Most large rooms whether they are a house of worship, gymnasium, dance studio, restaurant or even an airport often suffer from the same challenge: it is hard to understand the message being sent over the public address system (PA). This is more specifically referred to as 'intelligibility' or our ability to clearly discern the message coming through the speakers. More often than not, the sound system is not the problem, but the terrible acoustics of the room. More specifically, it is the lack of acoustic sound control that makes it difficult to comprehend the message.

The problem is simple: the sound coming out of the loudspeaker that reaches your ears is called the direct sound. This is often muddled by powerful echoes known and primary and secondary reflections. When the reflected sound is almost as loud as the direct sound, the ears and our brain's ability to discern one sound from another has to work very hard to comprehend the message and often, we simply cannot make out what is being said. Gymnasiums tend to be the worst! They have highly reflective surfaces such as concrete walls and hard floors that are perfect for creating echo! Turning up the sound system in these venues does nothing except make it worse!

The solution is also simple: you have to absorb the unwanted reflections by mounting acoustic panels on the walls throughout the room. Best of all, it is not difficult to get achieve significant improvements even with a limited budget. To start, you will need something that is absolutely free! It is called good common sense. Next you need to understand a few scientific facts.

Sound travels much the same was as light does. The higher the frequency, the more directional it is and easier it is to control. Low frequency sound is omni-directional which makes it much more difficult to control. Good news is that the voice is in the mid and upper range so this is where most acousticians focus when designing the acoustics for a room.

Because sound reflects off of hard surfaces you should think of the walls as mirrors. Start by drawing a plan view of the room and draw vectors or lines from the loudspeakers to the listeners and then using the walls as reflection points. It will immediately become clear that side walls often cause lots of powerful reflections so you will have to put some absorptive panels on them. Now look at the rear and front walls of the room. Are these large clear wall surfaces that could reflect sound back into the room? The answer is likely yes.

So how many Primacoustic Broadway panels should you buy? This generally depends on the budget but in terms of room performance, you can follow what is known as the acoustic bell curve. It works like this: Put a single 24"x48" panel in a gymnasium and I can tell you for sure that the effect will be inconsequential. Add another - still nothing will happen. Add more, then more and - boom - all of a sudden, the room will change. It will begin to sound different. If you continue adding panels to the point where every square inch of wall and ceiling is covered, you can bet that the echo will be gone. And so will your budget! This is exactly how the bell curve works. you just have to decide where you would like to be along the bell curve based on balancing your budget and application. For instance, you may want to have a higher ratio of absorption in a music class room whereas you can certainly live with less in a community hall.

ow some good news: In acoustics, corners are your best friend. Sound tends to migrate into corners and because sound is very reflective, you can usually treat the corner seam on one wall and leave the other adjacent wall untreated and basically get the absorption for free! The rest is simply a matter of distributing the panels throughout the room. It is really that easy and you can't go too far wrong. It is better to start with less and then add as you go. Generally speaking, if you can afford to get 20% to 25% coverage on each wall you will