| Oh, and for clarification and education.
Though the fundamentals of the speech range begin as low as 100Hz, depending the depth of the voice, the key material from which we discern what's being said come from the 1kHz - 4kHz range. This is where the formants, enunciations and obiculations come from - also known as the overtone series, which form the high frequency energy around our consonants and vowels.
With the L/R configuration, at 2kHz and 4kHz, the ALCONS - % Articulation Loss of Consonants - is as low as 7 in the extreme front and outside, but averages 2 or less throughout the rest of the room, even with room frequency coloring and boundary reflections.
ALCONS and STI (Speech Transmission Index) are measurement tools used to indicate the intelligibility of speech in a room.
With todays performance systems in churches, some do-it-yourself-ers focus too much on the music quality, and not enough of the speech quality. On the other hand, sometimes contractors and design build firms focus too much on speech quality and forget to find out what music program will be going through the system.   |