⭐ Acoustic Treatment Build Plans: www.acousticfi... 📉 Free Room Analysis: www.acousticfi... 🎓 eBooks & Forum: www.acousticfi... - In this video we'll talk about acoustical treatment and churches. Watch the video to find out more!
Dennis, I really like EVERYTHING you have to offer. Thank you for presenting these videos. I have a question. First, I do have a degree in recording, and strive to make my tiny all-in-one production room as acoustically stable as possible. To that end, I have designed and built a rear wall diffuser unlike any I've seen. How would I go about achieving a good diagnosis of its performance? Can I send you pictures? Than you for any advice.
I went to a funeral this spring at a traditional Roman Catholic church. Lots of marble and stained glass. Beautiful building. Great pipe organ (RC doesn't do "worship bands", though many of them did guitar masses back in the late 60s and the 70s until the fad wore off). HORRENDOUS reverb issues. As soon as I heard the PA - or rather didn't hear it, because it was super loud, but with all the reverb, you couldn't make out half of what the priest was saying. I immediately thought of you and Acoustic Fields. If you saw some photos of the inside, you'd see why the reverb is formidable. I wonder how low you could get the reverb times with all those hard surfaces, many of which couldn't be covered with treatment. St. Teresa's in Lincoln Nebraska, by the way.
Welcome to our world. Churches have three main issues: no budget, no space to treat and no knowledge. Without space to treat, you will have to live with the reverb times.
We have all but given up on churches. After 316 proposals and lots of work effort to achieve the Rt-30/60 goals, there is no money for the required treatment, no space to treat, and absolutely no understanding of what needs to be done. They are ripe to be taking advantage of and mainy have been.
Another great video; if I could also suggest when you talk to churches, they buy PA systems that are generic, and usually very wrong for the room. The first church picture is a long narrow shape, so don't let someone put 90x60 or 90 degree constant directivity horns in that space. A 60x40 degree dispersion pattern will reduce the reflected sound to start with, which will make your job a little easier, and doesn't cost any more for the church to buy. In very large rooms, small repeater speakers with time delay can make a big difference. This is another area I've seen so much bad advice given, and vast amounts of money spent that could have been avoided. Start with the right sound system and it will cost less to treat the room after the fact. Randy
That will not be possible when the speaker manufacturers tell churches that their speaker systems will manage reverberation times. It appears that they must make many mistakes until they get to the truth.
Thanks for the good info. I might have missed something but why in your prior video did you recommend doing the rear wall first and this time it is the sidewall? Thanks much.
Thank you for another great insight video. I would be very interested to hear more about that third church that got the idea right, but execution wrong. What depth of acoustic panels would be ball-park required there? Would you typically need deeper panels on the back walls and thinner on the side walls (or vice versa)? What is the frequency impact of the depth?
Managing reverberation times is all about square footage of coverage. Every room surface contributes 17% to the problem and requires so mush treatment coverage using the proper rate and level of absorption. Every room size and associated volumes are different.
@@AcousticFields Thank you for your quick answer. I realise my questions were quite broad, but would be interested in hearing more about the (frequency) impact on the depth of absorption panels in future videos
When you mange excess reverb, you must have a certain amount of surface area coverage on the four walls. If you can not meet the coverage requirements on the walls to meet the designed for reverb times, you must go to the ceiling.
I have a question about diaphragmatic absorbers. Would it hurt to build them to attach together and then attach a large tv stand on top ? Like a entertaining stand of sorts.
What are your objectives? Managing energy in the FOH with a band would be low-frequency focused. The other parts of the church would be reflection or reverberation management.
Good thought. It is amazing to me how little architects know about absorption, diffusion, and the most critical, noise transmission. I see structures designed everyday that will not reduce enough energy transmitted from noise sources to the rooms to match the room usage. Then, after the structure is built, people complain they can't hear themselves think.
@@AcousticFields It's been a lot of years, but the architecture majors I knew were only required to take one 100-level physics class, and it didn't involve calculus (which they also didn't have take, just algebra 102 or similar). I could be remembering it wrong though. Decades ago.
Hi. Thank you so much for your educational videos! I have 2 questions if you don't mind 1) Am I correct assuming diffusers do not change reverberation times in a room? 2) Why do you not recommend diffusers on side walls in 2ch listening setup? Thank you. EDIT: Ok, I think I found the answer for first question: "We must manage the Rt-60 times within our rooms before we introduce sound diffusion in small rooms. Diffusion added to a small room with high reverberation times will make the room sound worse. *It will increase the Rt-60 times* when our goal is to lower them." in www.acousticfields.com/sound-diffusion-in-small-rooms/
S, Agreed. However, older members can not hear speech or music and when they can not hear the spoken or musical word, they do not attend. We have treated many churches and in every case attendance has increased.
The worst ones are the ones that think it's OK to turn the volume up so loud you can't hear the person standing next to you talk, or your own voice for that matter.
@@AcousticFields Despite your vast knowledge, experience and credibility; I honestly don't think people like that would pay you any attention. "Love your neighbor as yourself" should be more than sufficient reason to not turn the volume up that loud. They disregard that by claiming it's a personal preference which I agree with. Their preference is to make a lot of excessive noise under the pretense of praising God. My preference is to not end up with more ear damage in my old age than I already suffer from. Needless to say, I won't attend a church that does that.
@@AcousticFields I literally told the church I played at, “buying more speakers isnt gonna fix the issue” the MD responded with “Its a sound board issue” I said “The more sound that is being reverberated, is eventually gonna create more chances for feedback” They said “Its not gonna work” I was gonna say “You havent even tried” But I gave up and said “Ok”
