Volunteer audio engineer Jay Hardy at First Baptist’s new SD10 console
USA - Approaching the centennial of its current building, the First Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi has been an institution in the area since it was built in 1926. Facing the lawn of the Mississippi State Capitol in downtown Jackson, the church’s sanctuary seats 3,000 worshippers and streams and broadcasts its services online to thousands of viewers any given week in 60 to 80 countries.
The sound in First Baptist’ sanctuary has been served for several years now by a DiGiCo SD5 console and its two SD-Racks for front of house. Recently, it was joined by a new DiGiCo SD10 console as the church’s primary broadcast console for streaming the audio for services and other events, along with a DiGiCo Orange Box multi-format converter equipped with a DMI (DiGiCo Multichannel Interface) card for Dante connectivity.
Both consoles, which were installed and integrated by Strata AVL of Atlanta, and which had Waves servers and CORE 2 software added in August, are connected via an Optocore fibre network, which now allows those streamcasts to seamlessly exchange audio elements, greatly enhancing the productions.
“We had such a great experience with the SD5 console that when it came time to replace our aging existing broadcast console, DiGiCo was the obvious choice,” states First Baptist Church minister of media and communications Michael Bowen. “The SD10 has all the features that we want, including easy and reliable integration with an Optocore network, so we could have all of our audio consoles on a single network. Plus, DiGiCo has given us great service for years with the SD5, and we’re looking forward to more of that with the SD10.”
Bowen says the SD10 will give the church’s media ministry a much greater array of options for handling its often-massive music productions, which on Sundays include a 50-piece orchestra and 150-voice choir. “We broadcast the Sunday service, so it’s important that we have a console that can handle the rigors of that many inputs,” he explains.
(Jim Evans)

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