Worship Space Acoustics

by Mendel Kleiner, David Lloyd Klepper, Rendell Torres

Overview

Worship Space Acoustics is a unique guide to the design, construction, and use of religious facilities for optimum acoustics. The book is divided into two parts: Part I discusses methods and techniques of room optimization, including how the acoustics of large and small spaces are designed, implemented, and adjusted; how acoustical privacy is attained; noise and its control; sound reinforcement; and numerical and physical modeling techniques. Part II provides the architect, student, and lay person a review of the characteristics of the religious services pertinent to various beliefs and how these are provided for in the acoustic design of spaces in churches, mosques, and synagogues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604270372
Publisher:	Ross, J. Publishing, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/01/2010
Series:	A Title in J. Ross Publishing's Acoustic
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mendel Kleiner obtained his Ph.D. in architectural acoustics in 1978 and is currently Professor of Acoustics at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, and in charge of the Chalmers Room Acoustics Group. Dr. Kleiner is responsible for teaching room acoustics, audio, electroacoustics, and ultrasonics in the Chalmers Master Program on Sound and Vibration. He has more than 50 publications, presented keynote lectures and more than 110 papers, has led courses at international conferences on acoustics and noise control, and organized an international conference on acoustics. His main research areas are computer simulation of room acoustics, electroacoustic reverberation enhancement systems, room acoustics of auditoria, sound and vibration measurement technology, product sound quality, and psychoacoustics. Dr. Kleiner is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, the Chair for the Audio Engineering Society's Technical Committee on Acoustics and Sound Reinforcement and on its Standards committee on Acoustics. David Lloyd Klepper is currently a student of Rabbinics at Yeshivat Beit Orot, Jerusalem, Israel. He was formerly President of Klepper Marshall King Acoustical Consultants, an Adjunct Professor of Architectural Acoustics at City University, New York City, and a senior consultant at Bolt Beranek and Newman. Mr. Klepper also has SM and SB degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT. He has been an acoustical consultant for over 200 worship space buildings, including the National Presbyterian Church, Washington, DC; St. Thomas Church, New York City; the Capetown , South Africa, Anglican Cathedral; River Road Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia; Young Israel of Southfield, Michigan; and Holy Cross Cathedral in Boston. He is a pioneer in the application of digital delay and electronic simulation of reverberation in worship spaces and in pew-back speech reinforcement. Mr. Klepper is the author of 37 published papers on acoustics, noise control, and electronic sound reinforcement systems. He was the Editor of Sound Reinforcement Anthology I and Sound Reinforcement Anthology II from the Audio Engineering Society (AES) and is a Fellow of both the AES and the Acoustical Society of America, a member of the Institute of Noise Control Engineering and the American Guild of Organists, and has received the Silver Medal (Berliner Medal) from the AES. Rendell R. Torres is a priest for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, New York. Before the priesthood, he was a tenure-track professor and director of the Program in Architectural Acoustics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and now continues to serve as an adjunct professor. He obtained his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, his M.S. in engineering acoustics from Penn State University, and his Ph.D. in applied acoustics from Chalmers Tekniska Hagskola (Chalmers University of Technology) in Gothenburg, Sweden. He pursued research in architectural acoustics and auralization with the Chalmers Room Acoustics Group in Sweden; at the Institute of Technical Acoustics in Aachen, Germany; and with the Acoustics Program at RPI. He has given lectures on his research for the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the International Congress on Acoustics (ICA) in Japan and Italy, and the Institute of Acoustics (IoA) in the United Kingdom. He has been published in the Journal of the ASA and in Acustica, the journal of the European Acoustics Association. He is also an active cellist.

