Back in 2017, New Life United Pentecostal Church of Austin — a.k.a., “New Life Austin” — became one of the first houses of worship in the country to implement a pair of KLANG:fabrik immersive in-ear monitor mixing processors and has now upgraded with the installation of a new KLANG:konductor to replace their predecessors.
In adopting the KLANG platform seven years ago, the church wanted to improve the performance experience for the eight to 10 musicians and vocalists on its stage every Sunday and give each worship team member full control over their personal monitor mix while also improving its sonic quality.
The installation, part of a package purchased through Heart Of Texas Music, also includes a new DiGiCo Quantum225 console at front of house. The KLANG-DiGiCo combination has been implemented as New Life Austin’s music production has continued to grow — just the number of vocalists onstage now would have outnumbered the entire worship team seven years ago.
“We have nine or 10 vocalists during services now, along with bass, drums, a couple of guitars, keys, percussion, sax, and so on,” says TJ Feronti, New Life Austin’s tech director and FOH engineer. His channel count now exceeds 70, which was straining the capacity of the previous pair of 56-input KLANG:fabrik systems.
“The :fabrik is a great IEM processor, but we were having to send groups from one into the other to accommodate everything we needed,” he explains. “And we had been maxed out on the DiGiCo SD9 console we had been using for front of house and to route the monitors. Now, we have up to 128 channels and 16 separate mixes available, going over MADI through the Quantum225. It’s all so much easier to manage.”
Feronti says the church’s musicians and singers have taken to the KLANG’s immersive mode, with most of them choosing to use it. “They’ve been very impressed, whether they’re new to the professional aspect of this or have been doing it since they were using wedge floor monitors or just stereo IEMs. They love being able to move things around spatially in their mixes on their iPads and have them reflect what they’re experiencing onstage.”
