Every church is dedicated to God as a house of worship. The designers, builders, and congregations all seek that perfect balance between speech, congregational singing, and music. Most churches never experience this balance because they don’t follow the plan laid out in the Bible. Yes, the Bible does in fact lay out the perfect example for all churches to adhere to. The following is the standard. It starts with the ideal room shape for Christian Worship. The rest of the standard is how to complete the interior of the worship space.
Width 1 Height 1.5 Length 2
Example: 30 feet wide, 45 feet high, 60 feet long. Churches with this ratio are perfect when they complete the interior details that conform to the Biblical standard. However, from experience, the height ratio decreases as the room gets bigger. That is something the Golden ratio doesn’t cover. Church acoustics is very unique and very different from the needs of any secular music or entertainment venue.
The Following is that standard.
Absorption Ratio • 30% of the total surface area of the room needs to be absorptive. • For most churches, the carpet and padded seating are enough. • For taller and higher-volume spaces, additional absorption high on the side of the walls will be needed to meet that 30% rule. o In such cases, only 3 to 8% of the available wall space must be covered with extra absorption. Reflection Ratio • The total amount of untreated reflective surface space will be 52-55% • There are to be no bare wall areas perpendicular to the stage/altar area greater than 49 square feet where the length to width of the exposed space is less than a 3:1 ratio, including windows. • Reflective areas are to be combined with diffusive surfaces to maintain a balanced ratio. Diffusion Ratio • The average amount of diffusion from half rounds is 15 to 18% of the total wall space. • The length of the tubes needs to be 2/3rds of the wall height. • The ideal tube sizes needed are 8-, 12-, and 16-inch half rounds. • The tube spacing, groupings, and sizes can be combined to give the room the flat frequency response it is supposed to have to correct any acoustical irregularities from improper worship space building practices in the existing space already have. • The ideal Tube spacing should be 17 to 23 inches centers or less (depending on tube sizes.) • All the walls need diffusion, no exceptions. • All sidewalls to the seating audience need to have diffusers at ear height when sitting down. • The half-round tubes don’t work if they are mounted horizontally. The Ideal Reverberation Time • Reverberation for Church Worship should never be greater than 1.7 seconds between 300 – 3000 Hertz regardless of the size of the room. • The reverberation from 50 to 300 Hertz should never exceed 1.4 seconds. Frequency Response of Worship Spaces • The frequency response of the room should be: o +/- 6dB from 20 to 100 Hertz and o +/- 5dB from 100 to 4000 Hertz and o +/-4dB from 4000 to 8000 Hertz and o 6dB per octave roll-off from 8000-20000Hz. Signal-To-Noise Ratio • The ideal signal-to-noise ratio is to be 20dB or greater at 512 and 1024 Hertz.
This standard is universal. It has been applied in rooms with all kinds of shapes and sizes. It doesn’t matter what style of worship your church practices; this standard works every time it is followed, and hundreds of churches have already implemented it. If your church is seeking better congregational singing, better sound system performance, or better speech clarity, this standard will solve those problems and improve the overall quality of worship. I don’t make that promise, but God does because this is from Him. Imagine a 3500-year-old recipe that solves all the church sound problems in the twenty-first century.
Performance Space Acoustics is fraught with many myths, misinformation, and limitations. It is pure science, but its complexity makes it appear part of the mystical arts, brainwashing most into believing good acoustics is not possible or repeatable. What could be further from the truth? There are rules for acoustics. Follow them, and success is assured every time. Break any rule, and the results create an endless and costly cycle of experiments to correct the error. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it is human nature for people to believe that the rules don’t apply to them. The burning question is, which is greater, the laws of physics or human nature? The answer is simple. The laws of nature cannot be broken, and no amount of human cleverness can change that.
It has often been said and proven that acoustical problems come in layers. The most common and misunderstood layer has to do with excess bass. This layer is often misunderstood in acoustical measurements due to the sound-masking effects of bass energy. Most experts are not trained…
The Bible has a lot to say about how a modern church should be designed. Solomon’s Temple was not just a house for God to dwell in, it was also meant to be a tool to help preach and spread the Gospel in the present.
