St. John Neumann Catholic Church

St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Canton, Michigan gathers its congregation in a tall, rhombus-shaped sanctuary and an adjoining entrance concourse. Both spaces are built to inspire, with brick, wood, tile, and stained glass, and every one of those surfaces reflects sound. The result was a room where spoken word and music carried well past the point of clarity.

Challenge

Memtech Acoustics measured reverberation time (RT60) and speech clarity (C50) across the sanctuary and the gathering concourse. Reverberation reached 3.6 seconds in the worship space and 1.5 seconds in the concourse, both above the range these rooms call for. The worship space also returned a low C50 value, which shows that late reflections were arriving after the direct sound and muddling what the congregation heard. The ceiling rises nearly thirty feet, so the sound had a large, hard volume to fill.

Solution

Memtech set targets of 2.5 seconds in the worship space and 1 second in the concourse, chosen to balance acoustic performance against the available wall space, the budget, and the look of the rooms. Using the measured data in a parametric model, Memtech engineered a custom panel layout: flat, open-cell acoustic panels sized and precut to integrate with the existing decor in the sanctuary, and matching panels in the concourse. The design concentrates panels on the wall area behind seated attendees, where they absorb the late reflections that hurt clarity most.

Results

The engineered layout is modeled to bring the worship space to its 2.5 second target and the concourse to 1 second, reducing the late reflections that blur speech so the congregation can hear and take part. Memtech verifies reverberation on site after installation and adjusts the treatment if the measured result does not meet the target.