The next step (that will probably never happen) would be to refurnish the Hagia Sophia, as it would have been before it was plundered in the fourth crusade, and seat an audience in it, as if for a mass. Then pop another balloon. All those extra furnishings and bodies would have had a significant impact on how the space sounded. The plastered over mosaics might also create a noticeable effect that would need to be com…
I find it strange that people and historians are so fixated on the 4th Crusade as the be all end all of the Byzantine's and ignore or minimize as much as possible all that irrelevant side business of the centuries of fighting with the Muslims. You know, the guys that fought them far more often and more brutally and actually took away nearly all their territory and destroyed them? In addition to the above comment and…
In this case though, the fourth crusade really is important since it was when the Hagia Sophia was first looted during a sack of the city. Nearly seven centuries of accumulated treasures were carted out of the place.