After watching this video, you'll know everything you need to know about the Riedel Bolero and Artist intercom systems and the company's Director software and why they're great choices for churches.
Intercom systems tend to be pretty simple to understand—headsets are connected via cable or wireless to a central transmitter or matrix that is usually split into two channels, which can then be joined into a party line. But that simplicity means scaling into something more customizable, say if you’d like to keep everyone on a party line but have the option to talk to just one person on that line --- that’s where things can get complicated.
Enter Riedel. We spent some time recently with the broadcast team at Gateway Church, a multi-site church based in Southlake, Tex. to find out just how the Riedel intercom system functions in Gateway’s wide-ranging productions.
The Riedel systems at Gateway work in three parts. First, Riedel’s Director software serves as the main hub where weekend directors can essentially build out the whole structure, routing, and networking of their intercom system across all of their campuses. Director helps the team precisely connect the people who need to communicate during their services.
“Using the Director software, programming has just been incredibly easy, and setting up from setting up the antennas to pairing the actual belt pack with the actual system has been super easy and flawless,” says Lucas Milbrandt, the church’s Live Production Systems Engineer. “Riedel does an incredible job of setting you up to win with their manuals, and their setup is super easy. It's not complicated, and I know from the programming side of it, it's very easy. You can click drag and drop, you can save presets, and you can save profiles. A big thing that we have here is that we have different operators and different people moving from weekend to weekend, and so it is very easy to set those profiles up and to recall them.”
Second, the Riedel Artist card serves as a node that connects individual users to the Director hub. Lucas continues, “So locally at the main broadcast campus, we have the Artist 128 that has 16 bays. It's very customizable. You get to have eight ports per card, and we use those for the Riedel Bolero beltpacks, and for each com panel station. So locally, we're all tied in. We can talk individually back and forth, and we have dedicated party lines that we can talk back and forth in between.”
Riedel's Bolero and Artist intercom systems have earned Church Production's Road Tested certification. Learn More >
Lucas mentioned the last key to the system, the Bolero wireless packs. Lucas finishes up explaining the system, “The Bolero packs really help us when it comes to wireless cameras, so they're not dragging around the cable around the platform. And that is a huge upside for us having Bolero, is that the individuals who need to move around can move around freely and they're not dedicated to a certain position. They can move about the auditorium freely and still be reachable.”
Maybe the best part of the Riedel system? Ease of use. Brandon Marx, the Live Production Director of Video, explains “On our production teams, we have very young people as well as every age range of our operators, and the Bolero beltpacks have been really easy to use with the dials and the buttons. It makes it really simple for them to be able to talk again, point to point, or on a party line, as well as select the volume that they're wanting for each of those channels. One of the biggest benefits that the Bolero has provided is that you don't have to use a standard headset. You can use your own Bluetooth device. So it's one great opportunity if someone has Bluetooth earphones or a microphone that they prefer to use, they can always use that in conjunction with Bolero.”
Oh, and all their campuses are connected on this one intercom system. “So, each weekend we do what we call campus checks. All campuses are on a headset. We're testing video feeds, we're testing headset mics, we're testing MC mics, and it allows every campus to give real-time feedback on what they're hearing and what they're seeing so that we can maximize our quality across all the campuses,” says Josh Aulds, the Live Production Systems Director.
Complicated made simple, but there’s still more to Riedel and what they can offer churches. Head here for the full rundown of the Riedel System, and take a minute with Marcel Patillo and the Gateway team to learn the full capability of Riedel.
