TITLE:
Evaluation of the Acoustic Environment in a Protestant Church Based on Measurements of Acoustic Descriptors
AUTHORS:
Samuel Ansay, Paulo Henrique Trombetta Zannin
KEYWORDS:
Acoustic Quality, Church, Clarity, Definition, Reverberation Time
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Building Construction and Planning Research,
Vol.4 No.3,
September
1,
2016
ABSTRACT: The new guidelines of the Catholic Church are in line with the guidelines adopted by
Protestant churches since the Reformation, unifying appreciation for the liturgical
practices of preaching and congregational singing. These guidelines require that the
room, in this case the church, provides appropriate acoustic characteristics, which
can be characterized by acoustic descriptors such as Reverberation Time (RT), Clarity
(C80) and Definition (D50). In this article, we analyzed the acoustic quality of a
protestant church whose design tried to follow these guidelines. Our findings revealed
the poor quality of the acoustic environment in terms of both speech intelligibility
and music. These findings emphasized the need to adopt not only Reverberation
Time but also other acoustic descriptors such as Clarity and Definition in
church design.