Founded in Randburg, South Africa, in 1979, the Rhema Bible Church is one of the largest Church organizations in the Southern Hemisphere and was one of the first churches to defy Apartheid laws, offering non-segregated services as a precursor of what was to come in the new South Africa.
In May 2022, founder Pastor Ray McCauley handed the reigns of the organization over to his son Pastor Joshua McCauley and his wife Pastor Tara McCauley, and it is under this new leadership that the church decided to update their flagship venue’s AV system with the assistance of South African AV distributors Audiosure.
Sound Team at Rhema Church North, (L-R) Simeon Levi, Mandla Dlamini, Lesedi Maponya, Bubele Bezu.
“This is one of the largest churches in the world, so they needed an audio solution to match,” explains Audiosure Digital Mixer Specialist, Lesedi Maponya. “The church was already running FOH, monitors and broadcast systems, but having grown a sizable online congregation, they desperately needed a modern update to provide the best possible audio quality across all platforms. Additionally, the system needed to be easy to use for both technical and non-technical operators.”
To replace the church’s aging FOH, monitor, and broadcast studio systems, Maponya and the team at Audiosure recommended Allen & Heath’s flagship dLive platform for all three roles within the church’s audio infrastructure. “As soon as the church’s engineers road-tested a dLive, it was a no-brainer to go ahead and integrate it,” adds Maponya.
At FOH, a 28-fader dLive S5000 Surface is deployed alongside a DM64 MixRack for audio processing and analogue I/O, and a Dante card is fitted for multitrack playback and recording. A second DM64 is utilized at the Monitor position, partnered with a 24-fader C3500 Surface, and for the broadcast system, another C3500 is employed with a DM0 providing the processing horsepower. In addition to the MixRacks, a DX012 audio expander, providing switchable analogue and AES outputs, is installed.
Audio is passed between the three systems via dLive’s unique tie-line feature, allowing signals to be patched directly to digital outputs via installed gigaACE cards without consuming any of dLive’s 128 input processing channels or incurring additional latency. “The tie-line features on the console are one of the most useful, and powerful, features in the system,” notes Maponya.
For mixing, the engineers rely on dLive’s integrated tools including the comprehensive suite of zero-latency DEEP Processing compressors and preamp emulations, 16 RackExtra FX slots, plus dynamic processors. “With 4 bands of dynamic EQ and multiband compression, the Dyn8 is a game changer,” Maponya says. “It gets constant use, in fact, it’s now hard to think of a time where dynamic EQ was not an option!”
On the stage, Allen & Heath’s ME Personal Mixing System gives the worship musicians control of their monitor mixes via 10 ME-1 personal mixers, all connected to the ME-U hub which handles PoE and audio transport.
“The aim here was longevity and flexibility,” concludes Maponya. “The access to support and training for a church is important because everyone on the team should be able to operate the system. This is the beginning of a relationship that can grow from strength to strength.”
