People who are involved in the design of churches (or to be politically correct, Houses of Worship), should be shot. Church's are buildings specifically designed for getting a verbal message across to a collective mass of people. You would expect this structure to provide a comfortable environment with intelligibility being of paramount importance. But, seldom do you ever walk into a church with good acoustics and you have to ask why. They normally get a healthy budget for any construction or refurbishment so price is not the key issue. There are no special building schedule conditions, so time constraints are not the issue. We suggest the biggest problem lies within the decision making process which commonly runs as follows:

1. Form a project committee of people involved in the church (This is the first mistake).
2. Have untold committee meetings, to then spend nine tenths of the budget on a chunk of marble that will live forever more in the foyer/entrance. We have never truly established if this thing is designed to evoke an instant feeling of peace or simply encourage a sense of guilt, in order to assist with cash extraction from the chosen. Regardless, we doubt it has any great effect on getting a positive, substantial or real, verbal message across.
3. Have approximately ninety six more committee meetings to discuss the colour of the back wall, seat covers, if they will have carpet or not, etc, etc. Again, none of which, we suggest, has anything to do with getting a message across.
4. Have at least one more urgent committee meeting because someone remembered they probably need a PA system (the very device that gets the message across).
5. Get quotes from all the companies they find in the phone book (a lot of which are HiFi shops).
6. Collate the quotes and sit around yet another committee meeting flinging vague comments in an attempt to sound like they know what they are talking about before one of them mentions that they have a cousin, brother-in-law, or simply someone in the congregation who plays in a band (and knows everything about audio). They then vote to enlist the services of the new "expert".

Look, we could go on with this dribble for a lot longer but it is a statistically proven fact that churches, schools and many other institutions that are run by similar committee's always make the same mistakes and invariably they purchase about three systems before they end up with one that even starts to sound like it's doing the job. The fact is that these people should take note of a few points. And they are

• These buildings should, from the word go, be designed primarily for good communication and that means quality acoustics taken into account before ink hits paper.

We would like to point out that, early in the piece (prior to sound systems) these building were designed to be very live because they needed to acoustically enhance the persons speaking but now with modern sound systems the reverse is the case. The room needs to be designed with a lot less reflections to increase intelligibility.

• Condition yourself and expect to spend an extremely large part of the budget on the audio system.

• Get a well respected authority onboard early in the piece and listen to what they say.

It's hard but try to ignore all the would-be "experts" (even if they have - built their own amplifier/speaker - worked in a radio station or for Telstra - own an electrical business - know how to tweak a computer - etc). They're often very nice, well intentioned people, but seldom have any real knowledge or understanding of current quality professional Public Address products and almost never have any real experience with auditorium acoustics.

• Do not purchase a system because it is louder, purchase a system because it is clearer.

A key point here perhaps is to provide microphones that are impossible for Priest, Vicars, Ministers, Rabbis, Comedians and the girl at the lunch bar, to insert onto their tonsils. Why the hell they think they need to swallow the things is beyond us, but better to cater for them and use a specifically designed microphone and not your standard PA or cheap gooseneck type (they are available).

• Shop around for a better price on the marble thingie for the front foyer (and maybe consider a plaster or plastic copy).