Acoustically-treating your worship hall

Lots of good worship music are being ruined by reverberations in church halls every week.

Reverberations are malicious morphing echos bouncing back and forth on flat solid walls and windows.

These echos are slightly-modified each time they bounce off the slightly uneven surfaces of walls or windows and also each time they slightly cancel each other out when they collide with each other.

Thus, in the end , we do not hear real echoes but muddled versions of the original. These muddled versions are called reverberations.

Most church halls these days are merely big rooms with flat solid walls.

Reverberations re-amplify low frequency sounds like the drum and bass sounds and cause the music to be very muddy and unclear. This is because the drums and bass are powerful enough to travel across the room and reflect off the walls.

How to reduce reverberations :

• The cheapest way is to put thick curtains covering windows and at least 60% of your walls. It can also be used as decorative purposes.
  
• Thick carpets can be used on the floor to reduce reverbs.
• Put a screen in front of the drums to reduce its volume.
  
• Angle your amps upwards in such a way the sounds from them do not hit the wall perpendicularly.
  
• Construct the hall in such a way that the walls are not at right angles 90 degrees with each other.
• Put sound absorbing panels on the wall with the help of an acoustic expert

I once played my alto sax in a church camp service in an acoustically-paneled ballroom at a hotel. The sound was fantastically warm and clear though the room was huge. Thats what we should all be trying to obtain for our church halls - warm and clear sounds.

However note that a room completely devoid of reverberations may sound very 'dead'. So a little reverb (either natural or digital effects) is OK.