Immanuel Baptist Church

The congregation of the Immanuel Baptist Church expanded their worship space with an 825-seat Sanctuary.

With music as an essential component of their worship service, Soundscape considered the church’s service and musical styles as the basis for the acoustical design. For a space to support the multi-faceted needs of worship, the room acoustics must support music while also affording excellent speech intelligibility.

Prior to Soundscape joining the project team, an acoustical finishes design had already been prepared for the project. This acoustical design called for extensive use of high-end acoustical room finishes. Soundscape was asked to perform an independent analysis of the Sanctuary.

We used the computer modeling program EASE to predict acoustical characteristics of the sanctuary. This software enables full 3-D analysis of the reverberation time, late and early sound reflections, all of which are critical. Reverberation, the amount of time sound lingers in a space, provides support for singing and gives the congregation confidence in participating in the service, but it must not interfere with speech intelligibility. Early reflections are important because they give breadth to music, provide aural envelopment, and support congregational singing. Late reflections can degrade intelligibility and be perceived as echoes.

Based on this modeling and our prior project experience, Soundscape presented more cost effective recommendations for acoustical materials and advised on room geometry that provided speech intelligibility of the spoken word while enhancing the musical experience for the congregation.