The Cathedral Church of the Advent, a large and historic Episcopal church in Birmingham, Ala., recently completed installation of a new audio system featuring an Allen & Heath C Class Digital Mixing System with C3500 Surface, CDM64 MixRack and IP8 Remote Controller along with an Allen & Heath ME Personal Mixing system for its musicians. The church’s 3,600-member congregation is one of the largest Episcopal parishes in the United States and serves as the Cathedral for the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama.
Kent Michael, the Advent’s mix engineer, says, “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.”
dB Integrations of Gainesville, Ga., designed and installed the Cathedral’s new audio system. dB’s Ronnie Stanford notes, “We did a dLive demo, and they said, ‘This is exactly what we need.’” dB installed the C3500 Surface on a rolling cart to make it easy to access for the church’s modern service. And, they provided a dLive IP8 Remote Controller for volunteers to mix the traditional services.”
Mix engineer Michael uses dLive compressors and other effects for the modern service. He uses dLive layers to manage the church’s multiple sources and dLive scenes to select and route these sources to where they’re needed for each service. “I’ve got a scene for the modern service, another for the traditional morning service, and a scene with the automix feature for other events and services that are unmanned,” he says. The traditional scene assigns selected channels to the IP8 and Michael notes, “I’ve got the IP8 paired with the MixRack so we don’t have to roll out and set up the Surface for our traditional services. The IP8 is a flexible unit that can be programmed to meet our simple or more sophisticated mixing requirements.”
The church’s new system includes eight Allen & Heath ME-1 Personal Mixers and an ME-U Hub and Michael notes, “The musicians in our evening service use in-ear systems with the ME-1s and everything just works seamlessly.”
Michael concludes, “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 very natural and clean and the processing is top notch. I think it’s a cleverly designed and well-rounded product.”
