The Quest to Restore Notre Dame's Glorious Sound
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
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.