‘Bringing the same great experience to everyone in the 1,100-seat sanctuary’ was the aim of the First Assembly Community Ministries of Lafayette, Indiana, when it sought a new audio system to mark its 90th anniversary.
Centred on an Allen & Heath dLive S Class Mixing System, mixing services now takes place on an S5000 Surface and DM64 MixRack, which serves as a FOH desk, broadcast mixer and monitor mixer. Technical Director Luke Flowers says the church’s previous digital mixer had high latency, poor-sounding effects and maintenance issues so the right mixer was an important choice for the new audio system.
Flowers also works as an independent FOH engineer so he discussed the decision with his touring contacts and he considered several digital mixers before requesting an Allen & Heath demo. ‘I was blown away by the dLive,’ he says. ‘The feature set is phenomenal for a digital mixer at this price and its open architecture and workflow make it very user friendly. I had our whole service set up within four hours after the demo.’
The console’s scenes and layers allow Flowers to ‘put anything anywhere’, keeping his mics and other sources in logical groups and automatically selecting effects and EQ for each song. This makes things easy for the interns who help with system operation. Its multiple input capability and flexible work flow allow Flowers to manage the FOH mix, the band’s in-ear monitor mix and a stereo mix for the church’s streaming broadcast – all from the S5000 Surface. Flowers also records each service and uses the virtual soundcheck to set up his mix before the musicians arrive, reducing rehearsal times.
Although he is a fan of Waves plug-ins, Flowers says the dLive S Class has an ‘incredible effects library’ and its compressors, reverbs and EQ introduce no perceptible latency in his mix. He also says its preamps are very transparent with a rich clear sound quality allowing him to use the dLive’s effects as ‘salt and pepper’ for his microphones and other sources.
Designed and installed by CCI Solutions, First Assembly’s new audio system, with its dLive S Class, complements the church’s contemporary worship style and its focus on ‘Sunday excellence’ meeting the church’s goals for sound quality and coverage. ‘We had no idea what we were missing,’ Flowers refelcts. ‘The clarity of our new system is unbelievable and, in my opinion, Allen & Heath knocked it out of the ball park with the dLive.’
More: www.allen-heath.com
