Church DIY Done Right

We have been involved with DIY projects for 17 years. We have done hundreds and maybe over a thousand with the additional project email questions. As hard as we try to keep DIY projects on the correct trajectory, we are not always successful. I believe the saying too many cooks in the kitchen comes to mind. It is a great joy considering all the time we spend with design and follow up questions, to see a project that went as planned. There are many treatment tactics used within this small sanctuary treatment strategy that contributed to the success of the project. Let’s look at a few of those critical variables. The sidewalls are the most critical when it comes to managing reflections.

The front of the church is the energy source. It can be a PA system or the voice of the church leader. Either source produces direct energy which is the straight line energy from source to your ears. Attach a laser to the top of the speaker and see where it points. That pathway is direct sound. Direct sound is sound that does not have the reflections from the room walls in it. It is a pure sound that we want to hear. Unfortunately, the sidewalls produce a series of reflections that cross the direct wanted energy and produce distortions. Add all of these reflections together and you have reverberation. Treating the sidewalls is a first step tactic in managing reverberation.

When managing surface sidewall or any wall issues for reverberation management, You must cover a certain percentage of surface area on that wall surface. This number must be calculated and is based upon a host of variables. On average, we see around 50% surface area coverage in our projects. Some require more, some less. Projects range from 35% – 65% surface area coverages. It is all about the rate and level of absorption used along with the appropriate surface area coverages to lower reverb times and improve speech intelligibility. SI is defined as how many words you can clearly hear in a ten word sentence. You can see that the surface area coverage with this project was in the 50% – 65% range. Notice with this project that they built our DIY Foam Panels on a sliding system so they could position them when the room usage required and then move them to allow for the sunlight to enter the room. This can be done in smaller sanctuaries and should be considered more that it has.

Windows are the worst surface area when it comes sto reflections. Sound takes on the characteristics of the surface area that it strikes. Glass “sound” requires us when we do reverb calculations to double the amount of distortion that the glass within the room produces. Covering windows is very powerful as demonstrated with this project. The proper rate and level of absorption was applied in the correct amount to the most critical surface area in this room size and usage. Care was taken to match the treatment strength to the strength of the reflections from that wall surface area. With reverb, you must fight fire with fire. Our foam technology was designed specifically for music and voice. It is not building insulation performance for music and voice because that is no performance at all. It is a technology that took 8 years and 2 M USD to create with over 8 prototypes. It takes into strong consideration the largest threat to reverberation that is 125 hz – 500 hz. range. It works as designed and advertised.