The Cathedral Church of the Advent, a 3,600-member Episcopal church in Birmingham, Alabama, has installed an Allen & Heath dLive system with C3500 Surface, CDM64 MixRack, IP8 Remote Controller and ME-1 Personal Mixers for the musicians to accommodate new service styles..

‘We had recently ushered in a service on Sunday evenings that incorporated more modern instrumentation, so we needed a system that would be versatile and powerful enough to mix a full band for the evening service and simple enough to operate by our volunteer staff for the traditional services,’ explains Advent mix engineer, Kent Michael.

dB Integrations designed the Cathedral’s new audio system, installing the C3500 Surface on a rolling cart to make it easy to access for the church’s modern service. The company also provided an IP8 Remote Controller for volunteers to mix traditional services. Catering for the different service styles, Michael uses dLive’s layers to manage the church’s multiple sources and scenes to select and route these sources for each service. ‘I’ve got a scene for the modern service, another for the traditional morning service, and a scene with Automatic Mic Mixing for events and services that are unmanned,’ he says.

The traditional scene assigns selected channels to the IP8: ‘I’ve got the IP8 paired with the MixRack so we don’t have to roll out and set up the full surface for our traditional services,’ Michael adds.

The system also includes eight Allen & Heath ME-1 Personal Mixers and an ME-U Hub: ‘The musicians in our evening service use in-ear systems with the ME-1s and everything just works seamlessly.

‘The new system solved our feedback and intelligibility issues, and the dLive fits our needs really well – it’s intuitive, easy to program and a delight to mix on. The preamps sound  natural and clean, and the processing is top notch.’