Worship Space Acoustics

Worship Space Acoustics is a guide to the design, construction, and use of religious facilities for optimum acoustics. Part 1 discusses methods and techniques of room optimization, noise and its control as well as sound reinforcement. Part 2 covers the characteristics of religious services and how these are provided for in the acoustic design of synagogues, churches, and mosques.

Mendel Kleiner obtained his Ph.D. in architectural acoustics in 1978 and is currently Professor of Acoustics at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, and in charge of the Chalmers Room Acoustics Group. Dr. Kleiner is responsible for teaching room acoustics, audio, electroacoustics, and ultrasonics in the Chalmers Master Program on Sound and Vibration. He has more than 50 publications, presented keynote lectures and more than 110 papers, has led courses at international conferences on acoustics and noise control, and organized an international conference on acoustics. His main research areas are computer simulation of room acoustics, electroacoustic reverberation enhancement systems, room acoustics of auditoria, sound and vibration measurement technology, product sound quality, and psychoacoustics. Dr. Kleiner is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, the Chair for the Audio Engineering Society's Technical Committee on Acoustics and Sound Reinforcement and on its Standards committee on Acoustics.David Lloyd Klepper, currently a student of Rabbinics at Yeshivat Beit Orot, Jerusalem, Israel, formerly President of Klepper Marshall King, Acoustical Consultants and Adjunct Professor of Architectural Acoustics at City University, New York City, and previously a senior consultant at Bolt Beranek and Newman, with SM and SB degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT. Acoustical Consultant for over 200 worship space buildings, including the National Presbyterian Church, Washington, DC, St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York City, the Capetown , South Africa, Anglican Cathedral, River Road Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia, Young Israel of Southfield , Michigan, and Boston's Holy Cross Cathedral. Pioneer in application of digital delay and electronic simulation of reverberation in worship spaces, and pew-back speech reinforcement. Author of ôSound Systems for Reverberant Worship Spacesö, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. August 1970, two church acoustics papers, one concert hall paper, and one on safer audio entertainment in automobiles in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Also, ôAcoustical of Assembly Places,ö The Encyclopedia of Architecture, coauthor with Mendel Kleiner of ôSound Amplification Systems,ö the Encyclopedia of Science, 34 other published papers on acoustics, noise control, and electronic sound reinforcement systems. Editor of Sound Reinforcement Anthology I (1978) and Sound Reinforcement Anthology II (1996), Audio Engineering Society, New York City. Fellow of both the Audio Engineering Society and the Acoustical Society of America, and member of the Institute of Noise Control Engineering and the American Guild of Organists, received Silver Medal (Berliner Medal) from the AES. Rendell R. Torres is a priest for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, New York. Before the priesthood, he was a tenure-track professor and director of the Program in Architectural Acoustics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and now continues to serve as an adjunct professor. He obtained his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, his M.S. in engineering acoustics from Penn State University, and his Ph.D. in applied acoustics from Chalmers Tekniska H÷gskola (Chalmers University of Technology) in Gothenburg, Sweden. He pursued research in architectural acoustics and auralization with the Chalmers Room Acoustics Group in Sweden; at the Institute of Technical Acoustics in Aachen, Germany; and with the Acoustics Program at RPI. He has given invited talks on his research for the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the International Congress on Acoustics (ICA) in Japan and Italy, and the Institute of Acoustics (IoA) in the United Kingdom. He has published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and in Acustica, the journal of the European Acoustics Association. He is also an active cellist.