The modern worship space at Rocklin presented some special challenges—being deep, with a particularly wide seating area. In addition, a balcony area presented a large, flat face that needed to be avoided. The team knew that even coverage for the wide room would make component choices critical. To achieve the best possible result, the team used Nexo’s free NS1 design software to configure and simulate a system design that would optimize the audio performance and ensure uniform SPL coverage.
Worshippers worldwide know of Christian music artists Lincoln Brewster and Thrive Worship. Those who are lucky enough to attend services at one of five Bayside Church campuses in the Sacramento, Calif., area can share powerful worship experiences with them when they are not out on tour. With such renowned and experienced musical artists performing regularly, it’s no surprise that a main ingredient, critical to the highly acclaimed contemporary services at each of the Bayside Church campuses, is great audio. Brewster, now one of the senior pastors at Bayside Church and an accomplished audio engineer in his own right, plays a large part in guiding the church’s exemplary production values.Brewster has set a high standard for audio, but also for good stewardship. So, when Bayside took over the day-to-day operations last year at a potential new campus in Rocklin, Calif., Jake Cody, Bayside’s production director, had hoped that the existing sound system in the 3,000-seat modern worship center there would be sufficient.
“We could have spent three times the cost on a different system, but the value that the Nexo system presents is unique.” - Jake Cody, Production Director, Bayside Church, Sacramento, CA
“To be good stewards,” he says, “we looked to see what we could do with what was already installed at Rocklin. What we found was an older audio system with limited coverage that was designed more for spoken word and musical theater. It just wasn’t up to standards for modern worship.” Even the best efforts of the experienced audio team couldn’t get the sound needed by the worship team. As a result, additional equipment had to be rented to reinforce sound. After renting for several months, it became clear that a more permanent solution was needed, especially if the church were to become a Bayside campus. Unfortunately, the church was not in a good financial position to make any major investments. This put Cody and his team in the position of not only having to design a concert-quality sound system for the space, but also finding a way to finance it.
Church Audio in the DNA
Cody is particularly qualified to find practical solutions to church production issues having grown up in a family that knew both about worship and technology. “I learned a lot from my mother,” he recalls, “who used to lead worship and ran her own sound.”
From helping her to set up worship, Cody discovered more production needs in middle school ministry where he helped with AV equipment before moving on to band experiences in high school. It wasn’t long before he developed a reputation as a sound man from setting up sound for his bands playing local clubs. “It all sort of blossomed from there,” he recalls, “when I was hired at the church where the audio director was coincidentally also a woman.” Cody appreciates the irony of being trained mostly by women in what was, certainly at the time, a male-dominated industry. With his audio training and heart in church, Cody soon developed a reputation doing sound and mixing for a production company. “I was mixing everything from yoyo competitions to concerts to audio for stadium events,” he said. When Cody was hired to mix monitors for a worship conference he met Yamaha sound engineers who recognized his abilities as an engineer and knowledge of the church market. They brought him on as Yamaha’s house of worship marketing manager, a position Cody would hold for nine years.
“I’m very proud of that work,” he says. “We did a lot of training and problem solving for churches. We didn’t care if they were going to buy or not, but the experience did get many to consider Yamaha equipment. That was the point.” Cody designed audio training on church specific scenarios, such as moving from analog to digital, how to mic, and setting best practices. Ten years ago, he brought his experience with audio technology and industry leadership to Bayside Church.
Collaborating on System Design
To design the best and most cost-effective system for the Rocklin location, Cody called on Aaron Padilla, Bayside’s senior audio director and Lee Fields, FOH engineer for Bayside’s main campus, and Brewster. Like Cody, Padilla and Fields bring years of touring experience with major acts and have worked extensively with gear from many top-of-the-line audio providers. Their experience with Yamaha systems, both on the road and at other Bayside campuses, made Nexo a clear favorite for this installation. According to Cody, in addition to great sound quality that aligns well with Bayside’s worship style and proven durability, Nexo components provide a strong economic advantage.
