A Single Number Index to Assess Selected Acoustic Parameters in Churches with Redundant Information

The paper presents an innovative approach for the index assessment of the acoustic properties of churches. A new formula for an approximate single number index to assess selected acoustic parameters of church interiors, such as reverberation time (RT), speech intelligibility index (RASTI) and music clarity index (C80), is presented in the paper. The formula is created by means of the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) method. An innovative approach for calculating the weights of partial indices is shown by solving the problem of redundant information, i.e., the system of overdetermined linear equations, using a computed pseudoinverse matrix. The new procedures for calculating the values of three partial indices and the single number index to assess selected acoustic parameters are presented. The proposed method was verified by measurements in several selected churches.