Evaluation of Church Audial Quality on Cross-City Routes: The Java Christian Church in Bandung, Indonesia

The church is a place of worship for Christians that facilitates the smooth and solemn implementation of worship activities. Many factors affect their overall effectiveness; for instance, one of the comforts that must be met in the worship room is audial comfort. Certain churches are situated in noisy surroundings, which may impact the comfort and auditory experience of the worshippers during prayer. This research examines the issue of attaining a comfortable audial experience in a church positioned at the periphery of a cross-town road. The main goal of this research was to determine the comfortable audial quality in the Java Christian Church in Bandung from the noise impact due to high vehicle traffic. The prominent noise that arises from the highway is mostly caused by motorized vehicles. The methodology employed in this study involves a case study approach using quantitative descriptive analysis to evaluate the church noise's quality. This study uses the Decibel X Sound Meter application to collect data through field measurements. The measured data were analyzed using NoiseTools, and IBANA-Calc Software was used to analyze the level of noise around the outer church buildings directly adjacent to the main road. The standards used as research references are based on the Decree of the State Minister for the Environment Number: KEP-48/MENLH/11/1996 concerning environmental noise and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development regarding spatial noise. Based on the observations made in this research, the noise level within the premises of the Java Christian Church in Bandung is fairly good, so all that is needed is for a barrier to be added to reduce environmental noise in the Java Christian Church in Bandung.