Controlling Echoes In Your Fellowship Hall
Similar to other social gathering venues, Fellowship Halls are faced with the common issue of sound reflections (echoes) interfering with the quality of acoustics within the room. When a group converses in a Fellowship Hall, particularly one containing several hard, reflective surfaces, the collective voices create reverberations that affect the quality of acoustics throughout the area. As these reverberations elevate background noise, they begin to interfere with speech clarity. As a result, people begin speak more loudly, creating a perpetual audibility problem that can contribute to an unpleasant atmosphere altogether. Soundproofing a Fellowship Hall is all about taking the echoes away from the room, so that what remains is great clarity to original sound and premium sound quality for communication.
Implementing an acoustical treatment aimed at controlling noise levels and improving the quality of acoustics within a Fellowship Hall involves first understanding the sound behavior being targeted for your acoustic treatment. If you stand in the Fellowship Hall alone and clap your hands, the resulting sound wave will radiate out into the room like a balloon inflating. In every direction, traveling along at a clip of nearly 800 miles per hour. As the noise reflects off the perimeter surfaces of the room, the echoes generated will return to your ear faster than you can blink. The human ear is not fine tuned enough to discern the difference between original sound and reflected sound, so the two separate sound signals, the original and the reflected, will appear to be a single sound. But it is not.
How to Soundproof Your Social Hall
The echoes, not the original sound, are what you can control when soundproofing a Fellowship Hall. Perimeter mounted wall or ceiling sound panels can effectively capture up to 80% of the unwelcome echoes, delivering back greater clarity to the original sound signal. This generates greager comfort for conversation and communication, and restores the Fellowship Hall to its full intended use. The congregation is far more satisfied socializing in a room that has been treated for sound, than one which has not. Especially for those senior citizens who are already battling hearing loss issues. Soundproofing a Fellowship Hall is wise use of a church’s funds. As is the case for also introducing the sound panel treatment to the Sanctuary at your house of worship.
Sound panels can be placed as you wish throughout the space, evenly spaced with nice even site lines around the perimeter wall or ceiling surfaces in the Fellowship Hall. If the ceiling is finished, and under 10′ tall, the ideal would be to place the acoustic panel treatment on the ceiling, and move the panels out over the center of the room. The sound panels are called Fabric Panels. These sound panels are class A fire rated, available in 70 color options, and will ship with the clips you will need to install them. They can be cut to any size between a 2’x4′ panel up to a 4’x10′ panel dimension.
The Key to the Success of Fellowship Hall Soundproofing
The goal with the sound panel treatment for your Fellowship Hall is to introduce the correct amount of product, and safeguard against under treating the space. A Room Analysis tool is available to help define your coverage amounts based on the size of your room. Simply call our help desk at 1-800-638-9355 for a no obligation consultation that can help you determine what that coverage amount is for your Fellowship Hall soundproofing treatment. From there, the acoustic treatment can be quoted, and free color samples can be sent to help make your selection.
Sound Panel Thickness For Your Fellowship Hall
Along with ensuring correct coverage amounts to control your ambient noise levels, care must also be given to selecting the correct panel thickness. The Fabric Panels are available in either a 1″ or a 2″ thickness. For room’s that are filled with primarily human voice, the 1″ thick panel is the right option. But for room’s that also host musical instruments, the 2″ thick sound panel is the better option. The thicker the sound panel, the greater the absorption coefficients are at the low bass frequency levels that stem from bass guitars, drums, oboes, cellos, cellos and the like. Most Fellowship Halls are social halls, filled with human voice, and therefore opt for the 1″ thick panels. But if the room also hosts events filled with music, then upgrade to the 2″ thickness. For these same reasons, Sanctuary soundproofing will typically target the thicker panels to better control the low bass frequencies stemming from contemporary musical instruments.
Installing Sound Panels in a Fellowship Hall
Once the sound panel order is defined, quoted, and approved, the panels take about 4 weeks to produce and ship. The panels will be custom sized per the client’s request, or as suggested by the supplier. When the panels arrive to your house of worship, take great care at stacking them in a safe place until they are ready to be installed. Included with the shipment will be a set of clips that will be used to install the panels. There are different clip systems depending on whether your sound panels are to be placed on drywall, concrete block, brick or metal. The acoustic panels can be spaced and placed as you wish, so long as they are dispersed throughout the room, and the correct square footage amounts are introduced into the space. For questions related to installing sound panels for your Fellowship Hall, call our help desk at 1-800-638-9355.
