High Kirk Presbyterian Church in Ballymena, Co. Antrim, Ireland, recently installed Allen & Heath GLD digital consoles as part of a major refurbishment project.
The Church purchased two GLD-112 desks – one for live sound and one for recording – plus, an AR2412 and two AR84 IO expanders.
The two desks were fitted with M-Dante network cards, providing simple to use multitrack recording capabilities.
The Church needed to satisfy a variety of operators with the choice of console. Some only use the desk one or two times a month, while others are professional sound engineers.
“During the demo, the more we looked at it, the more we realized how perfect the GLD was for our requirements – a single solution which totally eliminated our need for outboard equipment. Furthermore, all of our operators have their own preferred “layout” but with 28 faders and 4 layers, it turns out that everyone can have the desk arranged to suit their personal preferences.” says head of sound, Brian Adams
The capacity to easily reconfigure the desk could lead to confusion, so to avoid this, one of the early agreements the team reached was how they would use the channel LCD displays.
“When it came to our purchasing decision, the LCD displays were one of the most important features of the desk. With multiple operators, and the need for different fader layouts, the last thing we wanted was a dependence on rolls of camera tape and Sharpies. Not only do the channel names change as we switch layers but we use the colour coding to great effect.”
The technical team was impressed that only a single Cat5e cable was required in the route to the front of house position.
“During the refurbishment, we had to relocate to another part of the church for a few weeks – you can imagine how difficult this would have been with our old copper multis. With the GLD, we screwed a few hooks into the ceiling and ran in a couple of temporary Cat5e cables and were up and running within minutes.”
Apart from regular Sunday services, High Kirk is used as a venue for worship events, many of which are aimed at a young audience, and which are technically more challenging. In the past this often meant abandoning the “house” PA system and bringing in an alternative one. Much to the delight of the in-house tech team, that has become a thing of the past.
