Crossroads Church, a 121-year old congregation located in Corona, CA, recently upgraded its sound reinforcement system with the addition of 24 QSC Audio PowerLight 3 Series PL380 amplifiers and two Q-Sys I/O Frames, all controlled by a Q-Sys Core 500i Integrated Core.
The upgrade was designed to support the congregations’ highly energized and impassioned contemporary services that attract weekend attendances of nearly 8,000.
“Our contemporary services are always passionate and loud; we have rock bands, four or five singers, lots of keyboards, drums and electric guitars. We have musical productions, complete with aerial acts and acrobats; we like to get creative because we believe that church should be fun,” says Joe Sidoti, technical director at Crossroads Church. “When people comment on the volume, we always tell people that it is going to be loud in heaven, so we are helping to prepare them.
“We needed to have a system with more power and headroom,” he continues, “and I was looking for a processor that was powerful enough to meet those needs and fit within our budget. The Q-Sys Core 500i quickly became the only choice because of its power and its ability to grow with us. We added 24 PL380 amplifiers, and now I can go DataPort right to every amp. I can monitor heat and ohms load by pairing the PL380s – it still gives me the monitoring of the system status.”
Sidoti spent several weeks learning and understanding software downloaded from various manufacturers’ websites to determine the best solution for Crossroads Church. After watching Q-Sys videos at qsctraining.com and downloading the Q-Sys Designer software, he made his choice.
“We have services on Sunday and then again on Wednesday, so we only had two days in between to have any downtime,” he says. “I designed the entire system on my laptop using Q-Sys Designer before I even had the gear. When we received the QSC amps, I was up and running in a matter of minutes and was able to start tuning the system.”
The new system went live just before Thanksgiving, just in time for Crossroads to begin rehearsals for the annual Christmas show.
“One thing that is priceless is that I was able to program UCIs (User-Controlled Interfaces) right on my IPad – I was able to design meters and mute buttons and anything you can think of right on my device,” Sidoti concludes. “Now I can open up the Q-Sys app on my IPad and control the whole system right from there. I did not have to go with a very expensive way of wirelessly controlling the amps because QSC provides all the UCI’s. I am in love with it. It is cool technology. And it’s a free app.”
