Baton Rouge church upgrades audio with dLive
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Central to the upgrade is a new digital front-end incorporating an Allen & Heath dLive S7000, which joins a legacy EAW-based L-C-R system serving the main campus’ 1,600 seat sanctuary. To better support the church’s live streaming needs, a dLive C3500 additionally made its way into the broadcast control room. Bringing further form and function to the blueprint - which was penned by PPM founder and principal Blaine Wilkins - is the addition of Allen & Heath dLive DM64 and S Class DM0 MixRacks.
Helping to integrate the dLive components into a much wider range of live and broadcast scenarios, 128 x 128 gigaAce and Dante cards provide a number of networking options, while remote I/O capabilities were enhanced with the help of a pair of DX168 expanders also culled from the Allen & Heath catalogue.
Monitoring wasn’t overlooked in the systems refresh either: With a Livemix MIX-32 hub from Digital Audio Labs working in conjunction with 16 Livemix CS-DUO personal mixers (each of which is capable of delivering two separate mixes), performers onstage now have the opportunity to develop their own 24-channel mixes complete with EQ, compression, and reverb.
“As things went together, the DM0 became a super-unique piece in the whole puzzle,” PPM’s Blaine Wilkins explains. “It acts as the central hub for all the networking components, housing Dante, gigaAce, and Waves V3 cards, plus expansion slots, all of which can be utilized across the entire dLive platform. The DM0 resides under the stage, along with the DM64 and Livemix MIX-32 hub, which also speaks Dante. One of the DX168 expanders is at the FOH mix position driving wireless mic operations, the other is at hand as a backup for when the need arises to expand onstage.”
Greg Ziecker serves as production director at Istrouma Baptist, Parker Wales is the church’s production associate. “Greg brings a lot of experience to his role, especially in broadcast, having served with ESPN,” Wales relates. “After we developed a clear picture of where we wanted to go with this upgrade Blaine Wilkins was the one that translated our vision into reality.
“We can run the full gamut of Allen & Heath plug-ins at FOH, plus everything Waves V3 has to offer. We have Virtual SoundCheck functionality, plus the capability to make multitrack recordings. As for the sound itself, the fidelity of our processing has hit another level entirely. Combined with the flexibility of our user interface and its-ease-of-use, we really couldn’t have asked for anything more.”
