At Brentwood Baptist Church, Brentwood, Tenn., instrument and vocal signals are intuitively placed using KLANG:app’s 3D orbit view.
So, What is Klang?
Us older techs will remember the days of stage wedges for stage monitoring. Perhaps a few of us are still using wedges on our stages, especially in smaller rooms without a large band. At Lifemission, we keep two wedge monitors on stage to help our presenters combat echo from the back wall of our main sanctuary. But in the last decade, the vast majority of production teams have switched to in-ear monitoring (IEM) systems as their price points have dropped significantly or second-hand systems have come available. Most of us are familiar with Behringer’s P-16 system or any one of the numerous Aviom iterations on various stages around the country. And they’re really good—those systems affordably clean up the stage noise and feedback issues faced by audio engineers while delivering clean stereo mixes with roughly twelve to sixteen channels of control for instrumentalists and vocals.
However, a few of us have heard a newer name lately: Klang. And Klang offers an ambitious approach to in-ear monitoring with three-dimensional immersive audio.
What is three-dimensional immersive audio? Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Many are familiar with stereo panning—you pick a left-to-right spot in your monitors for a particular instrument or vocalist, and that’s it. But Klang decided that you should be able to put any instrument or vocalist anywhere “around” you, and through some audio black magic, made that a possibility, allowing users to arrange every part of their mix in sonic 3D space around their head.
This video offers a great example of how that actually functions in real time:
Advantages for Teams
The simple truth is that musicians perform at their best when they can clearly hear themselves and others. The most notable advantage of Klang is it delivers an exceptionally clear mix. Even with the best stereo monitoring systems, the mix can get muddy because simple panning doesn’t allow for isolation of each part of the worship team. Yes, you can clean that up with some EQ adjustments, but EQ adjustments on most personal IEM mixers don’t quite cut it.
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First Baptist Church Woodstock, Woodstock, GA: Stage Manager Lantz Cleveland helps one of the worship team vocalists dial in her IEM mix on an iPad running KLANG:app.
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First Baptist Church Woodstock, Woodstock, GA: KLANG:app discreetly offers FBCW’s musicians and vocalists fast and intuitive control over their own IEM mixes.
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Brentwood Baptist Church, Brentwood, TN: Musicians easily adjust their IEM settings on tablet devices.
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Community Bible Church, San Antonio, TX: San Antonio’s Community Bible Church is one of the latest North American houses of worship to adopt KLANG’s immersive IEM mixing platform.
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Community Bible Church, San Antonio, TX: One of CBC’s vocalists is seen here adjusting their mix.
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Olive Baptist Church, Pensacola, FL: Olive Baptist’s KLANG:kontroller for the piano player.
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Chad Robertson 601-497-4801
Broadmoor Baptist Church, Madison, MS: The dozen KLANG:kontrollers onstage allow the church’s singers and musicians to quickly and easily custom tailor their own immersive IEM mixes.
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Chad Robertson 601-497-4801
Broadmoor Baptist Church, Madison, MS: Mike Haight, Broadmoor Executive Pastor of Creative Arts, at the church’s DiGiCo SD8 FOH console and external monitor running KLANG:app.
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Church Unlimited, Corpus Christi, TX: Walter Wilson, Church Unlimited’s Lead Production Director, accessing KLANG:konductor’s IEM monitor mixes via a touch screen running KLANG:app.
Klang takes it a step further, though. Klang’s personal mixers, called :kontrollers, can take any channel from your audio console and deliver it to your team members thanks to Dante connectivity. Team members can set their mix exactly as they want it, channel by channel, and even assign channels to groups for quick control of large parts of the mix.
However, the proprietary :kontroller is not necessarily needed. Users can also simply use the iOS or Android “:app” to control their mix, a very flexible offering for teams that may already have iPads designated for in-ear mixing.
The advantages don’t stop there, however. As you might have noticed in that video, any churches using Digico consoles will have deep integration of Klang at their fingertips, allowing engineers to control and edit in-ear mixes quickly and intuitively right from the console, no third control machine needed.
Blake Barrow, production director, Church of the Highlands' Alabaster campus.
I took a minute to ask a Church Production Magazine friend at Church of the Highlands (COTH) to ask about their team’s experience with Klang. Blake Barrow is the staff production director at COTH Alabaster campus.
“I really appreciate the wireless connectivity, like being able to control things through the [desktop] app,” Blake says. Their campus uses the Klang:kontroller for their team interfaces as opposed to tablet app, and Blake can easily troubleshoot individual team mixes wirelessly from his laptop during rehearsals.
Klang’s mixing logic also provides a lot of flexibility for his team. “So you've got group control and then individual channel control. I can control the whole band in the group section, or as I go through the list, I can pick out individual instruments that go into the band group and turn those up and down specifically. It's all laid out. It feels like a mini console,” Blake says.
The learning curve and transition from their previous in-ear system for his team was relatively easy, as well. “I've talked to some people that have really enjoyed being able to place different instruments in there, you know, in kind of that 360 space. So that's even helped bring clarity to people's mixes, being able to, not just pan things, but have a little more spatial control over individual instruments,” Blake adds.
Integration
Obviously, if your facility uses Digico consoles, you’re at an advantage thanks to Klang’s deep integration with Digico. They are actually sister companies. But even without Digico integration, Klang’s Dante / MADI connectivity makes integration a breeze for most current audio systems.
The system comes in two parts, essentially—a Klang processor and control devices, which can be Klang’s proprietary :kontrollers (which have their own Dante connections and audio outputs) or Klang’s :app for iOS an Android which controls aux monitor mixes.
There’s not much more to it. Just save the configuration of the processor and user controls. That simplicity is another big advantage for church sound teams looking to take their in-ear mixing to the next level.
I’ll be up front here—for some churches Klang may be considered a long-term investment. The top-of-the-line Klang server, the Klang:konductor, which offers 16 mixes and 128 inputs, comes in just a touch over $10,000. You can opt for the smaller server, the Klang:vokal, which rings in at $4,200, but the :vokal is topped out at 12 monitor mixes and 24 inputs. Each Klang:kontroller hardware mixer costs a touch over $1,200, but the :app which runs on Windows, Android or iOS mobile devices is free and offers the same functionality and control as the :kontroller, just without the tactile features
The simple truth is that it’s very easy for a maxed-out system to run well in excess of $20,000, but a more modest system with the smaller Klank:vokal processor and the mobile-device controllers will get you started for significantly less. For smaller budgets and teams, it’s still premium piece of gear, but for larger churches that want to provide its musicians with top-notch, intuitive, and easy in-ear mixing, Klang is an enticing option.
For more information on immersive mixing, check out this video, and visit klang.com.
