There are certain spaces where it is very important for everyone to be able to hear what is being said either from a stage or lectern or from a public address system. Often these are large spaces such as airports or worship halls. They may have large expanses of glass along the walls or be packed from corner to corner with people. In many cases, the acoustics of these large areas distort or muffle whatever is being said to the point that it is difficult to make out the words either in the entire area or in certain portions of the space. In almost every case, these poor acoustic conditions can be corrected with the proper application of acoustic treatments.

For places like airports where the audio content is exclusively vocal announcements providing information, the main goal is vocal clarity within a relatively narrow frequency range. There are no deep bass tones to worry about, just ordinary human voices. In this case, reducing echoes so that everyone in the building is receiving much more sound directly from the source, a P.A. speaker, than they are receiving from echoes from the walls and ceilings is the main goal.

One way to accomplish this is to use shaped panels to break up and scatter the sound waves rather than allowing them to simply reflect back into the area where the people are. If they are also acoustically absorptive, that can help even more. This type of acoustic treatment is often seen on airport ceilings. Unfortunately, the same strategy can’t be applied to the large glass windows that line most of the hallways and terminals. To help compensate for the echoes, more loudspeakers should be used at a slightly lower volume. If, wherever a person stands, they are fairly close to a loudspeaker then that original source will be the bulk of sound that reaches them, over-riding echoes from farther away.

Churches, on the other hand, often use music as a part of their services. Music has a much broader frequency range and includes the very large sound waves of deep bass tones. Furthermore, vocal clarity is still a very important component of church acoustics as much of the service is simply spoken words. Acoustically absorptive panels made from materials like Owens Corning 703 can be used to reduce echoes and help damp reflections that can not only interfere with vocal clarity, but can make music sound harsh or overly bright. Meanwhile, bass traps can be applied to help reduce unnatural concentrations of bass tones that can occur in various parts of the room as a result of standing waves.

Whatever the space and its acoustic needs, properly applied acoustic treatments can usually correct audio distortions that are almost always introduced by the room itself.