Innova-Son Large Scale Digital Console Meets Input, Preset Requirements At Shadow Mountain Church

Shadow Mountain Church in El Cajon, California, just outside of San Diego, has just added an Innova-Son Large Scale digital console to head the sound reinforcement system in its 2,500-seat sanctuary.

Church member Vance Breshears, who some in our audience might know as a leading system designer, worked with Shadow Mountain Church Campus Sound Director Tim Hunten on selection and installation of the new console. Founded in the 1930s, Shadow Mountain’s current 10-year-old sanctuary is currently undergoing renovation of its video, lighting, and sound system equipment.

The prior console was suffering from electronic problems and in addition, did not offer enough inputs to meet the growing audio needs of the church. The 120-channel Innova-Son Sensory provides ample inputs for the church's 150-voice choir, 30-piece orchestra, outboard effects processors, and numerous on-stage, off-stage, and ceiling-hung microphones. In addition, it's footprint is smaller than a comparably outfitted analog board, allowing it to fit comfortably inside the front-of-house mix position.

"While the Large Scale itself is new, Innova-Son has been producing live digital consoles for several years," observed Breshears. "It's proven, comparably cost-effective, and intuitive. Moreover, the Sensory's elegant interface simply looks less intimidating than the interface of a similarly sized analog console does.

In addition to its small size, huge number of inputs, and clean interface, Hunten cites the Sensory's instant recall of all parameters as reason enough for the digital switch."We have between eight and ten events during the week and multiple services on the weekend, all of which require different audio configurations. With the Innova-Son, I can save a 'scene' as, for example, a memorial service. By punching the memorial service cue the podium microphone comes up, the piano microphones come up, and the record chain activates. Further, the Innova-Son instantly configures all of the necessary levels, equalization, and dynamics processing. All I have to do is tweak the roughed-in settings, such as equalization for an individual speaker's voice, to match the specifics of a given event. Setting up for Sunday service after a week of disparate events is simple."

Both Hunten and Breshears agree that the Sensory imparts no "sonic signature" to the audio it passes and hence leaves their mixes transparent. The in-line processing on every channel includes gates, compressors, and five-band parametric equalizers, a vast improvement over their old analog console.