Studies of the response of an auditorium to a short tone burst have indicated that the character of the first 20 or 30 db of sound decay, the “short‐term” response, is closely related to the subjective “hearing quality” of the room. Recently Haas has investigated the effect of a single echo on the subjective hearing of speech. On the basis of some of Haas' results and other information on the hearing of speech in rooms, a tentative criterion for the short‐term response has been formulated as curves of amplitudevs.time delay of each reflection relative to the direct sound. The criterion correctly rank‐orders subjective quality observations reported by others, and agrees quantitatively with some subjective judgments reported here.