Table of Contents

About the Authors xi

Web Added Value™ xiii

Part I xv

Introduction 1

Worship Space Acoustics 1

Chapter 1 Fundamentals-Nature of Sound 3

1.1 Some Important Properties of Sound 3

1.2 Sound Pressure, Sound Pressure Level, and Sound Level 6

1.3 Sound Pressure Level and Sound Power 7

1.4 Using the Decibel Scale 8

1.5 Spectra of Voice and Music 11

Chapter 2 Hearing 15

2.1 Basic Properties 15

2.2 Directional Properties 17

2.3 Masking and Critical Bands 18

2.4 Hearing Impairment 18

2.5 Effects of Masking in Time 21

Chapter 3 Room Acoustics Fundamentals 25

3.1 Propagation and the Reflection of Sound 25

3.2 Outdoor Sound 27

3.3 Geometrical Acoustics, Wave Packets, and Sound Rays 28

3.4 Reflection of Sound 31

3.5 Sound Decay in Rooms and Sabine's Equation 34

3.6 Reverberation Time and Reverberation Curves 36

3.7 Spatial Properties of Reverberant Sound 36

3.8 Loudness of Sounds in Rooms 38

3.9 Sound Pressure Level Behavior in Rooms 39

Chapter 4 Sound-absorbing Materials 41

4.1 Introduction 41

4.2 Absorption Coefficient and Absorption Area 41

4.3 Porous Absorbers 42

4.3.1 Disadvantages of Porous Sound Absorbers 48

4.4 Resonant Absorbers 50

4.4.1 Membrane-type Absorbers 51

4.4.2 Helmholtz Resonators 51

4.4.3 Resonator Panels 52

4.5 Adjustable Sound Absorption 53

4.6 Sound Absorption by Audience 54

4.7 Residual Sound-absorption Area 58

Chapter 5 Metrics for Room Acoustics 59

5.1 Introduction 59

5.2 Impulse Response 59

5.3 Reverberation Time 60

5.4 Early Decay Times 62

5.5 Clarity-Early-to-Reverberant Ratio 62

5.6 Initial Time-delay Gap 62

5.7 Speech Intelligibility and Articulation 63

5.8 Speech Intelligibility Metrics 63

5.9 Additional Room Acoustics Metrics 66

5.9.1 Strength Index 66

5.9.2 Bass Ratio 66

5.10 Brilliance 67

5.10.1 Lateral Energy Fraction 67

5.10.2 Interaural Cross-correlation 68

Chapter 6 Simulation and Prediction 71

6.1 Simulation and Prediction in Room Acoustics 71

6.2 Ultrasonic Scale Modeling 71

6.3 Acoustical Computer-aided Design 73

6.4 Auralization 74

Chapter 7 Planning for Good Room Acoustics 79

7.1 Introduction 79

7.2 Psychoacoustics: The Precedence Effect and Binaural Unmasking 81

7.3 Seating Area 81

7.4 Floor Plans 83

7.5 Lengthwise Sections 87

7.6 Crosswise Sections 89

7.7 Preferred Reverberation Time 91

7.8 Coloration 93

7.9 Echo 95

7.10 Some Sound-reflection Problems 96

7.10.1 Domes and Other Curved Surfaces 96

7.10.2 Whispering Galleries 98

7.10.3 Pillars 99

7.11 Annexes and Dual-slope Reverberation Curves 99

7.12 Balconies 100

7.13 Reflectors 103

7.14 Barriers and Mechitzot 104

7.15 Diffusers 105

7.16 Temporary Structures and Tents 105

7.17 Rooms for Speech 108

7.18 Rooms for Music 110

7.18.1 General Recommendations 110

7.18.2 Organ Placement 112

7.18.3 Organ and Choir Arrangements 115

Chapter 8 Quiet 117

8.1 Noise, Annoyance, and Sound Quality 117

8.2 Noise Criteria 118

8.3 Mechanical Equipment Room and General Isolation 121

8.3.1 Basic Planning 121

8.3.2 Construction and Details 122

8.3.3 Doors 122

8.3.4 Reverberant Sound Reduction 122

8.3.5 Mechanical Shafts and Chases 124

8.4 Fan Selection and Sound Output 124

8.4.1 Fan Types 124

8.4.2 Prediction of Fan Sound Power and Calculations for Room Noise Level 124

8.4.3 Silencers 125

8.4.4 Diffusers, Grilles, and Dampers 125

8.5 Vibration Isolation 126

8.5.1 Basic Planning 126

8.5.2 Housekeeping Pads 127

8.5.3 Floating Floors and Vibration-isolation Inertia Bases 127

8.5.4 Pipe and Duct Connections 129

8.5.5 Chair-scrape Noise 131

Chapter 9 Sound Isolation and Other Noise Issues 133

9.1 Sound Transmission 133

9.2 Noise Reduction and Sound Transmission Loss 134

