Many of our projects are houses of worship, with a clear emphasis on churches and synagogues having traditional liturgies and strong music programs. Successful worship spaces share highly-valued qualities such as clarity for intelligible speech, reverberance for liturgical music, responsiveness for congregational participation, and low background noise for enhancement of all sounds.

For many Orthodox congregations an electronic sound amplification system is simply not a consideration when improving intelligibility of the spoken word. In these cases our design approach is to optimize the natural acoustics for the best possible speech intelligibility. For Modern Orthodox congregations willing to consider electronic sound amplification we recommend a “Zomet” Shabbat speech-reinforcement sound system.

A performance space often must serve as both a music room and a lecture hall. These functions are inherently in conflict with one another because a natural acoustic environment which provides excellent acoustics for music is very different from one supporting good speech intelligibility. Our design approach is to provide naturally-supportive room acoustics, effective sound isolation, HVAC noise and vibration control for a quiet environment, a speech- and music-reinforcement sound system, and an efficient technical communication system.