WACO, TX — Highland Baptist Church’s multi-purpose Life Center has been equipped with a new sound system that includes an Allen & Heath iLive digital mixing system. “It’s not a typical sanctuary,” said Tim Cates, audio-visual director for the church, “it’s a multipurpose facility where we also host concerts and banquets in addition to two full size basketball courts. So we needed something with lots of flexibility and, of course, we had a budget.”
Highland Baptist looked at a number of alternatives, and Cates said iLive was the best value.
In its primary use as an 1,800-seat sanctuary, the church has a 90-foot wide stage along one of the long walls of the rectangular room. The iLive-176 Control Surface is positioned halfway back, with the iDR10 MixRack located backstage, connected by two CAT5 cables. The system also includes the optional Aviom module which integrates with the band’s monitor system.
Highland Baptist has a large musical ensemble, centered on a contemporary band with electric and acoustic guitars, bass, keyboards, drums and a horn section. An orchestral ensemble of varying size, a full gospel choir and a praise team of six additional vocalists augment the group. With the worship leader’s mic and playback from video and CD sources, roughly 40 channels are used for most presentations, expanding to over 50 when larger orchestra and choir groups are used for special events.
“iLive is easily equal to any task,” Cates said. “The drums, keyboards, choir and orchestral sections are all assigned to DCA’s for easy submixing, and the system is configured with eight effects and eight additional auxes. We use the audio groups feature to combine signals for the Aviom monitoring system. Another thing we love is the ability to look at individual aux sends on the faders instead of using the rotary knobs, so the engineer can quickly come up with a monitor mix on the fly.”
On the output side, the mixed output is routed as left/right/subwoofer signals to the amplifiers, which feed the dv-DOSC line array mains. The board’s matrix is used to send the summed left and right signals to the frontfill speakers. Additional outputs are used for two powered monitor sends that augment the Aviom system, and for a live Spanish translation system.
“When we decided to add a separate output for live translation, it literally took just a couple of clicks to reconfigure the system,” Cates said.
Another feature is iLive’s snapshot ability.
“We have several scenes set up and that saves us quite a bit of time. We’re building up our input library with snapshots for every mic and preamp setting for the different guitar players that rotate into the band, and plan to do the same for all our individual singers. So every week we can just look at who’s here and pull up their optimum settings. It’s an awesome concept.”
Rick Robinson, senior systems designer for integrator Digital Resources, Inc. was responsible for the full system design, from lighting and acoustics to audio and video. Asked why he recommended iLive, he replied:
“As part of the technical systems design, we assess the Church’s level and ease of using a digital console. If you’re used to analogue consoles, iLive is the easiest digital system to make the transition. It’s very intuitive, so the learning curve is very fast. Plus, the support from Allen & Heath has been awesome.”
“iLive sounds better than a lot of more expensive desks,” Robinson continued. “Their analogue-digital conversion takes a pure sample, and the tonal quality of the preamps is amazing. We haven’t even talked about the DSP – it’s so good and powerful, the church doesn’t need any outboard effects units.”
Cates agreed.
“We wanted our new facility to have a board that sounds great, and iLive has that great British EQ, plus all the dynamics processing on the panel with total routing flexibility. From a cost effective standpoint, the next step up would have been practically double the money. From our point of view, iLive was the ideal choice. No other console made sense.”
For more information, please visit www.ilive-digital.com.
