Anyone who has used the Church Room will know that it has always been a rather lively space — acoustically speaking! Conversations could sometimes bounce around the room almost as enthusiastically as the people in it.
To help improve things, twelve acoustic baffles have now been suspended from the ceiling. These circular panels are designed to absorb some of the sound that would otherwise reflect from the hard surfaces around the room.
The installation was carried out by Tim Ford and Phil Sergeant, with the help of a rather impressive tower scaffold — as the accompanying photograph shows.
Before any of the baffles were fitted, we took some simple sound measurements using an iPhone. The average reverberation time was about 1.85 seconds. After the first six baffles were installed this fell to around 1.36 seconds, and with all twelve in place it is now approximately 1.11 seconds.
In other words, the amount of lingering sound in the room has been reduced by about 40%. More importantly, you don’t need a sound meter to notice the difference. Speech is clearer, conversations are easier to follow and the room already feels much less echoey.
The aim was not to turn the Church Room into a recording studio, but simply to make it a more comfortable space for meetings, talks, social events and all the other activities that take place there.
So next time you are in the Church Room, have a listen.
