The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I'm looking for anyone who has been involved in improving acoustics in schools, especially old schools' auditoriums. My kids' school auditorium is insanely loud and just having a PTA meeting is near impossible, never mind any activity with 200 kids!

I have lots of reference books and sites, so don't post suggestions. If you've actually been involved or your local school has done such work please let me know.

thanks.

It sounds like you need absorptive materials in there. Is there a budget for this? I suggest GIK panels.

Ken

ken wrote:It sounds like you need absorptive materials in there. Is there a budget for this? I suggest GIK panels.

Yes, Ken, I know that
No offense, but multi-purpose room acoustics are involved (limiting reflection while still promoting propagation from the stage) so I'm looking for direct experiences and references, not suggestions. It's also a historic building so there are other limitations, etc. Budget will be established and funds raised, if needed.

Not a school auditorium, but a church building...

Basically, we wound up creating banners and other design stuff to soak up some of the extra sound, under the guise of being the "Liturgical Arts Committee." We were able to put up enough cloth to make an audible improvement, though it sounds like you've got a larger room and worse problem than we have.

I take it that noise leaking out of the room is not a problem (as it is with recording in an apartment), so some of the old fashioned treatments like egg cartons might help (though I bet the newer styrofoam egg cartons don't soak up as much sound as the old cardboard ones did). If you can round up some old carpeting that could be laid down temporarily, that might help too (I'm guessing that the room is also used as a gym, and that you have zero budget to play with). If there are openable windows in the room, you may want to try opening some of them when you're having a meeting to let some sound escape rather than continuing to bounce around.

You didn't mention if there's a PA system in there, but if there is and it's one with a whole bunch of speakers along the wall, you might find that a single-point-source system (i.e., one cluster of speakers front center) will give you more understandable sound...

Charles

Charles

Send email to this guy:

http://www.orpheus-acoustics.com/

Christopher Brooks. He LOVES to give his opinion. You can't shut the guy up. I can't vouch for whether he'll hold out for a consulting fee, but I really wouldn't be surprised if he was willing to chat with you about this.

JB

jb wrote:Send email to this guy:
http://www.orpheus-acoustics.com/

Christopher Brooks. He LOVES to give his opinion. You can't shut the guy up. I can't vouch for whether he'll hold out for a consulting fee, but I really wouldn't be surprised if he was willing to chat with you about this.

Thanks! I'll tell him you say hi.

Actually, I've already read most everything on his site! Seemed a bit glossy for our purposes (who wants to work on old stuf when you can design new teak-wood performance spaces?) I'll call.

heh.

Many years ago I was working as an engineer in a local theater, and I also worked in the attached leisure center. In the main sports hall, which was used for sports obviously and as such suffered the terrible accoustics of such a hall.
The hall was also used as a funtion room, for funtions that were too large to be comfortably seated in the theatre. Large dinners, festival gigs etc.

This was a much discussed and researched topic during my time there. We needed somthing that could do the job of cutting the massive reverbs and reflections when the funtions were on and yet be removed or 'put away' during normal times.

We decided to get a rail hung around the top of the walls and then had curtains made that were hung on theater style hangers. we also had bags that could attach to the wall (or be removed)

The curtains could be hung and drawn around the walls (velcroed together at the sides to make a constant curtain) when funtions were on. They could be taken down at any time, but also during times between funtions, the curtains could be pulled back and folded into the wall mounted bags.
So much easier, and less time consuming than hanging and unhanging the curtains 3 times a week. But obviously easy to take down and put up if it was a mucher rarer run.

From all the time we spent on this this really seemed to be the best thing for a muti-pupose room like this. It was however expensive.

There may be better things now, but this method really works well

jb wrote:heh.

We just spoke on the phone. Turns out he went to the school I'm talking about! Talk about tapping alumni. What are the odds that he grew up in my current neighborhood?

whoa, that's hilarious. will he help you for free, then?
-bill

HeuristicsInc wrote:whoa, that's hilarious. will he help you for free, then?
-bill

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Spike Lee went to the school, too, and all he's done is give us lots of cash for a film program.

i agree with the curtain thing. it will absorb shit tons in a gym type room and it's really easy and flexible.