All Church Sound - Reviews of Churches We've Visited

While In Colorado, I once again stopped in on a number of churches. One wasn't a church at all, but a bookstore. The reason for the photo below is to show the ceiling design. Notice how it has a concave curve to it. Well, at the far end of the room are a number of television monitors. Standing at the opposite end, in the center of the main isle, the volume is pretty low, but the sound is still heard. The intelligibility is non-existant. There's no way you could understand what was being said. However, take a step to the right or left just two feet, and you could suddenly understand everything being said. While this focusing of sound is often noticed by people like myself who can't get away from hearing acoustical problems, even a number of little kids heard what the ceiling was doing, and they were happy to stomp their feet and clap their hands all of the way down the isle as they heard the resulting echoes! It's a nice looking shape, but it sure makes for a noisy space. Oh, and yes, the effect of the ceiling can be heard even when the talker and listener are only 5 feet apart; it's that bad. Imagine if this was done in a church...many churches have been designed this way believe it or not.

(two photos above) sprung structure; basically an assembly of aluminum braces with a skin stretched over it. This one seats nearly 1,000

A church seating 4,000. The shape is rectangular and the room is used by width (wider than it is deep).