Rose Hill Church relocated a few miles across Baton Rouge earlier this year, upgrading from a 200-seat sanctuary to one more than four times that size to better accommodate its growing congregation. As part of the upgrade, the church integrated an all-new sound reinforcement system at the new location. The system includes a pair of SSL Live L200 Plus mixing consoles, three SB 32.24 SuperAnalogueTM Dante stageboxes, and a pair of Blacklight II Bridges.
Rick Camp, owner of Las Vegas-based RC1 Productions & Designs, was the lead consultant for the project after a chance meeting at Southern University in Baton Rouge, where he designed and integrated a Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 recording studio — coincidentally, featuring an SSL Duality Pro Station console. After briefly meeting Eric Johnson, Rose Hill Church’s technical director and bass player, who also works with the university’s marching band, Camp ran into him again about a month later at the NAMM Show. “He was putting together a P.A. system for the new sanctuary. We started our relationship right there at NAMM and I began introducing him to SSL and other manufacturers,” Camp recalls.
SSL Live: A flexible, multi-functional system
The two L200 Plus 38-fader consoles are positioned at front-of-house and monitors with access to 96 inputs over Dante from the three SB 32.24 stageboxes. The Blacklight II Bridges – which are specifically designed for fixed install applications – expands the console Dante interface count from the standard 64 to 256 channels. “They’re using almost 96 channels and we’re running everything over Dante,” Camp reports. A typical service includes a six- or seven-piece praise band, as many as 10 praise singers and a small choir. The Blacklight II Bridge not only expands the I/O on the console but allows faculties to scale their Dante-based audio network, and with SSL Live, it’s all routable directly from the console,” he says.
The new venue is a big step up for Rose Hill Church, which was founded in 1882 and incorporated in 1953. The church’s previous location was about 11,000 square feet, while the building in Baker covers about 46,000 square feet and includes additional amenities such as classrooms. The church now holds two services each Sunday where previously it had to hold four to accommodate worshippers.
Leveraging a state-of-the-art SSL Live system
With the move, the church also went from a relatively compact speaker system and inexpensive mixer handling both FOH and monitor duties to the new state-of-the-art K-array KH3/KS5 speaker rig. “It’s like going from a Volkswagen to a Ferrari,” Camp says. He provided training to Philip Washingon and Isaac Davis, the FOH and monitor engineers, as well as Eric Johnson and Danny Donaldson, who has been the church’s pastor for about 20 years and is a Southern University graduate, and also tuned the system. But while Rose Hill has made a significant leap in audio technology, the church’s full-time live sound system operators have made a smooth transition to the new setup, he says.
“They’re totally happy with the consoles,” Camp says. “It was a little bit of a learning curve going from the old console to a pair of SSLs. But I got them up to speed with everything pretty quickly. They understand the topology, how to find and route things, and all of that. It’s great that all SSL Live consoles offer the exact same operator experience. Now they’ve learnt the L200s, they can operate any SSL Live console – and easily take their showfiles anywhere with compatibility mode.”
Although Camp had to bring in an electrician to upgrade the power in the building, the project actually came together quite quickly. “We didn’t start until January,” he says. “And it was all done and ready for the first service at Easter.”
Camp is an accomplished musician and a graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Since starting his career in Ohio 40 years ago he has always worked both in the studio and on the road. He has toured with an extensive list of A-list clients, from The Commodores, Earth Wind & Fire and Burt Bacharach through Beyoncé, Madonna and Jennifer Lopez, and has recorded and mixed a variety of live concerts by several of his touring clients for release in 5.1 on DVD. He has also designed, tuned and programmed major sports venues and house of worship sound systems. Over the decades he has owned and operated his own production facilities. His current facility, Master Mix Live in Las Vegas, features an SSL System T and accommodates in-house and remote immersive mixing projects.
