Cathedral Acoustics

Synonyms

Architectural acoustics; Auditory properties of rooms; Religious building design

Definition

The designed aural qualities of large religious spaces.

Introduction

Architectural acoustic design, at its core, utilizes two fundamental properties of sound waves: reflection and absorption. The characteristics of a room that determine how sound waves are reflected and absorbed include both the materials used in construction as well as the size and shape of the room. Reverberation time is the unit of measure that identifies how sound waves respond inside a particular room. A space built with flat dense materials will generally have a long reverb time while one with rough soft materials will have a short reverb time.

Earliest Acoustic Amplifiers

There are examples of man-made structures demonstrating acoustic principles in construction of spaces used for religious services by the Mayan civilization from approximately 600 C.E. In central Mexico, there are indications that the Temples at...