After reading this article, please pass it on and make comments below.
This article is the most comprehensive study of King Solomon’s Temple I have ever written. If you believe John 1:3, then you know who really designed Solomon’s Temple. King David only penned the details of the new temple. King David told his son Solomon that it was the hand of God that guided his hand. What was so important for God to design the temple rather than letting a man design in with whatever came into his thought?
This article gives a stronger case for what the “Inspired Word of God” means.
Winning people to Christ is not a game or something given to chance. We need all the tools possible to have an impact on this world. Jesus is Lord, and if your church is dedicated to God, Jesus is Lord over your church building too.
Late last year, Kevin Young, freelance music and tech writer, professional musician, and composer ask to write up a profile article on JdB Sound Acoustics. After several interviews, he submitting the article to Church Sound Magazine which is part of Pro Sound Web. Pro Sound Web has published a number of my projects over the years and they are a great resource for churches for all things about church sound, lighting, and AV.
Is the performance of your worship space a priority? Is the message always crystal clear in every seating position, and over 60% of the congregation is singing all the time? If you say no to either or both questions, and you want your church to sound right for speech and music, the biggest obstacle is often the acoustics. The second is money. The third is aesthetics.
Fix the room! How? Follow what the Bible says, and you will not be disappointed. After all, it is God’s plan, not man’s idea. Do you think that the results will be less than perfect if you follow His plan completely? Isn’t the Bible the Living Bible? Since when did the Bible stop teaching us new things about science? Check out Solomon’s Temple, and the answers are there. They always have been. It’s just taken a while to join the dots.
But it costs too much! Oh, you mean the cost of a few floor monitors or a couple of wireless microphones considered too much? That is often the cost of the Bible’s way of fixing the acoustics or about $3.50USD per seat for a 300 seat church. (Not including the price for the knowledge of knowing what to do.) Replacing a mixer costs about $15.00-21.00 per seat. Replacing pews for chairs cost about $75.00 per seat. Buying 10 Shure SM58 mics with cables and mic stands – costs about $1,500.00. Fixing the acoustics of a church is cheaper than you think.
If the look of any acoustical treatment is a concern, ask yourself this. Are you there to worship God or the building? Fixing the acoustics is like saying you are more interested in hearing what God has to say through your minister. Putting up with acoustical problems, poor quality congregational singing, and accepting a sound system with limited performance is like saying the building is more important than the message and having fellowship with other believers.
It all comes down to priorities. The primary purpose of any building that is a dedicated House of God is the preaching of the Gospel. A place where the Gospel message can be spoken without distortion or interface. That includes making the room behave as God would want us to have it. The second priority is the breaking of bread and drinking of wine in remembrance of what Jesus did for all of us. The worship space has to support this event as often as each church chooses to remember. The next priority is congregational singing. There isn’t any other experience that can replace the joy and excitement of a room where more than 75% of the audience is singing. Songs that tell stories of Jesus, his atonement of our sins, and of people who follow Jesus are powerful in bringing people together. It takes the same quality of acoustics to hear clear speech as well as great congregational singing. These are the things that matter when you are a part of the Kingdom of God.
While I do have a business about church acoustics and sound, there is no possible way for one person or one company to fix all of the churches out there that need help. By making this public, it means that no one can patent it and force churches to pay a license fee. It means that no one can control it and inflate the cost of fixing existing and new churches. Churches should use the Bible’s methods with confidence, to apply in faith what God teaches, even without expert help. When churches take such a leap of faith, in most cases, the results are outstanding.
This information is being shared because I care more about winning people for Christ through better sound than creating a business empire. By revealing what the Bible teaches, by showing that science backs it up, that it is affordable for every church to have excellent acoustics, this is all part of the Great Commission. If more people with a passion and skills like mine, were to apply what the Bible teaches about sound, we could make a difference. Mat-7:15. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. (KJV) If you have the chance, read the rest of what Jesus said in Mathews 7:15-20. Don’t trust me. Trust the Bible.
