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.

A new approach to acoustic quality assessment of churches during simulation tests is proposed in the article. The numerical global index, based on four partial indices: reverberation, speech intelligibility, music sound index and a proposed new one - sound strength index, assesses the acoustic parameters of the model of the tested church in a complex manner.

The global single number index was obtained from 17 simulations of acoustic adaptation options of the investigated church's interior. The equation of the approximate global index has been obtained by means of singular vectors, obtained from Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) of the Index Observation Matrix of Simulation Variants (IOMSV). The weights of four partial indices and a universal equation of the global index have been calculated using the SVD technique to solve the problem of correlated acoustical parameters. The global index may be a helpful tool during simulation tests of acoustic quality assessment of churches. The proposed final equation of the global index does not require knowledge of the SVD technique and the values of acoustic parameters preferred for churches. Therefore the methodology proposed is easily applicable.

In this paper, the computer modelling application based on the modal expansion method is developed to study the influence of a sound source location on a steady-state response of coupled rooms. In the research, an eigenvalue problem is solved numerically for a room system consisting of two rectangular spaces connected to one another. A numerical procedure enables the computation of shape and frequency of eigenmodes, and allows one to predict the potential and kinetic energy densities in a steady-state. In the first stage, a frequency room response for several source positions is investigated, demonstrating large deformations of this response for strong and weak modal excitations. Next, a particular attention is given to studying how the changes in a source position influence the room response when a source frequency is tuned to a resonant frequency of a strongly localized mode.