Focusrite RedNet Offers Flexibility and a Future-Proof Setup for Fellowship Church Knoxville
Fellowship Church Knoxville, a four-campus church in east Tennessee, was an early adopter of AoIP technology. The opportunity came for an upgrade to the system, which its main campus in Knoxville, TN, got over the summer with the addition of several components from Focusrite’s RedNet range of Dante™-networked audio converters and interfaces, including seven RedNet MP8R eight-channel mic pre and A/D converters and two RedNet D64R 64-channel MADI bridges.
“We used the RedNet MP8R and D64R to completely rebuild the front end of the church’s audio system,” explains Phil Bledsoe, Integration Manager for The Production Source, the Knoxville-based AV integration firm that did the installation. “This church is incredibly savvy when it comes to technology — they did all of their own research when it came to choosing what to upgrade their audio network with — and they decided that RedNet was the way to go.” Bledsoe says the RedNet interfaces offered a high degree of flexibility for their current and future needs: the D64R provides ample I/O management for the church’s existing DiGiCo SD8 consoles, but with their Dante compatibility they will give the church a much wider range of choices when they’re ready to upgrade other components of the sound system. “RedNet and Dante will work with any digital products on the market, and the RedNet units are totally portable, so they can bring audio to any part of the building that already has a network point,” he adds.
Scott Bradford, Fellowship Church Knoxville’s Tech Director, and Robert Allen, the church’s Head of Audio, had narrowed their upgrade solution search down to three brands, but given their experience with audio networking, they quickly recognized the Dante-enabled RedNet devices as the most effective choice. “Our research process took almost a year — the old system was no longer being supported by the manufacturer but we had time, so this was not a panic situation with a key component melting down on us,” Bradford explains. “We could really get deep into how RedNet could help us.”