How Not to Make A Church Sound Bad

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Before Building a Church

1.1. The Rectangle

2.1. The Rectangle.
2.2. All other room shapes are just as bad without acoustical planning.

3.1. None that I know of.

4.1. A room is by default designed to store energy
4.2. All flat walls act as amplifiers
4.3. Walls do not have to be parallel to store bass energy.
4.4. All corners in a room store and reflect bass energy back into a room
4.5. This includes the corners where two walls meet. Where a wall and ceiling meet. Where a wall and floor meet.

5.1. The rectangle.
5.2. All other room shape cost more to make them acoustical friendly for worship.

6.1. Yes.
6.2. You can make any room shape acoustical friendly but you cannot make other room shapes perform and sound as good as a rectangle.
6.3. Each room shape has its own character of sound much like musical instruments.

1. The way a room is finished determine it's performance.
2. The materials that a room is finished in termines the tone.
3. This is just like building a musical insturment.

6.4. You can grade room shapes like the instruments of an orchestra
6.5. Instrument ranking starts with the most important instrument is the

6.5.1. 1st String Violin

6.5.1.1. Violins
6.5.1.2. Violas
6.5.1.3. Cellos
6.5.1.4. Bass
6.5.1.5. Harp

6.5.2. Trombone – Leader of the Brass

6.5.2.1. Trumpets
6.5.2.2. Cornets
6.5.2.3. Trombones
6.5.2.4. Tuba
6.5.2.5. French Horns

6.5.3. Oboe/ Leader of the woodwinds

6.5.3.1. Clarinets….
6.5.3.2. Sax….
6.5.3.3. Flutes…
6.5.3.4. Oboes…
6.5.3.5. Bassoons…

6.5.4. Percussion

6.5.4.1. Timpani
6.5.4.2. Bells
6.5.4.3. Complete drum kits
6.5.4.4. Glockenspiel…..

6.5.5. Keyboards

6.5.5.1. Piano
6.5.5.2. Celesta
6.5.5.3. Pipe Organ

6.6. When you have tested and listened to as many churches as I have, they all have their own unique sound that is associated with the room shape.

7.1. The Rectangle is the cheapest room to make it sound great in the design stage.
7.2. The Rectangle is the cheapest room to fix it later if not included in the original room design.

8.1. Rectangle rooms sound like strings
8.2. Fan shaped rooms tend to sound bassy and brassy.
8.3. Square and octagon rooms tend to sound sharp like flutes and Clarinets.
8.4. Oval or half round rooms tend to sound like French Horns or Trumpets.
8.5. Rooms with odd number of walls tend to sound sharp like percussion instruments.

12.1. A hostile room is a room that forces you into compromises.
12.2. It is a room the forces you to buy expensive sound equipment, elaborate speaker systems and extravagant monitor system.
12.3. It is what forces drummers into cages and worship performers into wires coming out of their ears.
12.4. It is what forces people to have to keep microphones within inches of their mouths at all times which also blocks the view of a person’s mouth. (This is a serious issue for people in the early stages of mild hearing lose who have learned to lip read.)
12.5. It is what discourages congregational singing.
12.6. It is what has driven many choirs out of worship.
12.7. It is a room that when you talk from the front of the church and whether you talk with or without a mic, you want to lower your voice because you hear yourself so loud and hope that the sound system is doing all the work.

13.1. It means that it doesn’t have any of the problems found in a hostile room
13.2. It means no need to experiment with sound equipment
13.3. It means you can invest in better equipment because you don’t have to buy as much of it.
13.4. It means a better worship experience for everyone from the pastor, music leaders, performers and the most important people of all, the audience.
13.5. It means first time visitors will most likely come back for future events

18.1. They will have to be acoustical cancelled later and the fix usually doesn't look good.
18.2. Unfortunately, many churches with such features don't carry on without making any fixes and just put up with the problem.

19.1. 2 x 8's are better.
19.2. Every wall inside a church must be insulated.
19.3. I have had churches complain about privacy issues in offices, restrooms and Fellowship halls.
19.4. Can you imagine a pastor consulting someone in their office and 60 feet away people can here the conversations in the restrooms.
19.5. Or every time a toilet is flushed in the main restrooms on the other side of the building it can be heard by everyone on the stage including the sound system (no the plumbing did not go under the sanctuary, this was a direct sound that traveled through the hollow walls.)

21.1. This also depends on the size of the church.
21.2. Either way, they should always be reasonable close.
21.3. One thing that seems to work is having the organ speakers/pipes and the choir equal distance to the organ console.
21.4. When the organist is too close to the choir and/or the piano, they will hear the choir as being very loud from their position.
21.5. The choir can be so loud that the organist can't hear the organ over the choir.
21.6. As a result, the organist will play the organ louder.
21.7. Unfortunately, this means the organ is drowning out the choir from the audience point of view.
21.8. This is also the reason having the console too close to the audience in not a good thing.
21.9. If the audience is to close to the console, the organist can't hear the organ and winds up suppressing the congregational singing.

