Good acoustics is one of the most important – and often overlooked or misunderstood – aspects of a worship space. Opinions abound about “standing waves,” “dead spots,” “too much echo,” or “not enough echo.” When designing acoustics for a new church, or when planning a renovation of an existing worship space, the most important first step is focusing on the worship and music style to determine what kind of acoustical environment is needed.
Consider these images of two different churches:
These two spaces sound very, very different from each other, but both have “good acoustics” for their particular uses. The upper one has plenty of sound absorption to control reverberation for the amplified praise band. The lower one has a tall volume with mostly hard surfaces that develop supportive reverberation for choir, organ, and congregational singing. However, if these two congregations switched churches, there would surely be complaints about “terrible” acoustics!
“Good” acoustics for a church depends on how the space is used
“Good” acoustics for a church depends on how the space is used and on the music and worship style of the congregation . Most churches fall somewhere in between the spectrum of possibilities outlined by these two examples.
Despite their different acoustical needs for music, nearly all churches need to provide intelligible speech for their congregation members. Even in an acoustical environment that is friendly to amplification, this can be a challenge considering the wide variety of people – many untrained in public speaking – who may participate in a typical church worship service. Fortunately, loudspeaker technology and digital audio processing have improved in recent years to make good speech intelligibility a reality in even the most reverberant church environments.
Churches are remarkable acoustic design challenges given their diversity of worship styles and architecture. The first job for an acoustics or sound system consultant is to work closely with you to determine what good acoustics means for you. After that, we work with passion and enthusiasm to help you get there.