Castle Hills church rebuilds with Allen & Heath
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The church partnered with Skylark AV of Oklahoma City to design and install the new AV and lighting package and help them develop a masterplan for this project and future expansion.
Tim Vencil, Castle Hills, technical director, explains the church’s mixer choice: “We had been using a smaller digital mixer. But, for the new worship space, we needed more than just a bigger board. I wanted an ‘infrastructure’ that would support our in-ear system, our streaming broadcast and everything else in the room.”
After research and consultations with other engineers, Vencil chose the dLive S7000 Surface and DM64 MixRack with a DX168 Expander at FOH for the church’s wireless mic system.
“I’ve never worked on a console that’s this flexible,” says Vencil. “I use the left and right banks for inputs with the centre bank as my outputs. And I use the layers as groups. We only have one service style at the moment but I use scenes for different songs. And, I love the colour coding options on the channel strips.”
Vencil uses the dLive’s onboard EQ, reverbs, delays and de-essers. “I’ve been really happy with the built-in effects,” he says. “I’ve found some great reverbs and I love the Dyn8 multi-band compressor.”
For its musicians’ in-ear monitors, Castle Hills has 16 Allen & Heath ME-1s with an ME-U Hub. “The headroom in the ME system is awesome and I was blown away by how crisp and clean they sound,” adds Vencil. “And, when you move to 40 channels and the ability to do groups, that was a game-changer for us.”
(Jim Evans)
