Acoustic evaluation of the cathedrals of Murcia and Toledo, Spain

Cathedrals are complex buildings, each of which is the product of a joint effort and whose con-struction process has covered an extended period of time. Not only are such historic monuments symbols of a national cultural identity, but also symbols of a European collective identity. The acoustic environment of cathedrals is considered part of its intangible heritage. The Gothic cathe-drals of Murcia (c. XIV-XVI) and Toledo (c. XIII-XV) correspond to the so-called Spanish style, in which the choir is located in the middle of the main nave. Their enormous volumes, construc-tive solutions, and finishing materials give them a highly reverberant character. This paper pre-sents the experimental results, obtained through the application of a previously developed meth-odology for the acoustic characterisation of these reverberant spaces. The spatial distribution of several objective parameters is analysed in order to assess the acoustic quality for both musical and speech reproduction of their main temples. Various source positions are considered in the study.