“We just don’t feel that exotic gear is necessary when, so often, the same thing can be accomplished for a half or even a third of the cost.” - Jake Cody, Production Director, Bayside Church, Sacramento, CA
“We could have spent three times the cost on a different system,” says Cody, “but the value that the Nexo system presents is unique.” He is quick to point out that the decision to go with a Nexo system was not based solely on his long relationship with Yamaha, but Bayside’s. “They were Yamaha customers long before my arrival,” he says.The modern worship space at Rocklin presented some special challenges—being deep, with a particularly wide seating area. In addition, a balcony area presented a large, flat face that needed to be avoided. The team knew that even coverage for the wide room would make component choices critical. To achieve the best possible result, the team used Nexo’s free NS1 design software to configure and simulate a system design that would optimize the audio performance and ensure uniform SPL coverage. Even though the Bayside audio team was well along with a system design and confident of the improvements it would make, there was still the issue of how to pay for it. To brainstorm on possible solutions Fields reached out to Amplio Systems of Chicago. to partner with Bayside on the project. Amplio co-founders, Jeff Vandergiessen and Nate Krause, have known Fields for close to a decade and worked on other successful projects for Bayside Church. “More than once,” recalls Vandergiessen, “it looked like this project was not going to get done because of the financing.” Though primarily a design-build church integrator, to help solve the financing problem, Amplio agreed to structure a rent-to-own arrangement for the new audio system. The church would pay roughly the same as they were currently paying to rent, but have much better sound. With agreeable terms and a very small buyout payment at the end, the church would eventually own the system.
“We do many different types of projects,” says Vandergiessen. “With each church presenting their own special challenges, solutions aren’t always obvious. We sat with the audio team and worked through several scenarios, settling on this one—certainly the most ‘creative.’ Our previous work with Bayside gave us confidence that this arrangement presented a good investment for us and a good solution for the church.” With financing in place and tentative system designs in hand, Fields and Padilla visited the Nexo facility in Plailly, France, to share thoughts about the system design and set up variations of the proposed system at the company’s outside venue. While the outside venue could not present the same room dynamics at the campus, Fields and Padilla were pleased with the trial. “We found the design to present the warm sound that we expected with punch from the top, clean and clear,” recalls Padilla who expected the system to require very little tweaking to get a good sound good. “We expected this Nexo configuration to behave like our other system designs,” he notes, “with very minimal EQ needed for high-end and no major tuning requirements.”
Touring-style Installation
Krause and the audio team reviewed and tweaked the designs to tailor coverage to the room, produced a final parts list, and ordered equipment to be delivered on site. Over a three-day period, Krause and an Amplio technician unpacked and technically inspected each speaker to check for proper operation and polarity before he and the audio team assembled and rigged the arrays.For consistency with other Bayside campuses and for easy reconfiguration, the audio design at the Rocklin location would be set up touring style. Rather than a permanent install, where feasible, components were installed in road cases on wheels with snakes used for connectivity. Suspended audio components would be rigged with hoists. “This allows set up us to reconfigure quickly for special events,” says Padilla. “
"We can accommodate special set-ups for holiday services and events in the round the same way as we do at other campuses, and at a moment’s notice.” - Jake Cody, Production Director, Bayside Church, Sacramento, CA
For example, we can accommodate special set-ups for holiday services and events in the round the same way as we do at other campuses, and at a moment’s notice.” Cody recognizes that the tour-ready systems come at a premium, but the benefits of the touring hardware, he says, are well worth the modest increase in cost. The unique design for a stereo system at Rocklin called for two arrays each consisting of 14 Nexo STM M28 omni-purpose modules that provide 90 degrees to 120 degrees of horizontal dispersion and a 0-15-degree splaying angle between modules. Each module pairs two eight-inch high-excursion drivers for low frequencies with two 2.5-inch voice coil, 1.4-inch throat high-frequency drivers. In addition, nine Nexo STM B112 bass cabinets were added to each side. The B112 is a hybrid horn-loaded design that features a high-excursion 3000W 12-inch bass driver with a four-inch voice coil. According to Padilla, the team ruled out the use of both an S12 system, because it would not have provided sufficient coverage for the space, and the larger M46 system due to its size and expense. The ultimate design realized both cost savings and efficiency, using M28 modules aligned alongside B112 bass cabinets. “It’s an unusual configuration,” noted Padilla, “that we looked to Yamaha to approve for our installation. To our knowledge, Rocklin is the only place that this has been done.”
