A very early adopter of Yamaha’s new MCP1 surface-mounted control panel, the Anglican church Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) has installed two at its main site – with more to follow.

HTB has four sites in London, its Brompton Road complex being close to the Science, Natural History and V&A museums. Here the church has a primary worship space, as well as a number of smaller ‘breakout’ rooms located several hundred metres from the main building where meetings and other events can be held.

The A/V facilities in the breakout rooms are designed to be ‘self serve’ by any user. Recently the existing analogue audio systems were replaced by a brand new digital system, based on the site’s existing Yamaha MRX7-D matrix processor and DCP series control panel. The MRX7-D is located in the main building and, when the MCP1 was launched in June last year, HTB Production Supervisor Joe Sunley-Smith quickly saw the advantage of its ability to transmit the Yamaha control protocol from the breakout rooms to the main building over the existing standard IT network which links them.

Featuring customisable touch controls, the MCP1 delivers great remote control flexibility, with up to 36 parameters able to be assigned to the six control (plus home) buttons. Featuring an elegant brushed aluminium finish, dot matrix display that permits dynamic labelling, four user levels for access management and enhanced security, up to 16 MCP1s can be added to a system.

Working with London-based PF Events, the MCP1s were straightforward for Joe and his team to install, along with a Yamaha TF-Rack digital mixer: ‘The systems are set up to auto schedule, which resets the input level parameters overnight,’ Joe Sunley-Smith says.

‘We have used the access management facilities to ensure that all settings are locked, so the only parameters users can change are the levels. We use zone control in one of the rooms, so users can also choose which zone is operational. Additionally, we use an SD card in the MRX7-D’s slot for playback routing across the different rooms.’

The MCP1s are already proving a valuable addition to the HTB facilities: ‘When we planned upgrading the analogue system to digital, we wanted to standardise the rooms so people would be familiar with the systems, no matter which one they use,’ he adds. ‘We are working towards this across all of our four main sites and breakout rooms. We are planning an A/V upgrade for four self-serve rooms at our Onslow Square site this year, which will be fitted with the same MRX7-D and MCP1-based system.’

More: www.yamahaproaudio.com