Sanctuary Help - Placement of absorbers

Thanks for all the help from the forum users and moderators. You guys have taught me alot. I came here often back when I built my personal studio, now I am returning for info on some sound control in my church's sanctuary. If this is the wrong place for this post please direct me to the correct area. I have attatched 4 pics taken from the each of the four corners, and one pic at the back looking towards front center. The building was built using standard construction techniques, standard wooded studded wall with sheetrock interior/brick exterior, all the walls except the back where the entrance is are exterior walls. The room is 48' by 48', 8' ceiling heigth at the walls, and I'm not sure how high in the center, but I would estimate 12 or 14 feet. There is a about 3' of attic space if that's useful for anything. As you can see from the pics I have already placed some of the absorbers (4" rockwool) in the front and 3 on each side. The front panels are 2'x4' and the side panels are 15" wide by 48" long. I had some of my rockwool already cut to 16" wide, so I decided to go ahead and use it by just making some narrower absorbers. I went ahead and put these up because of a revival last week and wanted to get a handle on the sound a little before it started. I have left: 7 - 2'x4' panels, 2 - 15"x4' panels, and 8 - 2'x2' square panels - all 4" thick rockwool. I'm curious if anyone would have any ideas on placing these in strategic places making them most effective, or if there is any other ideas that would help a room like this. The sound right now is "Okay". Before placing the first set of absorbers it was pretty rackety and reverberated. The speech intelligibility has increased alot, as well as the clarity of the music. It seems as if it's pretty cluttered in the 400-800 hz area, just by guessing.

I'd put some of those on the rear wall: you must be getting plenty of slap-back from that large flat hard surface. Also treat the wall in front of the console. (OT: I feel sorry for you, if your job also includes running sound from that location in the rear corner! Ouch!) I wonder if treating the peak of the ceiling might also be a good idea. And maybe a few checkerboarded on the side walls would help a bit. - Stuart -

Thanks Stuart, Any particular places on the back wall? Or just evenly spaced? Yeah as far mixing in that corner, what an awful design. BLAH! Also, would hanging baffles from the ceiling, the kind I am thinking are planks of wood wrapped in insulation, produce any desired results? Or do they only absorb the lowest frequencies? Thanks again, Joe.

I think I'd space them over the back wall more or less evenly, and also put at least a few on the side walls, also spaced evenly, but staggered (so that each panel is opposite a blank piece of wall on the other side, not opposite another panel). Might help a bit. Baffles would probably help too, but might screw up the aesthetics. Perhaps do something like in the photo below, for a church I helped out here in Chile a while back. You can see the treatment on the ceiling, between the lights. They are hung with spacers to leave an air gap behind, and maximize absorption. It made quite a difference (along with some other stuff we did). - Stuart -