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Willow Creek Community Church Gets Massive Audio System Upgrade Including Focusrite RedNet Components

In Audio, home_page, Install Newsby admin

Willow Creek Community Church is among the largest worship facilities in the U.S., serving a weekly congregation of 26,000 in the Chicagoland area. The church’s 800,000-square-foot main campus, located in South Barrington, Illinois, recently underwent a major upgrade to its AV systems, including Yamaha FOH, monitor and broadcast consoles, a robust Dante™ network infrastructure, Cisco network switches, Meyer Sound MILO and M2D systems and much more. Helping to distribute the audio between each location is a number of RedNet Dante-networked audio interfaces from Focusrite.

As with many modern churches, AV production takes a central role in worship, including video screens and closed-circuit feeds, broadcast and streaming, and more. Matt Wentz, who has been with the church for the past 11 years and for the past six the Audio Systems Engineer, notes, “Our whole production team is as many as 30 people total, and they’re broken up into three smaller crews. We updated our video systems last year, and it was important we upgrade the audio to keep up. Dante was clearly the right solution as far as networking such a big campus, and we were running into some conversion issues here and there. After doing extensive research, I acquired a RedNet 6 interface, and the rest sort of came together piece by piece.”

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Yamaha Professional Audio Continues to Expand Dedicated CIS Sales Team

In Audio, home_page, Industry Newsby admin

Yamaha Corporation of America, Professional Audio division has announced the appointment of Dennis Dillinger to the position of district manager for the expanding Commercial Installation Solutions (CIS) sales team. The dedicated team serves the sound reinforcement integrator, contractor, and CIS dealer base to provide effective systems for the commercial, retail, and corporate markets.

“Dennis Dillinger brings a wealth of audio-visual experience to the CIS sales force,” states Alan Macpherson, general manager, Yamaha Professional Audio division. “He is a tremendous asset to the team, and as we move forward, will help strengthen our share of the market.”

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Broadcast Audio & When You Need a Separate Console

In Web Articlesby tfwm

by Bryan Cole

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More and more churches are turning to web streaming of their church services as a way to expand their reach, allow military families on deployment to stay connected to the same message, and even as the basis for multi-site delivery of live preaching.

Good Audio Makes Good Video

When we choose to deliver our content via a web medium, or even to archive storage for later use, the video must have audio content along with it – and this demands that we spend some time considering how the audio will be “mixed” for the broadcast audience.

When attendees experience your service live, they are hearing a complete package of sound that is composed of any stage volume, plus the output of the sound system, as well as the results of those two sound sources interacting with the room. Your sound engineer mixes the audio so that the mix sounds as natural and appropriate for the style as is possible.

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Second Baptist Church Chooses DiGiCo Consoles

In Install News, Product Reviews, Web Articlesby tfwm

Superior audio, ease of use, simple firmware updates and seamless plug-ins cited in upgrade to SD5 desks at SBC’s massive West Campus

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Christmas services this past December never sounded better at Second Baptist Church’s 400,000-square-foot West Campus in Houston thanks to a recent audio system upgrade to two DiGiCo SD5 consoles. Installed by local HOW systems integrator Covenant Communications, the new consoles replace a pair of legacy DiGiCo D5 Live FOH and monitor desks for the church’s 5,000-seat “in-the-round” worship center, which also televises its lively services.

Second Baptist Global Tech Director Mark Sepulveda notes that after seven years of duty, the time had come to retire the previous consoles and make an upgrade. “The SD5s were chosen based on what our team thought were the best overall live audio consoles on the market that continued to give us superior audio with the DiGiCo brand, continued ease of hands-on functionality, easy firmware updates that will continue to add new features in the coming years, and the ability of the SD software to integrate with Waves SoundGrid for a seamless plug-in experience,” he says.

Covenant Communications has largely handled Second Baptist’s audio/video/lighting needs for the past four years, and the eventual upgrade choice came after considering various options. “I put a few things in front of Mark,” notes Joe Smart, Covenant’s sales manager. “Our role is to be objective; it’s not an emotional decision, but one to find the best solutions for them.” The SD5’s flexibility was perfectly suited for the church’s typical need for a quick “flip around to different worship styles” – from traditional to high-energy contemporary sound – and “recording audio for future TV broadcast,” notes Smart.

Smart points out that Second Baptist required more than the 128 inputs processed by its previous system: “The new spec required close to 160 inputs, no doubt in part to accommodate the fairly large band, including 12 to 15 rhythm players and 20 to 30 string players. That doesn’t include the enormous choir of up to 180 singers, 24 of those members being wirelessly close-miked and processed for a massive choir sound.”

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Yamaha CL5

In Audio, Product Reviews, Web Articlesby tfwm

Yamaha CL5 Review by Julian Ray   First Seventh Day Adventist Church in Huntsville, AL, was founded in 1937 as a small company of seven or eight people, and slowly …

Central Church Installs Five DiGiCo Desks

In Install Newsby tfwm

Church media director praises SD5, in particular, for ease-of-use, meeting needs and price point

DiGiCo_Central_Church_2Central Church of Charlotte, NC is one of the latest Houses of Worship to become a “House of DiGiCo,” as its media director testifies that services have never felt so inspirational, easy and intuitive to mix since installing its first SD5 console in the church’s main sanctuary a year ago. In addition, new DiGiCo boards have now also been installed in its Student Life Center (SD8 and SD9) and Family Life Center (SD11) facilities.

Don Kendrick, Central’s director of media services, notes that a second SD5 will also soon be going  into a new audio/video suite, designed by Dallas-based Russ Berger Design Group, which is currently under construction and slated to be completed in the first quarter of 2015.

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