As “Phase 2” of a major audio upgrade, Crossroads Community Church of Vancouver, Washington, has added three Allen & Heath dLive systems to mix front of house, stage monitors, and broadcast. Remington Smith, Crossroads’ front of house sound engineer, says, “We found we couldn’t beat the sonic quality or the amount of I/O we were able to achieve with the dLive.”
Crossroads’ contemporary worship services feature a live band with three to six vocalists, recorded tracks, and an occasional string section. The church holds three services each Sunday in its 1800-seat sanctuary, in addition to hosting Christian music concerts and holiday events. Worship services are broadcast live on the church’s website [crossroadslive.tv] using a dLive C Class C3500 surface, DX32 expander and DM0 MixRack.
At front of house, Crossroads uses a dLive S Class S7000 surface with DM64 MixRack. Smith comments, “One of the beauties of the dLive is that it is so flexible. I’m able to create a work flow that makes sense.” He uses dLive layers to manage the church’s microphones, recorded tracks and other sources, and dLive scenes to set up a “starting place” for different songs. The S7000 includes a Waves card but Smith says, “For the most part, we are using the dLive’s internal effects which always maintain the same latency thanks to the XCVI Core.”
The church’s loudspeaker system is configured as an LCR-sub setup, but Smith runs the dLive in 5.1 mode. “That gives me control over divergence to my center speakers and the ability to really shape the stereo image within the house,” he says. He uses the 5.1’s LFE output for subs.
A C3500 surface with DM64 MixRack mixes monitors. “We do from 9 to 14 in-ear mixes for any given service and up to five wedge mixes for special events,” Smith says.
The monitor MixRack also serves as a matrix router for the entire system receiving local sources from the stage and audio sources from a second DX32 in the church’s video suite. Smith explains, “All of our signals come into the monitor DM64, and they’re routed to front of house and broadcast using Allen & Heath gigaACE cards, which are rock solid and redundant.”
Crossroads purchased their dLive system from Narrow Road Pro of Vancouver, WA. “We evaluated a lot of different mixers,” Smith says. “But I can’t say enough positive about the dLive. It is really a phenomenal desk. It has far surpassed my expectations.”
