CAN YOU HEAR WELL IN CHURCH?
Our church building is full of hard reflective surfaces. As we progress with the building works, the way that sound travels around the church, the echoes and reverberations, may be different to what you are used to. Such reverberations also differ according to the location of the speaker, the size of the congregation and where you are sitting. Adjusting the sound system to compensate is a lengthy and complex task, which we hope to undertake at key stages, and following the completion of the building works.
The complexity of the building means that the listener’s experience will be different in different parts of the church. It will also differ according to your personal hearing range, whether you use hearing aids, and whether you use the loop. We are aware that un-aided sound seems poor in the North Aisle and loop-aided sound poor in the South Aisle – so choosing where to sit can be important.
Unfortunately, none of the speakers, the musicians and singers, nor sound operators, can experience the audibility of the sound where you are sitting. Neither do we have the ability to monitor the effectiveness of the loop where you are sitting.
To help us better understand your experience, we have developed a feedback form (below or download here). We hope that your feedback will help us make small but effective changes to help improve your experience, and also inform the tuning of the AV upgrades once the main building work has completed.
In the meantime, thank you so much for your patience, your understanding, your feedback, and your support during this tricky transitional period.
Chris Holloway August 2022