To further bolster the low frequencies, eight Nexo RS18 subwoofers were installed along the front of the stage. Each cabinet houses two 18-inch long-excursion neodymium drivers that extend system response down to 30Hz. At either side of the wide room, three Nexo Geo S12 two-box systems provide sufficient side fill. Each S12 system is comprised of an S1210 module (with shallow tapering to the cabinet rear) and an S1230 module (with steeper tapering, allowing for larger array angles). Six Nexo PS10s, each with a 10-inch low-frequency and one-inch high-frequency driver and a rotatable asymmetrical horn, were carefully placed as front fill speakers.
The team made the obvious choice of Yamaha’s Nexo 4x4 power amps to power the system, employing a total of 15. The industry-recognized Meyer Galileo Galaxy processor was used for matrixing, zoning and overall equalization of the system. For quality sound, consistency with other Bayside campus locations, and to minimize training needs, Yamaha CL5s mixing consoles were installed at monitor and FOH positions. Each console provides a mixing capacity of 72 mono and eight stereo channels along with the flexibility of 24 mix buses and eight matrices. For access to inputs, two Rio 3224-D were initially installed at FOH and then moved to stage area utilizing a fiber connection on a redundant system of four Cisco SG300 managed switches. Two IP switches are located at the RIO racks and two at FOH.On stage, Bayside uses Shure microphones with a typical drum set-up employing Shure Beta 52, Beta 57, Beta 98, Beta 27 and KSM137 models. For vocal performances, Shure ULX-D KSM9 handheld condenser vocal microphones are used and speakers are issued Shure ULX-D SM86 cardioid condenser vocal microphones.
Good Stewardship Challenge
For Rocklin, Cody knew they needed to provide a system that would be able to deliver on the high expectations for powerful Bayside services. “At the same time,” he says, “we felt like we had to choose the right system when viewed through the filter of fiscal responsibility.” To meet the technical challenge, the team designed a great sounding, affordable system pairing Nexo components. Orchestrating a partnership with Amplio, an innovative integrator, made the great system a financially possibility for the church. “The completed Nexo system sounds ridiculously good,” says Cody. “There is clarity in the high end and, at the same time, the presence in the low mids is unreal.”
He says that he loves mixing on the new rig. But more importantly, his executive team and worship/production teams unanimously feel great about it. “For leadership to feel great about the cost of the system and for our team to genuinely be excited to work on it each week is a huge accomplishment. When it doesn’t feel like anyone had to compromise, that is the sweet spot that we want to be in.”As part of Bayside Church’s larger vision, Cody believes that quality equipment should be accessible to all churches, and that churches should be able to live comfortably with the investments they make for audio. He advises all churches to take a second look at what they plan to spend on audio and determine if that level of investment is prudent. “It’s our pride,” he says. “We want to ‘milk’’ our gear for all it’s worth, and red flags start going up when I see churches buying top-of-the-line equipment. We just don’t feel that exotic gear is necessary when, so often, the same thing can be accomplished for a half or even a third of the cost.
That’s just not good stewardship.” Cody readily admits that the team at Bayside has taken overspending on audio as a personal challenge and invites churches who are thinking about spending a lot of money for an exotic audio system to come to Bayside Church and compare. “The point isn’t for us to prove that we are right or that others are wrong on a particular piece of gear,” he says. “Anyone who comes will hear our PA, as well as the systems we’ve put together. The PA is great, but it’s the systems we’ve put in place before and after the PA that get us there. Put good supporting systems in place and the right process on stage, and you won’t need the most exotic PA in the world to get great sound.”