27.1. While compressing insulation is normally not a good thing, it is more important for walls not to vibrate during worship.
27.2. Many times I have tested "insulated" walls that vibrated enough that when you put your hand on them some of the feedback in the sound system stops during musical performances.
27.3. The heavier and denser the walls, the better.
27.4. Foam insulation works fine too. (This is not for sound proofing. For that you have to include other considerations.)

28.1. The cost difference between a great building and a poor building is often less than 15%.
28.2. Building codes are a minimum standard for short term construction (it is almost as if they are meant to last only 30 years or less.
28.3. What is it now, 50 to 70% of the churches built in 1910 are still standing today.
28.4. Will your church last 100 years?
28.5. That should be the standard.

29.1. They often have to rewrite their mortgage or get a mortgage to do the repairs.

31.1. They are usually fudged. (I know people don't want to hear that but it is true.)

32.1. Interview the church secretary, caretaker and the deacon/elder responsible for property management.
32.2. Visit the minister last.
32.3. Visit and interview former churches your Architect built 3 to 5 years ago.
32.4. Check out their older buildings and document the good and bad points.
32.5. I find it interesting that when you get all of the good things a committee liked from a dozen or so churches they visited at random, most times they wind up designing a rectangle shell to get those entire good feature into one worship space.

35.1. Use a canvas boot on either side of walls to break the connection between the HVAC and building.

36.1. I have come across over a dozen churches less that 10 years old that have HVAC system total contained within the sanctuary.
36.2. In two churches, they have 6 to 8 units with their own thermostats.

36.2.1. As the sun light through the windows move across the room on sunny days, you can hear each HVAC unit cycle of and on creating pockets of hot and cold air with a difference of 5 to 10 degrees "F" within steps of each other.
36.2.2. The temp changes were enough that during one worship service, you could see people putting on and removing jackets and sweaters during the worship service like the wave at a football game.

38.1. Doing that has reduced the noise in the worship space and helped to keep the room temperature more stable.
38.2. It often allows the HVAC system to be more responsive to drastic room changes.

39.1. This also applies to any unit outside of the church or for units and church roofs and when within the building

Existing Churches

1.1. The ideal RT 60 should be between 1.4 to 1.8 seconds between 200 hertz to 2000 hertz average.

2.1. The Ideal RT 60 should be between 1.4 to 2.2 seconds between 200 hertz to 2000 hertz average and depending on the style of worship.

2.1.1. To have longer RT60’s you need volume. When the volume of the room goes over 300,000 cubic ft, the RT60 can become longer as long as you have good signal to noise.

3.1. Better yet. Any noise over 40dB at any frequency is a problem.
3.2. This is important for many people over 45 years of age.
3.3. You should have a signal to noise ratio of 20 to 25dB
3.4. Up to 30% of the population has hearing lose in one or both ears
3.5. Any kind of mechanical noise above 40dB flat is problematic for hearing aids in large spaces.

6.1. or your church is not properly insulated.6.2. In general it takes about 1 ton for every 500 square ft of floor space. (This is just a guideline. There are many variable that can change this estimate.)

7.1. In general, when the air velocity exceed 400 CFM's it usually introduces noise at the registers.

8.1. The minimum foot candles should be 60 foot candles for the seating areas and 140 foot candles for the stage area.
8.2. The higher stage lighting allows for better lip reading up to 100 ft from the stage and the higher audience lighting is easier reading of bibles, bulletins and Hymnals - for churches that still use these worship assets.

13.1. Thirteen feet for 9 rows under the balcony
13.2. Fifteen feet for 12 rows and so on.
13.3. The higher the ceiling is under the balcony, the better the space is for singing, worship and hearing.

14.1. Painting often destroys the performance of most absorptive produce and texture walls.
14.2. Paint has tremendous effect on room acoustics.
14.3. Even if a wall material is soft or if you feel you need to paint the unpainted block, watch out. True, you can't hurt the brick but the acoustics can change so much that you may have to sand blast what was painted later. It has happened.
14.4. Do not paint ceiling tiles. Have them cleaned.

15.1. The clicking sounds of the relays may be amplified through the sound system.

16.1. Check out the results of other projects from your designer and see if the results matches what the modeling predicted.16.2. Ask if the drawings are just for illustration purposes to better communicate the proposed project.

17.1. In a well planned worship space, the sound person should be able mix from anywhere in the main seating area positions.

18.1. Most churches find that they have better results when the mix position is not in the middle.

1. Good Intelligibility and Clear Speech
2. Even sound coverage and no Deadspot throughout the room
3. Good congregational singing
4. A space that inspires people to sing
5. Effortless congregational singing
6. To hear and understand the choir
7. For the choir to hear the pastor and song leaders
8. For the choir to hear themselves
9. For the choir to sound like a chorus, not individuals
10. Effortless choral singing
11. For the organ or praise team to not over power the audience or choir.
12. For the drummer and bass player to not play so loud
13. No feedback from the sound system
14. To be able to hear children when on the stage. (Many parents get really upset if they can't hear their children when the children are at the altar/stage and are leading the worship - even if only saying one or two lines in a drama play or when singing to the congregation. What individual want and what families need are both very important and should be automatically part of any acoustical and sound system fix.)
15. To make the HVAC system quieter

By Joseph De Buglio