In today’s digital age, many houses of worship are moving towards rich multimedia presentations that are streamed, uploaded and broadcast worldwide.
The need for up-to-date systems to handle this new model of worship options often requires an investment in gear and technology. For the 2,300-seat Anchorage Baptist Temple (ABT) in Alaska, this was the very impetus to undertake a revamp of its overall audio set-up.
The original audio system had undergone a number of expansions and upgrades over the past two decades, all done with the help of So-California-based house of worship integrators Michael Garrison Associates (MGA). MGA provided the consultation, design, and installation services for the original system in 1992, as well as all subsequent upgrades over the years.
The MGA team specified DiGiCo for this latest upgrade—an SD7 surface with expander for FOH, an additional SD7 for its Broadcast Mix location, and an SD10 for Monitor Mix location.
The new system is a fully fiber optic system with a cohesive loop that all systems can access. It has five fully loaded DiGiCo SDRacks, and the monitor desk can be removed from the main system and used as a standalone portable system.
Planning started in October/November of 2012, with the final phase of the installation and crew training completed in early May 2013.
“The consoles that were replaced had been in service faithfully since 1994 but were exhibiting signs that end of life was near,” explains Bryan Dunfee, Tech Director and FOH engineer for ABT. “Also, the desire to further implement multi-media into the worship services was restricted by the amount of copper we had running between the auditorium and broadcast. ”
The DiGiCo SD7 at FOH was outfitted with the Waves SoundGrid bundle and the SDRack was loaded with analog and digital I/O to support local record and playback devices and wireless receivers located at FOH.
Onstage the additional SD rack supports the worship band and includes an Aviom card to accommodate monitor control for talent as ABT’s regular services do not require a monitor desk or engineer.
For the more demanding services, they have an SD10 for mixing monitors. The auditorium amp room has two SD racks loaded with analog and digital I/O.
In the broadcast room, they replaced another Midas XL200 with a DiGiCo SD7, Waves SoundGrid and an SDRack loaded with analog and digital I/O to support local record and playback devices as well as the HD-SDI card for merging audio and video into a final product for capture and distribution.
The new consoles have proven to be a huge blessing to Anchorage Baptist Temple, from the overall clarity of sound to ease of use.
“The improvements in the clarity and week-to-week consistency of our monitor mixes has given our teams a greater confidence,” sums ABT’s Worship Pastor Bill Leight. “I’ve received a number of compliments from members of our congregation who have noticed the improvements that have been made, which I attribute this to the tools now available to us in our new DiGiCo console.”
