A t the beginning of certain sound “Vendors should publish the Angeles. The existing room had a crucisystem design projects there is a form shape with wooden pews facing moment of pan ic when the formulas and assumptions the sanctuary. The building has 40-footwhole thing seems totally impossible. high arched ceilings and is built of stone Usually the difficulties arise from a behind their software.” and concrete with unpadded wooden combination of a challenging acoustical environment and complicated client pews and tile floors. It is being redesigned to accommodemands. At these times it is useful to take a deep breath date services in the round in keeping with the Vatican II and review the overall design objectives, which are relativeencyclical that encourages “full active and conscious participaly simple: (1) distribute direct sound evenly to the listening tion in the liturgy? The existing pews will be removed, and a area, (2) provide adequate intelligibility, (3) deliver suffinew seating configuration installed, which can be rearranged cient level, frequency response, and natural sound quality using moveable chairs, into any configuration to accommofor the intended use, (4) leave the listener with the sense date various uses. In addition to traditional Masses with prethat the sound is coming from the source, (5) control feedsenters located at six different locations distributed throughout back at the microphone positions, (6) avoid acoustical the space, the room will be used for lectures, working group defects such as long delayed reflections, and (7) respect the presentations, choral singing, and small musical ensembles. architecture of the space. Attendance can vary from 6 to 200 at any given time. Sound system design combines the arts of architecture, audio, and acoustical engineering and can be surprisingly complicated. The sound system designer is often asked to provide a solution in a less than ideal acoustic environment for a variety of potential uses. Figure 1 illustrates a good example of a challenging project. It is a sketch by the architects, Armando Ruiz and Associates, of their concept of the reconfiguration of a traditional gothic chapel at Mount Saint Mary’s College, a small Catholic women’s college in Los The transmission of speech over the existing sound system was difficult to understand, as was unamplified speech beyond about 20 feet. Organ and sacred music sounded wonderful over the existing sound system and the music director did not want to loose those special qualities. The architect wanted to preserve the existing visual ambience. Not surprisingly the budget was small and the time frame short. This project, which was completed in late 2006, serves as a good example of the audio design process.