Historic Church Installs 21st Century Sound System while Aesthetics Remain Intact

Boston Avenue United Methodist Church, located in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma is one of the city's art deco jewels. The building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright protégé Bruce Goff, was placed on the United States' National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Boston Avenue United Methodist Church, located in downtown Tulsa, Ok. is one of the city's art deco jewels.

Its sound system, on the other hand, had fallen into such disarray that the new sound system prompted some surprising comments, and required a bit of re-acclimation from attendees who had grown used to the poorly functioning system. Comprised of several old loudspeaker columns on the side of the proscenium, plus under-balcony and side-fill speakers, portions of the old sound system had stopped working entirely. "Many of the front speakers of the old system had failed and so people over the years were trained to perceive the sound as mainly coming from the sides and back of the room," says Dr. Joel Panciera, director of music for the church.

Because of its cultural and architectural significance, Boston Avenue church required an upgrade that wouldn't compromise its renowned aesthetics. "The church wanted to keep the room intact; they didn't want to see a single piece of technology, which presented some challenges, because we had to figure out where to place the loudspeakers," adds Colby Bramlett, co-owner of AV-interiors, the Oklahoma City-based integrator responsible for the churches audio upgrade.

"At first, it seemed like hanging a line array wouldn't be an option. Then we decided to work with the cavity behind the church's wooden façade structure," Bramlett adds, "which is behind the choir loft and wraps around the entire stage for the organ. We designed an XLE181 system — EV's most compact line array – of 10 boxes per side, to be flown behind that façade. The boxes just barely fit in there, but we were able to mount them completely hidden by the decorative, perforated woodwork that's been in the church for decades, while ensuring the system provided complete coverage for the room."

The system at Boston Avenue also features four FRi-2082 ultra-compact, two-way, dual 8-inch, low-ceiling/low-profile, full-range loudspeakers for front-fills that wrap around the front of the stage behind more decorative woodwork. Also included are two XS212 dual 12-inch subs under the stage and two sets of FRI-2082 delays. The system is powered by EV's new Q Series amps and processed by a NetMax N8000 digital matrix controller controlled wirelessly from the front-of-house mix position.

A new 24-channel Midas Venice console sits at the mix position now located in the center-front of the balcony. The engineer for the old house sound system sat in the broadcast booth and mixer using headphones.

"NetMax controls all of the loudspeakers," says Marcus Walker, System Designer and co-owner of AV-interiors. "We have the line array divided into three control sections with additional control over subs, front-fill and the two sections of delay, along with minimal fill beneath the balcony. We ended up using a 24-channel Midas Venice console at front of house, because the church's volunteer team was used to running an analog console, and we thought the Venice would make for the easiest transition. They're a very traditional church – choir, organ, piano – so the system doesn't require many inputs. What they needed was a good clean sound, and the warm preamps on the Midas do the job perfectly for them." A new front-of-house mix position is located in the center-front of the balcony.

Panciera adds, "We are quite happy with our new system's user "friendliness. Before, one person in the broadcast booth did the mix for the broadcast and room with headsets on. Dividing the process into two has improved the quality of their work."

"The feedback we've gotten from everyone at the church has been extremely positive," adds Bramlett. "From where the church has come from –1960s-era speakers – the difference with state-of-the-art technology is very noticeable; the congregation is very excited to be able to hear now. Plus there's no aesthetic difference in the sanctuary."

"I think that EV's XLE equipment is superb" says Walker. "Using EV engineering – NetMax, amps, speakers – we were very easily able to predict the performance of the speakers and what was going to happen as far as fine tuning the product to the room was concerned. Everything was very, very easy. Huge props to EV for all their help, it couldn't have been any easier."

Panciera concludes saying the, "Clarity and power of our new audio is greatly improved. It is wonderful."

For more information, visit www.electrovoice.com, www.av-interiors.com and www.bostonavenue.org.

DIGICO SD8 GOES INTO OVERDRIVE

Digico expands the SD8 line with two new additions. All SD8's are now available with Overdrive, a dramatic increase in versatility and number of features. The new SD8-24 has a smaller footprint than previous models, and offers an exceptional cost-to-feature ratio.

