Convention, Paris 18-22 February 2000.
Not only is this method not affected by distortion, but it can actually help you measure the distortion. I've implemented it and was able to get in the order of 90-110 dB accuracy <b>even with cheap PC speakers</b>.

www.winmls.com

Allows you to measure using mls-sequences or swept sines. Swept sines are recommended.

-k