With a 12-year old analog sound system, First Baptist Church in Hurst, Texas, knew it was time to update. Located between Dallas and Fort Worth, the church serves a membership of about 2,000 members with two services every Sunday.
With a blended traditional and contemporary musical presentation, more inputs were needed. The contemporary band consists of a worship leader on vocals and acoustic guitar, with a praise team of up to six backing vocalists, plus two acoustic guitars, one electric guitar, bass, drums, acoustic piano and electronic keyboards. The rest of the stage is occupied by a 10-piece string section, six-piece horn section, and a choir that averages 120 voices.
“Over the years, the equipment had been manipulated and taken several different directions,” The church put out bids and awarded the job to TPS Audio Visual in nearby Grand Prairie. Media Coordinator Tim Carver explains. “I was given the task of designing a system with the functionality and ease of use that our presentation requires."
The console of choice for First Baptist Church proved to be the iLive-144, outfitted with an iDR10 MixRack with an Aviom card, providing 64 inputs and 32 outputs, adding significantly more DSP power along with the ability to program, save and recall settings for faster, repeatable set-ups. TPS also installed an Allen & Heath PL-6 wall-mounted mix controller in the sanctuary, providing control of eight channels (typically, a few handheld mics, a couple musical instruments and CD player) for smaller events.
Along with the house mix, Carver controls all monitors from the iLive as well, with a mix of Aviom systems for most of the contemporary band and floor wedges for the choir, orchestra, and several others on stage.
“Before we installed the iLive 144, I had to do a lot of channel doubling, doing submixes on stage. The iLive has allowed me to expand to 50 channels, which still leaves me 14 more for expansion. Plus I have a lot more possibilities for adding effects and EQ without any outboard gear. I've been saving scenes for different types of services, plus anything new that we add, like different instruments,” Carver explains. “Eventually, we'll get to the point where we're just executing scenes.”
“When you think about it, the control surface is just another outboard device for the MixRack, which is the brains of the system,” he says. “The iLive lets me use my laptop the same way. When I come in to set up, I just grab my computer and hit the stage before I even go to the sound booth. I power everything from backstage and do my setup on the iLive Editor software from there. In fact, I can also control my Sennheiser wireless and Audia [loudspeaker] processor racks at the same time. I just log onto all three systems from my laptop and go. I'm basically ready within ten minutes. It's been phenomenal.”
Carver closes saying a final factor in the decision to go with Allen & Heath was ease of use. “Operationally, it's really easy. We've also had great training and support from Allen & Heath. That was a big help to me.”
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