It is only 12 months since DiGiCo launched its entry-level SD8. This already powerful yet compact console employs a smaller Super FPGA than the flagship SD7, but includes many of its revolutionary advances, as well as all the major features and versatility of DiGiCo's original D Series of consoles. Now, the SD8 is ready to go into Overdrive…

Overdrive includes the following new advancements:

• FX units - Eight stereo effects (FX) units have been imported from SD7 MACH2 effects, including the floating-point reverbs and time-based FX.
• Dynamic EQ – available on any eight channels, mono or stereo, and on any eight input and output paths. This is equivalent to 64 Dynamic EQs in DSP processing. These are individually switchable and can be easily monitored via the gain reduction/expansion meter.
• Multi-Band Compression – again available on any eight channels, mono or stereo, and on any eight input and output paths. This is equivalent to 48 Multi Band Compressors in DSP processing.
• Graphic EQ – 24 x 32 bands available, which has been increased from 12 x 32 bands previously available.
• Matrix - expanded to 16 x 12 from 12 x 12.
• Snapshot Scopes and Crossfades - expanded to allow per-channel settings.
• Snapshot List – per-snapshot, editable text styles for Snapshot names (uses snapshot notes style).
• Snapshot Timing Progress Bar
• MIDI Machine Control - this has been implemented to allow Play/Stop and Locate commands to be triggered by Snapshots.
• Assign/Unassign – allows the building of custom banks via channel functions on the worksurface.
• Optional Stereo or LCR Master Buss
• Talkback Channel – allows you to talk to any combination of aux busses using a new dedicated talkback channel.
• Overview screen - new options are now available including Disabling Joystick, Prev/Next Buttons and Hard Mute. Second-Function Auto-Cancel and Larger Meters.
• Channel list - now contains the location of all channels on the surface and indicates channels that are unassigned (not on the surface).
• Security Modes – Unattended and custom Live mode are now available with user- definable password protection.

Overdrive, although a cost option, will be available to all existing SD8 customers at no additional charge.

BIG ON DELIVERY, BUT SMALL IN SIZE
LESS IS MORE WITH DIGICO'S SD8

With the DiGiCo SD8, the compact footprint of this entry-level console, coupled with the astounding power of its Super FPGA processor, made it an instant hit, with record numbers sold since its launch. Now, as the world of corporate events begins its renaissance, DiGiCo has once again produced a product to suit the industry's changing needs - a console with an even smaller footprint, but with no reduction in functionality or number of inputs and outputs. At under a metre in width, this diminutive powerhouse is known as the SD8-24.

"A lot of our customers in the corporate world were hard hit at the start of the credit crunch," says James Gordon, DiGiCo's managing director. "Recently, they've been telling us that work is starting to come back. This is great news and we wanted to do something to address the needs of the rejuvenating market. Designing a smaller footprint SD8, but without reducing any of its features, seemed the perfect way to do that."

The SD8-24 has the fixed architecture of the SD8, employing the same smaller Super FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), a technology that has been around for almost as long as DSP.

FPGAs comprise a series of logic blocks, plus a system for connecting them, which can be programmed to perform complex operations or more routine tasks normally associated with basic gates, and in many high-performance FPGAs, these logic blocks also have access to on-chip memory or even embedded microprocessors.

Applications for FPGAs are very wide reaching and this brings with it certain economies of scale. They are particularly well-suited to audio mixing applications, not least because a single FPGA can carry out the same functions as a whole board full of conventional DSP chips.

Evolution has seen the development of much larger FPGA's and these can perform far greater numbers of calculations than the most advanced DSP. These Super FPGAs are utilized in the SD-8 and SD8-24.

DiGiCo has also applied Stealth Digital Processing to its entire SD range. This is the technology that allows it to process all mixing functions and reverb algorithms in one of the latest FPGA design components. A single-chip processes an amazing amount of channels, providing more channel processing than can be found on any other digital live console.

All of this gives the SD8-24 an exceptional cost-to-feature ratio and means that less really is more.

The console benefits from all the features currently available on the SD8, as well as some additional ones courtesy of the newly developed OverDrive software, which comes as standard in all new SD8 and SD8-24 consoles and is available as a free upgrade for existing products.

The SD8-24 is not only ideally suited to the corporate market, but to other applications where space is at a premium. These include regional theatre or house-of-worship installations that want to upgrade from existing consoles to benefit from vastly increased features, I/O capability and sound quality, but do not have the space for a larger footprint console.

For more information, please visit www.digico.org.