Soundscape of a worship space.

Abstract

Worship spaces have a variety of sonic experiences, which they must accommodate such as the service of word and the service of music. Depending on the size and architectural properties of the church, speech or music may need to be electronically reinforced or amplified by sound system. Soundscape methods can be used to evaluate each of the multiple sources present in the room at multiple locations and receiver locations. Natural acoustic and reinforced sounds from the choir, organ, musical accompaniments, pastor or priest, key readers, and congregation were considered. Three churches were chosen for this study with regard to the level of reverberance and of the use of a sound system. Analysis of data required soundscape methods showed that while reverberation time was not very different at each receiver location, early decay time (EDT), center time (Tc), and speech transmission index (STI) obtained from the natural sound propagation in the rooms were different from the measurements made using the sound system because of the location, directivity, frequency response, and coverage of the loudspeakers. In conclusion, worship spaces have to be evaluated for both natural acoustic projection and reinforced or amplified projection of sounds using multiple source and receiver locations.