Community Bible Church in San Antonio, one of the largest houses of worship in the region with seating 3,500 at each of its five weekend services, recently implemented a KLANG:konductor processor to provide immersive in-ear monitor mixes for the worship band’s seven vocalists and six musicians as well as their musical guests and worship leaders.
The new :konductor, purchased through pro audio retailer AVLX of Franklin, TN and integrated into the audio infrastructure earlier this year by the church’s sound team, has reinvigorated the band’s monitoring experience, says AJ Lebron, CBC director of audio and production coordinator for events.
“I’ve been running sound at the church for about 14 years now and I’ve come to know the band and have seen how much time and energy they’ve had to spend on getting their in-ear monitoring just right,” he explains. “I noticed that the mixes were becoming stale and they were regularly experiencing ear fatigue. They had stereo mixes, but they were sounding one-dimensional. They needed more space and dimensionality in their monitor mixing. I’d heard about the KLANG:konductor and checked out a demo at AVLX, and I loved it. I thought it was exactly what we needed.”
Lebron also ordered a DiGiCo DMI-MADI-B card that’s plugged into the :konductor’s rear panel to interface with the church’s existing Avid S6L-24C monitor desk. While that console will stay in place for services to provide additional functionality, such as muting and EQ for guest vocalists and pastors, the KLANG:konductor has taken on the primary monitor-mixing tasks. He says the :konductor’s design made it easier for the church’s sound team to do its own integration, and its routing — able to interface with MADI, Optocore, and Dante (a DiGiCo DMI-DANTE2 “Brooklyn” card is also on order) — means it fits well into the church’s existing infrastructure and can accommodate future expansions.
All of the musicians in the worship band are able to manage the mixes of their Sennheiser G4 IEMs at a granular level, dialing in the individual mixes they each want to hear, but also doing so using KLANG’s immersive mixing technology. That, says Lebron, offers them the sense of dimensionality that had been lacking onstage lately. “We did a two-hour training with them using their own iPads for control and you could see the difference the :konductor was making — they love it!” he says. “Guests onstage can still opt to use the system in stereo, so it’s familiar to anyone who wants to go ‘old-school,’ but that’s pretty rare. Easy to install, easy to use, and we got a great result. KLANG:konductor was the way to go.”
