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[chris harwood]

I appreciate what you were trying to do and hope others do as well.  However, I've been surprised how many people dealing with larger spaces, including churches, seem to get ideas for DIY acoustics directly from the numerous home studio and home theatre resources that are so readily available.  And also how many think only of room finishes when thinking of acoustics without considering how acoustics can extend into aspects of the space design such as room shaping, room volume, space planning, HVAC system design, etc.  It's not a church but I'm currently working on the acoustics for a $350+ million building and the vast majority of my time is being spent on HVAC system noise and vibration control, interior and exterior sound isolation, space adjacencies and so on.

Your current job sounds impressive.  Thanks for telling us. 
Like I said, I think most trying to deal with acoustics understand some basic principles, whether they get them from that Winer guy and his bass traps or whether they actually read up on it and study.  I guess trying to contribute in the shadow of your experience really is probably a waste of my time.  I'm sure your finished project will be an example many should aspire to.
Unfortunately, there are too many Kingdom projects that only have 5 grand or less and it IS a fix.  Ripping out existing HVAC systems and putting in the new Binford 5000 hush system isn't typically the first solution. 
Good blessings for your current project.

[Arnold B. Krueger]

And also how many think only of room finishes when thinking of acoustics without considering how acoustics can extend into aspects of the space design such as room shaping, room volume, space planning, HVAC system design, etc.  It's not a church but I'm currently working on the acoustics for a $350+ million building and the vast majority of my time is being spent on HVAC system noise and vibration control, interior and exterior sound isolation, space adjacencies and so on.

As I do my spring tour of high school auditoriums for the choir/band festival recording season, I see many examples of what you are talking about. Rather nice rooms with a giant wart of a noisy HVAC system are very common. 

I find it interesting that a new auditorium with a flat floor is virtually unheard of for secular-purposed buildings such as schools, but people are still doing it to new churches all of the time, and with a big tradition-loving grin on their faces.

[Steven Tye]

Hi Arnold - you said that you didn't have any pictures of these getting made or installed, but do you have any of what they look like afterwards?

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Hi Arnold - you said that you didn't have any pictures of these getting made or installed, but do you have any of what they look like afterwards?

Here are pictures of the front of the church (for reference) and the back of the church including the sound absorbers on the front of the balcony.





This is a "before" picture:



Note the yellow-green cast from the use of legacy flourescent lights that we used in the days when this picture was taken. The other two pictures are of the room after we upgraded the chandeliers with dimmable CFLs and turned the old fluorescents off most of the time.

The top picture was taken on a sunny day when sunlight dominates. The middle picutre was taken on a darker day when the CFLs provide most of the lighting.

[Brad Weber]

Looks very nice, very much like they were intended to be there.  Now if we could just get Architects to understand that flat, glass rear walls are not a good idea...

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Looks very nice, very much like they were intended to be there.  Now if we could just get Architects to understand that flat, glass rear walls are not a good idea...

If the flat glass  was the only problem. We're having sound transmission problems, now that with two services we are running classrooms concurently with worship.

What happens is that one of our largest classrooms, taught by a really nice smart guy who happens to have a very low voice who doesn't like microphones, secretly shares a wall with the sanctuary.  Its not obvious but the balcony is the ceiling to the narthex, and that the back wall of the balcony is the side wall of this teaching room.  What is obvious is that we have some tiny monitors in the narthex that do have a little sound coming out of them. What is not obvious to many is that single pane glass and 1/4" plywood are not soundproof.  Therefore, when sound gets transmitted into the classroom, and quite a bit gets there, only the monitor speakers are blamed.

We've done some experiments and all by themselves, the monitors barely hardly make a tiny little sound in the classroom. But the perception is that turning off the monitors helps a lot. Turning those monitors off and on around the worship parts of the service seems small, but most people in the media booth are really busy during transitions, and particularly all the way through the worship. Besides, the monitors really have no bearing on the problem.

So, we've got two problems. Plenty of mechanical sound transmission, and the perception that the problem is the electronics. Leadership doesn't want to try to inform people of the real truth becase then the people who vociferously complained would have made a mistake, beat up the wrong people for the wrong reason, and generally get mad at the church rather than being mad at one person who isn't formally in leadership.

[Chris Penny]

Can I just say that the rear of your church seem very much the same as the rear of my church (complete with sound booth on the right, rear glass wall and gallery over narthex). Has me thinking about our room now.

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Can I just say that the rear of your church seem very much the same as the rear of my church (complete with sound booth on the right, rear glass wall and gallery over narthex). Has me thinking about our room now.

I'd bet money that about 1/3 of the alegedly 50,000 churches in the USA fit that mold! I know my oldest son's church in PA fits the mold, except that their media booth is on the other side of the aisle.

[Jonathan Johnson]

Looks very nice, very much like they were intended to be there.  Now if we could just get Architects to understand that flat, glass rear walls are not a good idea...

Since we can't seem to get architects to understand this -- they are thinking sight lines -- perhaps we can get them to angle the glass downward to reduce the inevitable slap-back to the stage.

[Brad Weber]

Since we can't seem to get architects to understand this -- they are thinking sight lines -- perhaps we can get them to angle the glass downward to reduce the inevitable slap-back to the stage.

For some reason people do seem to focus on the plan perspective and forget working in section and elevation, however if you angle the glass with the top leaning toward the stage then you'd want it to be at a sufficient angle that the reflections won't negatively impact the listeners.  I have been successful in getting some Architects to 'sawtooth' the glass in plan.