Cornerstone Church in Maumee, Ohio recently replaced its aging front of house console with a new Allen & Heath dLive digital mix system headed by an S5000 mix surface interfacing with compatible components in a project handled by local integration firm Tech Arts.
“They were already using dLive at monitors,” explains Tech Arts operations manager Christian Spurlock, “so the decision was made to change out their front of house console for a dLive S5000 since it was familiar to them.”
In fact, the church now employs three dLive consoles. At monitors, the church employs A compact DM0 Mixrack at monitors facilitates mixing entirely by the performers on stage via the Allen & Heath OneMix iPad monitor control application that’s available free, while FOH and broadcast each have an S5000 surface with a DM mix engine offering 128 channels.
All three systems are fed from a pair of DX32 modular stageboxes that are equipped with several PRIME input and output modules. The PRIME input modules provide high-quality preamps with very low noise joined by high-resolution 32-bit analog-to-digital converters. The audio is shared between the three systems using Allen & Heath’s proprietary gigaACE networked audio protocol.
“The PRIME preamps have been phenomenal,” notes the TechArts team. “It’s been a noticeable difference in quality, even for the majority of the congregation – many of whom are not necessarily ‘audio people.’ The users have also noted big improvements in functionality and workflow.”
PRIME modules are designed to deliver flat frequency response from 1 Hz all the way up to 40 kHz as well as a fast slew rate. Before PRIME input modules leave the factory, each unit has its individual preamps trimmed by hand to meet strict requirements for feedback path and common mode rejection.
Each of the three consoles are also equipped with its own Dante card, which are used for simplified playback from computers and for receiving audio from wireless microphone systems. The church also plans to add a 128-channel WAVES card in the future to make use of dLive’s Virtual Soundcheck function.
“Tech Arts has put together an amazing system for the folks at Cornerstone,” states Allen & Heath USA director of marketing Jeff Hawley. “We’ve had a number of absolute top-tier placements of PRIME out on world tours in some of the largest venues around. It is cool to get the feedback from Christian and the team that the members in the congregation are noticing and really enjoying this sort of high end audio and enhancing their worship experience.”
