Plano, TX (April 23, 2018)—Custer Road United Methodist Church of Plano, Texas didn’t just double-down on Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing desks when it updated its audio system recently. Instead the church purchased a trio of the consoles—one to handle front-of-house in its main sanctuary; one for its broadcast room; and one soon to be installed that will land in a new contemporary worship space.
Jim Carter, the church’s director of AV and IT, worked with volunteer Bill Kistler, a senior associate at WJHW Consulting in Dallas, on the design for the new worship space. “For that venue with its contemporary music, we wanted a digital board,” said Carter. After considering several options, the team chose the dLive platform and purchased their new mixers from Sound Productions of Irving, TX.
In the sanctuary, an S Class S7000 Surface with a C Class CDM64 MixRack handles FOH for the church’s large orchestra, several choirs and instrumental ensembles, youth and holiday programs and frequent outside events.
Meanwhile, a S5000 with a Dante expansion card mixes broadcast and recording, and acts as a hub for all wireless inputs. Custer Road operates its sanctuary CDM64 in multi-surface mode, allowing the broadcast surface to access the sanctuary’s MixRack through the church’s fiber network. This allows recording and broadcast of worship services and other events from either venue.
Another S5000 Surface with CDM32 MixRack will mix FOH for the church’s contemporary worship space, and eight Allen & Heath ME-1 personal mixers with an ME-U Hub will provide personal monitoring for musicians.
Carter set up a dLive show file for each of the church’s Holy Week services, and has high praise for the dLive’s built-in, advanced signal processing. “I’ll never need artificial reverb in the sanctuary because it’s purposely reverberant for our large pipe organ, choirs and orchestra,” he said. “But, dLive reverb and other effects can be used for our streaming broadcast. The dLive gates and compression have already made a world of difference.”
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