What would you prefer? A church were you can have the best worship experience or a church that looks amazing?
The organist of this church pulled every stop, pushed the peddles all the way down and the he had trouble hearing the organ just 20 feet away. At the back of the church at the sound booth, the organ was barely audible. I used a SPL meter, put it about 3 feet over my head at the back of the church and the congregational singing peaked at 105dB several time during a familiar hymn. There was no one behind us. There have been other times at other church where I designed or upgraded their acoustics were the congregation is singing acapella and they were peaking at 106dB. The good news is, singing like that doesn’t hurt your hearing.
The goal of any worship space and the church sound system is not about loudness, gain before feedback, intelligibility, special sound effects for the organ or choir, having the most talented performers in the worship team, how many wireless mics, number of channels the mixer has or the name brand of equipment you have. The goal of a church worship space and the sound system is to be a safe place where the Gospel can be presented clearly and with little to no blemishes. Where every person within the worship space can hear and understand the Gospel as clearly as when having a conversation with someone only 4 feet away and sharing the Gospel. Anything less than that goal means that the spoken word can be corrupted in the journey between the minister’s mouth and ears of all those who are listening. The Gospel needs to be broadcasted and understood as clearly as reading God’s written words.
If your church has hot spots, dead spots, good sound in these seats and poor sound in those seats, then the Gospel is not being presented equally to everyone. If your sound system has technical problems during worship often, then it is a distraction, and it can make the difference of understanding something important.
The chart below shows tangible results when your worship and sound system are tested. There should be three tests.
The first is with a test speaker. It is a point source speaker that is small enough to mimic a person’s voice.
The next test is feeding a signal directly into the sound system and test those results. This test is just about the playback quality of your sound system.
The third test is to use the test speaker 30 inches from an open microphone such as a pulpit or any microphone on a stand and test the combined results of the worship space’s acoustics direct interaction of the sound system and open mics. You can also do a second version of this test and place the test speaker 4 inches from a microphone where the microphone is 45 degrees off axis.
If all three tests are not in the Yellow section, the results will let you know if it is your sound system, the acoustics or all of the above. This is also a better indication predicting if upgrading your sound system will improve the results you are looking for. This is also a strong indicator that your worship space needs some kind of an acoustical management system
You can get your church tested. It doesn’t cost much, and the results can save a life or many lives, depending on your point of view. As an independent consulting company, we offer church testing and results with no obligation to use our services in the future.
Churches use a lot of Cardboard Tubes in acoustical room fixes because they are very effective in getting the room performance they want and need. Cardboard Tube not only outperform all other acoustical products in churches but they are also the most affordable. There is nothing that can do what half-round tubes can do, even at 40 times the cost.
Ok then, what if you don’t like the look of cardboard tubes around your worship space. Here is an option some churches have been willing to spend a little extra for.
These look like standard 5 inch deep absorbing panels. They are not. These are Sono Tubes mounted in a wooden frame and covered with cloth.
The cloth was an added expense and it was worth it. The fire rated cloth is expensive and before covering the panels, you want to make sure the acoustical system is going to work and work it did. The church is very happy with the results and they are enjoying the room.
This is what the installation looked like before it was covered. The wooden frame has no effect on the performance of the half round tubes. The cloth only affects frequencies above 10,000 Hertz which means they have no effect on speech or music. In this installation, three sizes of tubes were used.
At the bottom is a huge video wall screen. On the wall are the Sono Tubes. Yes, the tubes will work behind a vinyl screen. If you notice the pattern of the diffusers on the wall. that pattern was needed to control lower mids and bass sound energy. This pattern was pretested in our test room.
Here is the finished installation of the video system. It takes three projectors for each screen. The center screen is a video wall.
Photos courtesy of Frederic Lachance of Northside Church in Coquitlam BC, 2017.
Welcome to the world of Church Acoustics 