With a growing membership and a full schedule of weekly worship, youth services and community events, the production team at Countryside Bible Church knew it needed a stronger audio infrastructure to accommodate its workload.
The Southlake, Texas-based, ministry had been using a Yamaha QL5 digital audio mixing console in its main worship center, and recently added a QL1 console to expand its number of available channels.
“We went from having fewer than 60 channels up to about 96 channels without breaking the bank on a larger board,” says Dan Thomas, technical director at Countryside.
The church duplicated that QL5/QL1 workflow in its streaming room where they webcast services and events for members unable to attend in person. That upgrade meant the church was already equipped for web-streaming long before that became the only option to reach its members. Countryside moved to streaming in March 2020 as a means of adapting to world events and in its first online-only weekend attracted more than 6,000 unique views. When on-site operations return to normal, they’ll be ready to hit the ground running with their expanded audio console capabilities.
“We're mostly doing the same type of productions as before,” Thomas says, “although we’ve added a full orchestra and we run a full choir in the mornings. Those elements can eat up a lot of channels but by cascading, now we’re able to do individual microphones on every instrument. Also, we run everything with Dante allowing us to easily send signals through our boards to our stream room and have the setups in both locations be identical.”
Using the consoles and Dante networking to connect the different locations on campus, “Gives us a unified console structure with more dynamic channel-sharing capabilities for overflow or mixing performers in different spaces from one location,” Thomas says. “Every console on campus talks to our Dante controller so we can patch anything we want to and from anywhere.”
This workflow is especially helpful during busier seasons like Easter or Christmas. “For those services,” Thomas says, “we enlarge our orchestra by about 25 percent and that requires a number of microphones we never really had enough bandwidth to handle. By cascading the Yamaha consoles and gaining more channels, we’re able to get more creative in terms of mic options.”
To further standardize training and functionality across its campus, the church also added three Yamaha QL1s across its campus – in the chapel, gymnasium and youth room – complemented by Yamaha TF RACK compact rack-mount digital mixers in each space. The chapel seats nearly 400 and is used for Sunday school and smaller services while the gymnasium can handle lectures and sporting events, with both accommodating overflow crowds when the main sanctuary is full.
The church’s youth ministry regularly uses these spaces for their weekly meetings. “They have a band in there, with full audio, video and lighting, plus we also produce Countryside internal events so the QL1s fit these spaces nicely,” Thomas says.
Whatever the future brings, Thomas and his team are confident the Yamaha consoles will support the church as their production needs and requirements grow.
