Spire AVL of Carlisle, Pa., has replaced an older digital mixer at the West Shore Church in Mechanicsburg , Pa., with an Allen & Heath dLive S7000 Surface. Spire AVL's Seth Shoemaker explains the upgrade. “The church's previous mixer had experienced technical difficulties and added nearly 25msec of latency in its processing,” he says. “We recommended the dLive because we knew it was a reliable mixer with very low latency and the drag-and-drop touch screens would simplify setups. We also provided 14 ME-1 Personal Monitor Mixers to give the church's musicians the ability to do their own in-ear monitor mix and we knew the dLive would integrate all of this very nicely.”
West Shore is an Evangelical Free Church with a 1500 seat worship center. The church's stage includes 112 audio inputs allowing the band or choir to be placed almost anywhere on the stage while maintaining short cable lengths. Additional inputs are located in a catwalk area for overhead mic'ing and ambient pickup. An Allen & Heath DM64 MixRack and three DX32 Expanders bring all of these inputs to the dLive S7000 surface, making it easy to patch the system digitally for worship services and other events. A Dante card in the DM64 feeds a digital multi-track recording system in another room.
Spire AVL set up dLive scenes that allow non-technical volunteers to mix simple services like weddings and funerals. The church's technical director sets up weekly worship services and special events with dLive scenes and layers and adds the dLive's DSP features such as its multi-band compressor.
Shoemaker says the church's reaction to the Allen & Heath updgrade was overwhelmingly positive. “Even people who would normally tell you, ‘I can't hear any difference,' came up and said it was ‘way better!'” Spire's Chris Gregory adds, “Two years ago, we installed a new loudspeaker system at West Shore. They had been running these brand new boxes ever since, but never truly saw them shine the way that they did with the dLive!”
