Music has always been a part of Ian Hazzard’s life. He started on piano at an early age and was doing worship music in his early teens playing drums, keys, guitar and doing vocals at his hometown church, North Central Baptist Church in Gainesville, Fla. Now he’s also a worship leader for the Baptist Collegiate Ministry (BCM) at the University of Florida.
Performer, Soundcaster and Director are each part of a suite of apps from Audiofusion designed to deliver smartphone-based personal monitor mixing via in-house wifi.
I’m super excited for the new Android version as it will really open up the market for churches to use this affordable system. - Ian Hazzard
Hazzard attends Liberty University majoring in Digital Media and Journalism in preparation for a career as an integrator and AV system designer. In his spare time he helps several smaller churches in the area with their AV set-ups through his company Hazzard Creative.
One thing that always seems to get compromised in smaller churches is the personal monitor mixers. The traditional hardwired systems can be very expensive, but there didn’t seem to be any alternatives except stage wedges.
The Performer interface is super intuitive; most people take about 10 seconds to figure it out and start mixing themselves. - Ian Hazzard
Searching the internet a year or so ago, Hazzard discovered Audiofusion Performer wireless in-ear monitoring app for iPhone. Now he recommends it to nearly all the churches where he’s involved.
With Audiofusion Performer, we can set up eight musicians for a little over $1000 --- including buying a beefed-up wifi router.. - Ian Hazzard
“With Audiofusion Performer, we can set up eight musicians for a little over $1000 --- including buying a beefed-up wifi router [sold separately] --- versus about $1000 per person to use a traditional, wired personal monitor mixing system,” Hazzard says. “Plus, we're able to get started really quickly by just downloading the app. The interface is super intuitive; most people take about 10 seconds to figure it out and start mixing themselves. People can use the ear buds from their iPhones.”
Ian Gray Hazzard, Worship Leader, Baptist Collegiate Ministry, University of Florida.
Performer is just one in a suite of apps. SoundCaster connects digital audio devices and broadcasts multi-channel audio to your iPhones and tablets. The Director app (beta version available now) is a remote controller for SoundCaster and Performer, and allows the user to set up monitor mixes for other musicians.
Hazzard says the Audiofusion Performer is easy to set up. In a typical application, they just take a USB connection out of the mixer into a computer and run an ethernet cable to a dedicated wifi router that’s not connected to the internet -- and that’s where the musicians connect. Hazzard says latency has never been an issue. And even though most of the band members are not tech savvy, it’s not hard to set up and explain.
The only catch with the system for Hazzard’s group was not everyone had an iPhone. “Biggest hindrance is that it was iOS only,” he says. Up until now, if churches had mostly Andriod users, Hazzard would have recommended against the Performer app. But Audio Fusion has announced a Kick Starter campaign to bring the Performer app to Android. “I’m super excited for the new Android version as it will really open up the market for churches to use this affordable system,” he says.
Audiofusion software is designed to turn a phone or tablet into a wireless in-ear monitoring system at a fraction of the cost of hardware-based solutions. Users can see at a glance all the channels in a custom mix—those that are muted and active --- control volume and panning of each channel in that mix and personalize instrument labels and icons to see them in terms each individual user understands.
