Welcome to the world of Church Acoustics

There are over 400 churches that have very good to great acoustics.  There are another handful of churches that have great acoustics that were not planned as high quality worship space.  Sometimes it just happens.  Churches with good to great acoustics makes up less than 5% of the church community.  Why?  Just recently, Maranatha Church in Hamilton, Ontario has joined the ranks of one of the best sounding traditional style church in and around Hamilton.  Look them up and have a visit.  You will not be disappointed.

The congregation can drown out the organ. When does that happen?

How to recognize speech?

or

How to wreck a nice beach?

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How does your church sound system perform?

When you’re listening to your church sound system what are you hearing?

If you are listening to your minister and you can’t tell the difference between these two phrases, don’t be too quick to blame the sound system.  The acoustics in your worship space could be limiting the performance of your sound system.  Chances are, if this is happening, congregational singing and praise and worship could be affected too.

Did you know that 90% of churches with poor acoustics can be fixed? So how much does it cost to fix the acoustics of a church?  A typical turn-key installed church sound system runs from $55 to $140.00 per seat or higher. High performing acoustical fixes in existing building run from $12.00 to $35.00 per seat and for new churches before they are built the acoustics can be a low as $23.00 per seat.  A fraction of the cost of a church sound system.

Well, you will need a sound system anyway so why do acoustics?  If you include the acoustics, you can have the acoustics and sound system combined for the same $55.00 to $140.00 per seat and have even better sounding sound system with less sound equipment or even with budget equipment.   That’s right!  A lot of current mid to high-end church sound systems are over designed because most of the designers of them think that more equipment will somehow side step physics and correct the room acoustics.  Well, that will never happen.  Oh!

Did you know that when many of these touring companies go from venue to venue, not all of what you see is turned on?  In many cases the same rig that needed everything turned on in one 10,000 seat venue only had 1/3rd of the same sound system turned on in another 10,000 seat venue.  For most outdoor systems, everything is used but for indoor venues the room decides what gets turned on and what is kept off but for convenience, the whole rig is set up every time.  What you see is not always what you hear.  Many times only a third of the twin line arrays are turned on. Every professional sound engineer  who mixes live sound for a living who knows and gets great sound consistently will tell you that less is better.

So what does this mean for churches?  When the acoustics are great and it meet all of the needs for worship including congregational singing, you can have great sound with up to a third less sound equipment.  That then give you two other options.  You can add more to the multi media budget or have higher quality equipment to get that extra sonic quality you wanted for the pastor or the praise team.

By getting your church acoustics managed properly, the church win in many ways.  First off, churches that have better acoustics and matching sound systems have an average higher attendance of 10 to 25%. With higher attendance you have a larger financial base for missions and other church programs.  Churches with better acoustics also have a much more stable memberships and have better successes at planting new churches.  Church staffing is easier to support and when building maintenance is required, the funds are easier to raise.  Along with that and something that is rarely mentioned, a church with higher attendance should also mean church pastors being better supported.

Finally something that I have repeated often, church acoustics usually pays for itself in 12 to 24 month.  What other item can a church invest in that pays for itself?  What investment is there that pays out a 100% return in two years or less?

by Joseph De Buglio

PS:  The opening lines are from an audio magazine news article in the 1980’s.  Couldn’t find the author.  However, the origins of the phrases many have dated back to Bell Lab around 1928.

The following is an overly generalized statement but bear with me.

If I had followed the secular methods of doing larger room acoustics for churches over the last 25 years, I would be still looking for my third acoustical project.  Instead I ditched the methods taught at school and followed the scriptures method of doing church acoustics. Now over 450 churches have very good to great to excellent acoustics.  The science is all there, it’s just used in a different manner and it gives churches what they really want.  It gives a church a space they often hear about but never thought possible in their acoustical nightmare.

Doing church acoustics the biblical way always get the results a church wants regardless of the style worship you practice.  Hey, I used to do churches using secular methods and while it changed the room, often it limited or stifled the worship.  Church acoustics should enhance the worship and bring people together.

What should be louder?  A 37 rank pipe organ or 450 people singing?  How exciting is it when the congregation can out sing a pipe organ without effort!

What should be louder? A 40,000 watt sound system in a 600 seat church or the 500 people singing?  The people should be louder. Such acoustical marvels are already in churches that use the biblical method of church acoustics.

Whether your have a store front worships space, a warehouse worship space or a purpose built church for a worship space, they all can have excellent acoustics right from the first day you worship in it.  Hey, I didn’t make the rules or the laws of physics, God did, and following God is what we are to do as Christians.

Blessings

Joseph De Buglio

Churches and Worship spaces are like musical instruments. Look at a violin.

A lot of detail goes into designing and building a violin. Many violin builders know that if you leave parts out or don’t design the same details into every violin, then you wind up with something that isn’t playable or you have something that cannot be used in an orchestra. Violins are built to a certain standard of performance and to get to that performance, you have to build them almost all the same.

If we built violins the way we build churches, it would be the end of orchestras because all the violins would sound too different to play together. Is this what is happening to churches and worship centers? Are our churches sounding so different that when people visit for the first time they can’t understand what is being said or the sound quality is so different that hearing “church talk”, it is too confusing?

If a church is a musical instrument and it doesn’t sound right, adding the sound system will not fix. Think about it. Does adding an electronic pickup or microphone make a bad sounding guitar sound better? No. All that a microphone or pickup does is amplify what you have. You know – Garbage in – Garbage out… Yet everyday, churches are upgrading and changing their sound systems with a complete disregard to the acoustics of the worship space. All they do is exchange one set of problems for another set of problems. Unit the room is fixed, spending money on sound equipment is not an investment. All it does is make the sound companies and manufacturers rich.

When a church has acoustical problems, spending more money on sound equipment certainly isn’t helping to get more people to stay in church.