Whenever you agree or disagree with nytimes you have to admit their interactive article is always a joy to play around with.
But as the article points towards that architecture can have a huge role in say sound is interesting, since you think most of us tend to just solve it by having louder or specially designed speakers.
I know there's similar architectual designs from the past where light plays a similarly important role.
Speakers can always change their EQ, or could in theory add reverberation (although I've never heard of doing that). But they can't really remove reverberation (you need carpets or other sound-dampening material for that).
But in a church you often aren't using speakers at all, just like you aren't in a concert hall for classical music. Maybe the speaker during a sermon is, but not the choir.
The kind of massive reverb you get in a cathedral is terrible for some music -- it would turn any normal pop concert into a muddy mess. But for a lot of organ+choral music that was obviously composed in the first place for these kinds of spaces, it creates a kind of magical all-enveloping effect. Which, if you're looking for religious otherwordly inspiration, is spot-on.
Louder speakers weren't available when Notre Dame was built though... all they had were human voices, maybe some other instruments, and sometime later, an organ.
I distinctly remember walking around the area where Notre Dame is in Paris and hearing a faint sound I recognised on the breeze. The closer I got the more it gave me chills. The sound of the organ presumably (I'd like to think) being played by Olivier Latry and of course I recognised the sound from his recordings of Messiaen[0]. Not Messiaen that day but those compositions being played by Latry on that organ... that sound.. it just takes me somewhere else.
But as the article points towards that architecture can have a huge role in say sound is interesting, since you think most of us tend to just solve it by having louder or specially designed speakers.
I know there's similar architectual designs from the past where light plays a similarly important role.