St Andrews Catholic Church Acoustics problem and Resolution

BACKGROUND:

When the decision came to start to save on construction costs at St. Andrews, one of the things that was deleted, was the acoustics plan presented by the Acoustic Engineer, Earl Mullins PE. A secondary solution was developed by the Building Committee and that also was dropped as a cost savings. As a result, the parishioners of St. Andrews have had some serious issues with understanding the spoken word. Many have elected to go to other churches so they could understand the spoken word.

The system (hardware) has been adjusted and tweaked to the maximum. The problem isn’t a hardware issue, but about 90% is the reverberation caused by not having any acoustical buffering applied to the church.  Our Acoustical Engineer provided us with a chart to show how the reverberation will be dampened by the addition of acoustic buffering.

We will need everyone's help in completing this project. The more we can do ourselves, the less it will cost. We need people who are experienced in construction to guide and help install the acoustic panels. Everyone, also needs to contribute $ so we can accomplish this and other projects.