Bad Accoustics Distract From Speaker’s Message

I recently attended an event in a school auditorium where I listened to three speeches. While the hall itself was elegant, the acoustics made it difficult to hear the speakers.

What could have been done to make the speeches more accessible to the audience? Here are some suggestions on proper accoustics setup for public speaking:

1. Reduce the echo in the room. For this, I suppose one would have to hire an expert in acoustics.
2. Get a better public address system, with more speakers in more places, with a sound engineer constantly adjusting the quality of the sound to make the most of the voice doing the speaking.

3. Teach those doing the speaking how to speak into a microphone so that their vowels and consonants will be heard. This can be taught by a private speech coach.

Part of this is voice projection, which comes from breath control. Part of it is enunciation, which comes from training the muscles of the tongue and lips to shape each sound like an Olympic figure skater. And part of this is simply learning to stand still and find the proper distance between mouth and microphone.

I was impressed with each of the speakers, but I had to work like a mule to hear what they had to say.