| Popis: |
When the new organist at St. George's‐by‐the‐River church in Rumson, New Jersey complained that his greatest efforts at filling the church with music seemed futile because the reverberation time was too low, we attempted to quantify this feeling and explore low‐cost remedies. The church is of modest size, a 8.1×9.6‐m chancel area and a 19.7×17.8‐m nave. We measured an average reverberation time near 1.5 s (measured in third octave bands up to 8 kHz), observed inefficient coupling of sound energy from the pipe organ chamber via the chancel to the congregation, due to location of the sole acoustic feed high in the side wall of the chancel. To augment the acoustic coupling a microphone was positioned in front of the organ chamber, and the signal was digitally delayed by 82 ms, amplified, and fed into a pair of powerful loudspeakers positioned high and against the rear corners of the nave. This produced a substantial increase in sound level (>6 dB over 3 octaves). Both we and the organist found the natural character of the pipe organ with this mild electroacoustic assist quite gratifying. |
