Based in Nebraska, Inspirmedia specialises in live A/V for church services, larger worship events, corporate events and concerts. Founder Phil Grimpo and his team handle video, graphics and lighting production; consulting, training and sales – locally and America-wide.
A steady element of the firm’s equipment arsenal comes from Roland’s Professional A/V division, including the M-200i, M-400 and M-480 Live Mixing Consoles. ‘I really dove in deep with Roland on those boards,’ Grimpo says. ‘Most jobs that I would spec, I’d advise considering a Roland board and Roland’s complete ecosystem. We used both the M-400 and M-480 boards in my main church gig – they are very user-friendly and can easily be reconfigured for different set-ups or applications without hassle.’
Only one aspect of the range left Grimpo wanting: ‘Our main limitation was channel count, even in smaller churches with praise bands,’ he admits. ‘So, when I heard that the M-5000 was coming out with up to 128 audio paths, I was immediately very excited.’
But when Grimpo called his rep, the M-5000 wasn’t officially available: ‘There was no official pricing when we put in our purchase order,’ he recalls. ‘But our rep did his magic, and I believe we got one of the first production units, if not the first, in the world.
The M-5000 is the first Roland product to be based on the Ohrca. Platform – Open, High-Resolution, Configurable Architecture – and the M-5000 reflects this by delivering freely definable audio paths, supporting multiple audio formats protocols and offering 96kHz resolution throughout the system. The internal mix architecture is not fixed and can be freely defined for mixing channels, auxes, matrices, subgroup buses and mix minus buses within a range of up to 128 audio paths.
The M-5000 also has two REAC ports, plus two expansion card slots with seven expansion card options including Dante, Madi, Waves SoundGridor more REAC ports, as well as audio embedded over video protocols. The rear panel includes 16x16 analogue I/O, 4x4 AES/EBU, a 16x16 USB audio interface, connection for control via an iPad connected or wireless and control ports including footswitches, GP I/O, RS232C and Midi. All of this capability enables the console to see up to 300 inputs and 296 outputs, all at 96kHz and even more at 48kHz.
Inspirmedia’s typical live production set-up includes the M-5000 at FOH, two S-2416 Digital Snake Stage Units for remote I/O and the R-1000 48-Track recorder for multichannel recording and playback.
‘It is hard to sum up what makes the M-5000 special,’ Grimpo says. ‘The ability, with the expansion cards, to interface with Dante, Madi, SoundGrid etc, is unprecedented. And if you compare it to products from other manufacturers, you notice several things. First, the M-5000 is far less “noisy”, which is obvious with headphones. It looks better, and the visual interface is brighter and more readable and the workflow more intuitive. Getting around the board is really easy once you get the hang of it. And one of the things that I love is it works with all of the existing Roland hardware that’s out there. It’s backward-compatible and future-proof at the same time.’
Grimpo has plans for the M-5000: ‘Corporate events, larger stadium gigs, worship conferences – the M-5000 is going to be a key part of our audio workflow moving forward,’ he says.
‘Consulting work is a big part of what we do,’ he adds. ‘People almost always come up to us after an event and wonder what it would take to put something like the rig we had just used, into their church. And I’m not a rep for any particular brand or product, but I know what works for the job, and I love getting people in front of different products to A/B them for themselves. Lately, I cannot get enough people in front of this console. It’s been impressing everyone. I recently had a client ask if I had any boards other than Roland M-480. When I told him we had the Roland M-5000 he immediately reconsidered and is planning on using that for his event.’
