| January 2006 | |
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DIGICO D5 - THE FLEXIBLE FRIEND FOR ABBA'S HOUSE |
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A three year, $14 million project in Hixson, Tennessee has recently culminated with the opening of a new worship building at Abba's House, a Southern Baptist church in the town of Hixson. And right at the heart of it is a DiGiCo D5 console. Featuring a 3,750 seat auditorium, childcare facilities, classrooms, offices, bookstore and a café, the building also includes state of the art audio, high-definition video broadcast and recording facilities. As well as a centre of worship, the building has been designed to function as a community auditorium, lecture hall, concert venue and conference facility. So the technical specification had to be extremely flexible. “The church services are enormously varied,” says Abba’s House sound supervisor Scott Austin. “One week we may have a full symphonic orchestra and 250-voice choir performing Handel’s Messiah, while that same evening we could feature just a 6-piece band and small praise team. “The worship ministry at our church is very strong and spans all age groups, so music style naturally varies from service to service and often from song to song. One never knows what’s coming next!” To ensure maximum flexibility, Austin Sound Design of Auburn, Georgia, working hand-in-hand with DB Technologies, installed an SLS line array system with mixing on a DiGiCo D5. “The D5 was the obvious choice to meet the myriad of situations we will face,” says Scott. “The availability of 96 channels in a less than 60 inch footprint is the first of many wonderful features. We are also very excited about the save and recall functions, which allow us to offer a ‘zeroed-out’ console to a guest artist and then with a single touch, restore all of the original settings for our weekly use - wow! “At least once a year we present a very technically involved program of some sort,” he continues. “The ability to pre-program the console and then just ‘fire off’ the scenes as they take place is a wonderful tool.” With flexibility being the key requirement, Scott’s job at FOH could get very complicated. However, the D5’s onboard processing means that almost everything is immediately to hand. “It greatly simplifies the whole mixing situation. Everything you need is at your fingertips - except perhaps for a ‘play’ button for the CD player,” he says. “But I also love the fact that I still have the ability to insert any piece of outboard gear I may want to.” The church is already using 87 of the D5’s 96 channels, with a wide variety of input sources including vocal and instrument microphones, electric instruments, CD, video and computer playback sources. With so many channels already in use, the potential for expansion was another key factor. This is something that the church is soon to put into action, aided by the seamless integration possible with the D5. “For us, the final selling point of the D5 was the ability to link multiple consoles together with the DiGiRack unit, while maintaining individual control at each desk,” adds Scott. “Plans for the very near future include the addition of a Soundtracs DS-00 recording desk. The ability to ‘plug and play’ with the existing system will be a huge advantage. “We have also purchased an ADK 112- channel, direct to disk recording system which connects via MADI direct to the D5 A/D converter. This will allow us to come in on Monday morning and completely remix the Sunday services for broadcast. In addition, we enjoy the ability to place a stereo channel anywhere we may want one. A direct connect card for our Aviom monitoring system will be another very nice feature.” In the short term, the Abba’s House team have had to learn a new console with more features and capabilities than they had previously come across, but in the medium to long term, Scott Austin is unequivocal about the huge benefits that the D5 has brought them. “There is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to setting up the console. Configuring outputs, inputs, routing effects and processors can be a bit daunting at first, but the support provided by DiGiCo’s Al Nichols was instrumental in getting us up and running so quickly,” he says. “But once everything is in place, it is a dream to mix on. It’s a digital console and must be thought of in that way. But it also provides all the knobs and buttons that anyone would need to effectively do his job mixing on the fly. I love it!” Press Contacts:
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