The Chapel of the General Theological Seminary in Manhattan recently approached Philadelphia-based AVL integration company Legend Sound Systems over a unique upgrade…
‘They needed a way to host two different types of services,’ says Legend Sound President Bill Lyle. ‘The seminary had daily traditional services each morning requiring a very basic audio set-up with a few wireless mics. Then, on the weekends, they hosted more modern services with a full band. We needed to figure out a way to give the right control access to the right people.’
Providing installation services to bars and restaurants and fitness centres as well as houses of worship, Lyle’s company was well placed to assist. With the complexities of the project clear, Lyle began to ponder an optimal solution.
‘I didn’t want a seminary student with no training to be pushing faders on a mixing console,’ he explains. ‘I also didn’t want the control to be dumbed down for trained audio engineers when they came in to mix on Sundays.’
Lyle saw Allen & Heath’s AHM platform as a perfect fit – AHM matrix mixers offer advanced audio processing and multi-zone routing with a variety of simplified control options. ‘Using an AHM-64 processor with a Dante module to feed directly to the amps, we had our traditional services covered,’ Lyle says.
For the modern weekend services, Lyle’s team added a fully-featured 48-channel SQ-5 mixing console – which connects to the same Dante network using its own Dante module. An Allen & Heath AR2412 stagebox feeds inputs to both the AHM and SQ. For the students to control the various microphones during daily services, they created a custom mobile application using Allen & Heath’s Custom Control editor.
‘The app interface only shows seven faders,’ Lyle says. ‘We also set it up so that each fader is limited to prevent the mics from being set too loud and creating feedback problems. It really worked out well.’
The Legend Sound team configured the AHM such that each Zone output feeds a different loudspeaker, allowing a precise balance in a difficult acoustic environment. ‘The walls are stone and the ceilings are 40ft high,’ Lyle says. ‘There was a lot of careful tailoring required to get the sound right, and we were able to do that with AHM.’
Even though this was his first time installing an AHM processor, Lyle found it straightforward to configure and operate. ‘New products are always daunting, but it was fairly easy to use. If I ever did hit a brick wall, I could shoot an e-mail to the support team or use one of the many great instructional videos online to get through it.’
The staff at the Seminary were delighted with the resulting installation and its control interface. ‘We’ve been thrilled by the set-up at,’ says Seminary Senior Vice President Michael DeLashmutt. ‘We don’t have a professional A/V team or even a single person who we can rely on for A/V support from one semester to the next. The set-up that Legend Sound provided for us, with the simplified tablet interface, gives us the sound quality that we needed, but without the complexity that would make running it unfeasible for our students, staff, or volunteers.’
The Legend Sound team has subsequently been offered further work via word of mouth of this installation, and will likely continue to use AHM when similar installs come up.
‘I prefer Allen & Heath products to any others on the market,’ Lyle says. ‘Not only are they good quality products, the service is unparalleled. If I ever have a problem, I can pick up the phone and I know it’s going to get fixed.’
