Scenario:

City Church of East Nashville (CCEN) recently moved to a new location. The space is in the heart of East Nashville and much larger than their previous building. And while it’s a great space to grow their community, the space was not originally built to be a church. The new location was a mixed-use space filled with offices, bakeries, teaching studios, and more. So when the production director and band initially set up in the new sanctuary, the acoustic issues were immediately heard.

The challenge

Often when houses of worship are designed and built, acoustic considerations are a big part of the design process. But with CCEN’s new location, this was not the case. Music City Acoustics had a creative problem to solve as the space was anything but ideal or purpose-built to be a church with great acoustics. 

 Music City Acoustics was working with a space consisting of a large rectangle with hard, reflective surfaces. The concrete floors, ceiling and walls were a combination of concrete, drywall, and glass windows – all highly reflective materials that are great at reflecting, not absorbing, sound. The ceilings in the sanctuary were flat, parallel to the floor, and only 11 feet tall – the room was essentially a giant echo chamber. 

 At the onsite acoustics consultation with Music City Acoustics, the challenges CCEN was facing with their new sanctuary was immediately clear. The Reverb Time (RT60) was well over 3 seconds long, reflections between the parallel walls created very prominent and distracting flutter echoes as sound bounced between the parallel surfaces, and because the floor/ceiling boundaries were parallel, there were several locations in the room where there was a ringing bell-like sound from the combination of echoes being trapped between the reflective walls, ceiling, and floor.

 The goal for CCEN’s new space was to turn it into a beautiful sounding sanctuary with crystal clear speech intelligibility, as well as impact and emotion from the music. Oh, and with a timeline of two weeks so it could be ready for the first service.

The solution

Following the consultation with CCEN, Music City Acoustics built a 3d model of the space and ran Reverb Time (RT60) projections to determine the best approach to improve the acoustics in the sanctuary. The RT60 projections not only revealed how many panels were needed in the sanctuary, but also the most effective locations for the Acoustic Panels to be installed. Using the numbers from Music City Acoustic’s calculations, acoustic panels were added into the model to identify where they would fit and how they could be installed within the confines of the space (e.g. lighting, a/c ducts, sprinklers, windows, TVs). 

After completing the acoustical modeling and projections, Music City Acoustics presented CCEN with a comprehensive plan to improve the acoustics in their new sanctuary. 

 The solution consisted of a combination of wall and ceiling acoustic panels strategically placed to reduce the amount of exposed parallel surfaces.  It was also very important to create and layout for the ceiling acoustic panels that placed them evenly throughout the space to maximize their impact on the acoustics and improve the look of the sanctuary. Learn more about church acoustics.

The final plan included 30 8’x4’ High-Mid Acoustic Panels on the ceiling and 26 High-Mid Acoustic Panels for the walls. 

 After the installation was complete, the impact of the acoustic panels was immediately noticeable. The reverb time decreased by two full seconds to 1.34 seconds, and the flutter echo and ringing that plagued the space before the acoustic panels were implemented was removed. 

 The sanctuary is now a wonderful space to worship in with clear speech and powerful and impactful music from the band.