9.3 Efficient Sound Isolation 136

9.4 Effect of Background or Masking Noise 136

9.5 Transmission Loss Curves of Typical Walls 137

9.6 A Balanced Spectrum Design 138

9.7 The Coincidence Effect 139

9.8 Average Transmission Loss and Sound Transmission Class 140

9.9 Laboratory vs. Field Measurements 141

9.10 Effects of Leaks 141

9.11 Complex or Double Partitions 142

9.12 Control of Flanking Sound Transmission 145

9.13 Music Practice and Teaching Facilities 146

9.13.1 Basic Planning 146

9.13.2 Privacy 146

9.14 Sound-isolating Windows, Partitions, and Doors 149

9.15 Exterior Noise 152

Chapter 10 Sound Systems for Clarity and Reverberation 153

10.1 Introduction 153

10.1.1 Sound Level Amplification 153

10.1.2 Increased Clarity or Increased Reverberation 154

10.1.3 Frequency Response 155

10.1.4 Freedom from Distortion and Noise 155

10.1.5 Directional Realism 155

10.1.6 Balance between Clarity and Spaciousness/Liveliness 155

10.1.7 Sound System Uses Other than Reinforcement 156

10.2 Basic Types of Worship Space Sound Reinforcement Systems 156

10.2.1 Type I: Central Systems 157

10.2.2 Type II: Split Central System 157

10.2.3 Type III: Conventional Distributed Systems 160

10.2.4 Type IV: Pew-back System 162

10.2.5 Type V: Distributed Directional Horn System 164

10.2.6 Type VI: Distributed Delayed Column System 165

10.2.7 Type VII: Horizontal Line Source 166

10.3 Equipment 169

10.3.1 Microphones 169

10.3.2 Contact Pick-up Devices 172

10.3.3 Preamplification 173

10.3.4 General Control Equipment 173

10.3.5 Operated vs. Automatic Systems 173

10.3.6 Control Consoles and Mixer Preamplifiers 176

10.3.7 Controls Usually Fixed 177

10.3.8 Location of Controls 177

10.3.9 Delay Equipment 178

10.3.10 Feedback Protection 178

10.3.11 Crossovers 179

10.3.12 Power Amplification 181

10.3.13 Loudspeakers 181

10.4 Applications 188

10.4.1 Basic Reinforcement System 188

10.4.2 Archival Recording System 190

10.4.3 Monitoring and Paging Systems 190

10.4.4 Surround and Electronic Reverberation Systems 191

10.4.5 Acoustical Envelope or Stage Communication System 195

10.4.6 Hearing Assistance and Simultaneous Translation 195

10.4.7 Production Communications 195

10.5 System Planning and Implementation 196

10.5.1 Design 196

Part II 203

Synagogues 205

S.1 History 205

S.2 Modern Synagogue Architecture 210

S.3 Separation of Sexes: The Mechitzah 214

S.4 Small Synagogues 215

S.5 Synagogues as Study Halls: Beit Ha-Midrash 216

S.6 Jewish Communities 217

S.7 Chassidism 218

S.8 Reform Movement 219

S.9 Conservative Movement 221

S.10 Noise Issues 223

S.11 Overflow Seating 223

S.12 Room Finishes 223

S.13 Use of Sound Amplification 224

S.14 Summary 226

Churches 227

C.1 Introduction 227

C.2 Historical Survey of Christian Liturgy 227

C.3 Acoustics for Christian Worship 230

C.4 Reverberant Acoustics-Roman Catholic Liturgy as an Example 234

C.4.1 Typical Liturgical Music for Reverberant Spaces 234

C.4.2 Acoustics for Liturgy 235

C.4.3 Example Projects: Reverberant/Semi-reverberant Spaces 240

C.5 Absorptive Acoustics-Evangelical/Blended Worship as an Example 247

C.5.1 Typical Worship Music in Spaces with Absorptive Acoustics 247

C.5.2 Acoustics for Worship in Absorptive Spaces 248

C.5.3 Example Projects: Absorptive/Semi-absorptive Spaces 249

C.6 Summary 254

Mosques 257

M.1 Historic Development 257

M.2 Worship Characteristics 259

M.3 Music in Islamic Worship 260

M.4 Mosque Acoustics and Sound Systems 261

M.4.1 Traditional Mosques 261

M.4.2 Contemporary Mosques 264

M.5 Noise Control Considerations 268

M.6 Minarets 269

Appendix 271

Part I Notes and References 275

Part II Notes and References 285

Index 297