Listening to echoes puts people to sleep. When you decide to put on an event in a rectangular, high-ceiling hall please think carefully about the sound. There are a few things you can do to reduce this effect and sonic fatigue. I’ll try and give you a quick overview here on some of the tools you can explore with your sound crew.

1) EQ! Lots of the resonance comes from low, booming sounds that can be reduced with a bit of low frequency reduction. In general, you can roll off most frequencies below 117 Hz. Also, you can reduce mid frequencies (400-600 Hz). I could go a lot further but I’ll leave it open for discussion.

2) More speakers at shorter distances. Very rudimentary but it really depends on the room. You should probably think about having smaller speakers every 30Ft or so. Remember that a speaker is not stereo so no need to use stereo placement.

3) Compression: speakers generally have fluctuating dynamics during their talks. Why not experiment with some soft compression? Even out the “ups-and-downs”. Since this isn’t a critical recording situation, the main goal of the speaker is to be heard and understood; compression can help this.