Northern Beaches Christian School (NBCS) in Sydney, Australia recently completed an AV upgrade of its key performance and worship spaces tjat’s anchored by dual Allen & Heath dLive digital mix systems.
The school’s Marina Pryor Centre for the Performing Arts (MPC) and CITY indoor / outdoor meeting space each have a capacity of 800 and host an ever-changing program of student assemblies, worship services, musicals, concerts and celebrations.
Alan Schutz, the school’s general manager, explains the decision to update: “The MPC systems were designed in 2009 and the CITY systems in 2012. Technology has forged ahead and some of our needs have changed since that time. The age of some components was apparent in the difficulty of operation. There were major differences between the MPC and CITY infrastructure and gear and the complex systems required significant manoeuvring and setup times.
“For NBCS, what is unchanged is the usage for diverse live music, playback and speech,” Schutz continues. “We required a long-term cost-effective solution that continues to be inspiring and ultra-flexible. Given students are users of the systems, all components have to be super user-friendly.”
NBCS worked with production and installation company Production by Design (PxD) to help specify an AV solution that met all its requirements. PxD project manager Chad Keating recommended the dLive system, installing DM32 MixRacks in both venues, fitted with Dante cards for integration with a Dante network carrying audio and video throughout the school. Everyday activities such as assemblies can be managed from iPads running the dLive MixPad app or via GPIO connection to a Q-SYS system, which was chosen as the end user interface for basic room control across campus.
For more complex events, NBCS invested in dLive S5000 and C1500 surfaces that can be deployed in either venue, or used together to manage the largest shows, sharing the same DM32 over Allen & Heath’s gigaACE protocol. The system’s flexibility is further enhanced with DX168 portable IO expanders and a ME personal mixing system comprising a ME-U hub and six ME-500 personal mixers, all of which live in portable racks, is also ready to serve where needed.
“Moving to dLive has given NBCS the flexibility it needed and has cut setup time for an end of year event from a day and a half for an eight-person student crew to just two hours for a single staff member,” Keating concludes. “The enhanced audio quality is immediately noticeable too – even for basic assemblies, and dLive’s user-friendly interface allows the students to achieve outstanding results with the system.”
