I designed, installed and tested sound systems for several churches in the San Miguel de Allende area. Details are contained in the PDF documents attached to this web page.
Mexican churches are a design challenge because most of them are constructed as long narrow “tunnels” with no sound absorption on the walls, ceilings or floors. Most are Catholic, which means the walls are filled with side altars, statues, crypts, paintings, etc. leaving no room for acoustic absorption material. Local, federal and UN restrictions limit architectural changes. The result is an echo chamber that may sound great with organ music, but makes voice comprehension very difficult.
San Juan de Dios – San Miguel de Allende
This is a colonial era church built around 1765. It is constructed entirely of “rubble stone” with a cement binder and plaster coating. The original sound system was installed around 1990. The design, implementation and testing are documented in three parts. These are very detailed, and if you want to read a summary, please go to Summary beginning on page 20 in the third part.
SJD Sound System Part 1 (2020), SJD Sound System Part 2 (2021) and SJD Sound System Part 3 (2022)
Community Church – San Miguel de Allende
This is neither an historical site nor Catholic. The building is a warehouse type structure but fixed up inside to provide a worship area in the back and a social area in the front. The current sound system is four amplified loudspeakers in the four corners of the worship area. A large number of sound panels are already in place on the walls. Nevertheless, some members complain about the echos, so I modeled the current system and evaluated some changes including adding carpeting, curtains, and different loud speakers. The results of this assessment are in Acoustic Evaluation SMA Community Church-1 (2025).
Capilla Conference Center – Atotonilco
A 100 year old abandoned chapel becomes a community conference center. The sound system was designed using EASE5, acoustic absorption panels built, loudspeakers installed and the system tested with Smaart8. For the details see Atotonilco Capilla Sound System (2026).