Relationships between subjective and acoustical measures in churches

Abstract

This study reports on subjective and objective acoustical field measurements made in a survey of 36Catholic churches in Portugal built in the last 14 centuries. Monaural acoustical measurements (RT,EDT, C80, D50, TS, and L) were taken at several source/receiver locations in each church and a groupof college students was asked to judge the subjective quality of music. The listeners in each churchevaluated live music performances at similar locations in each room. Evaluation sheets were used torecord the listeners overall impressions of room acoustics qualities and also Loudness, Reverberance,Intimacy, Envelopment, Directionality, Balance, Clarity, Echoes, and Background Noise. This papercomplements the one presented at the Indianapolis ASA Meeting (May 1996) and concentrates on therelationships of the subjective parameters with the objective room acoustics measures and with thearchitectural features of the churches. The results are graphed and analyzed by comparisons.Correlation analyses and statistical modeling identified significant relationships among the measures.For instance, linear correlation coefficients (R) of 0.8-0.9 were found for the relationships:Reverberance/RT and Clarity/C80; the maximum R found was 0.93 for Echoes/RT. Regardingarchitectural features the maximum R found was 0.87 between Intimacy and Total Volume.