ACOUSTIC INSTALLATION ON SEIL ISLAND, WESTERN SCOTLAND

DACS had the pleasure of working in Oban, unofficially the "Gateway to the Isles" and described as "endearingly enchanting" on the Oban Website.

The new Village Hall on Seil Island presented what seems to be a classic problem. The large hall was OK for sports, but as soon as speech or music was attempted the result was very poor. Speech intelligibility was so bad that once the listener was more than a couple of meters from the speaker no sense could be made. Music also suffered; dancing was virtually impossible as the beat was subsumed in the reverberation.

The solution required absorbers that could handle 5 a side footballs on the walls, and the ceiling height could not be reduced (by hanging absorbers); we had to maintain the necessary height for the badminton players. To achieve good control of the reverb, absorbers were required on both the walls and ceilings.

We used custom panels specifically designed to fix easily to the internal uprights (i.e. the vertical studs) of the plasterboard walls, and these were fitted by a local builder's team. The colours were selected by the Hall's committee to match rather than contrast with the wall colours, except on the bright red feature wall at one end. The result was a major improvement; all the users seem to be very happy with the result.

'Douglas Doherty was highly recommended to us by a retired professor of music who has a home in this area. The hall has been transformed from an echo chamber to an acoustically comfortable space. It has not been completely deadened and has been highly praised by all users. There have been quite a few expressions of interest from other halls.'

(John Gordon, Seil Island Hall)