COLLEGE PARK, GA – Services conducted by noted author Dr. Creflo A. Dollar, founder of World Changers Church International (WCCI), reaches a local congregation of 8,500 within the church's dome-shaped sanctuary. It also gets broadcast to satellite locations worldwide. One thing that hadn't changed for close to three decades, however, was the church's reliance on entry-level analog consoles for live audio production – until recently, when the church upgraded to digital desks at FOH (DiGiCo SD7) and monitors (DiGiCo SD8).
Roy Drukenmiller and Mitch Donner of Rock-N-Road Audio facilitated the sale of the new desks and installed them within a three-day turnaround. They worked with the church staffers – Jeff Sparks, Mark Hawley, John Eley, and Hall Williams – and volunteers – Carlton Reeves, Jeffery Stubbs, Femi Afuape and Kirk Bowie.
"Matt Larson from DiGiCo flew in the Monday prior to the Atlanta WFX show in November of 2010 to give us a tour of the SD7," recalled WCCI FOH audio engineer Hall Williams. "Rock-N-Road owned an SD8, and they brought it in for an in-house demo."
With Larson, Drukenmiller and Jim Greene present, "we imported two CDs of all the tracks from one of our Sunday services into Reaper using the RME MadiFace card," Williams said. "We just brought the faders up to ‘0', with no EQ or Dynamics, and we were amazed at how big of a difference the DiGiCo sound made.
"I then had a chance to dial in a mix, which confirmed our first impressions," Williams continued. "The console blew us away, and I knew we had to have both consoles for our Dome. We figured if the SD8 sounded this good at house position, it was a no brainer to get the SD7 for Front of House and use the SD8 for our monitor needs."
Features, sonic quality and compact footprint all clinched the sale. "I've known about DiGiCo since the D5," said Williams, who toured extensively with top Gospel, jazz and reggae artists before settling down at World Changers. "I've played with all the toys and consoles in the industry but when I got a look at the SD7, it was the best of all worlds.
"What I love about the DiGiCos," Williams continued, "are the busses, auxes, EQ, compressors, groupings, the dynamic EQ. I like how it's set up, I like that everything's onboard, and I like the size. To be such a huge console in sound quality of our room and application with such a small footprint was really great.
"We've had them running since the end of December and they're working wonderfully," Williams said. "Once we hooked up the consoles and ran them through our V-DOSC/dV-DOSC rig powered by L-Acoustic/Lab.gruppen amps with XTA processors, the sound quality improved drastically."
Of all the features of the SD7 Williams has been using as FOH engineer, he cited the Dynamic EQs and Multiband Compression as must-haves.
"But there's so much to choose from," he said. "In addition to the Dynamic EQs and Multiband compressors, I've found that the snapshots are really intuitive and very flexible. I'm using that along with the matrix section a lot-which is a lifesaver. It's literally cut our workload, pre-service checklist and rehearsal time in half.
"The Control Groups/DCAs are really nice and it's fantastic to have more than enough" – 32, in fact, on the SD7, Williams continued. "I've found the effects to be smooth-sounding and having an abundance of them onboard really enhances my mixing pleasure. The matrix section, grouping and control groups are so intuitive, I forget sometimes I am on a digital console. I'd say the SD7 has solved every sonic and functional challenge I have ever had in my mixing career – and that's been 20-plus years."
For more information, please visit www.digico.org and www.worldchangers.org.
