Dr. Tony Evans understands the need to make the message clear. He’s the pastor of the 10,000-member Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship (OCBF) church in Dallas, Texas, which he founded with wife and ministry partner Dr. Lois Evans in 1976, as well as president of The Urban Alternative radio broadcast that can be heard over 1,000 outlets daily throughout the U.S. and in over 100 countries worldwide.
So when the OCBF needed more sound, video and lighting earlier this year, the church turned to Guitar Center Professional (GC Pro), the business-to-business (B2B) division of Guitar Center providing customized service for professional accounts, to both select and source the right components and to match the best systems integrators for the AVL and control systems.
The project was substantial, says Jeffery McDaniel, account manager based at the GC Pro location in Dallas.
“This is a large facility building, across from the church’s main campus, that houses their activities areas, such as their youth centers,” he says.
“They needed a lot of additional audio, including a lot of speakers and DSP processing, as well as new video displays and new lighting. But they also wanted to add more sophisticated control over the AVL systems, to enable a wider number of users to access and configure the systems as needed more easily. That called for a Crestron control system. Installing audio, video and lighting requires one set of specialized skills, and programming a complex control system requires a different set of skills. So we matched Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship with two different Affiliate Program member integrators for this project.”
Crown Audio Video was assigned to the Crestron programming tasks while Trinity Group International took on the job of installing new audio, video and lighting.
The latter aspect of the project included over a dozen ceiling-mount QSC speakers, including in-ceiling subwoofers, with QSC processing and amplification for the main activities hall; Community Sound all-weather speakers for outdoor use; an LG 47-inch LCD display and a Blackmagic Design HDMI SDI-to-HDMI conversion unit for one of the building’s youth centers and a Sennheiser wireless microphone system for a second youth center on another floor. Chauvet LED lighting components were also added to several areas. All of these were sourced through GC Pro.
“It was a pretty sizable project,” observes Walter Jones, media director at the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship.
“The main entrance area is huge at about 30 feet wide and about 300 feet long, and it serves as the main artery that leads to the other areas of the building. We wanted to have a zoned sound system in that area to support live events, background music and announcements. The video screen is now used as confidence monitor for those using our ProPresenter software. We also added LED lighting to the stage and some additional acoustical material in the second floor youth room. A major part of the project was the activation of our Crestron control system. Our first floor youth room is loaded with high-tech AVL systems. We really needed an easy way for our not technical staff and volunteers to be able to access and control those systems. I knew the programming would be intensive, but it had to be done right.”
And it was, thanks to GC Pro’s extensive inventory of technology products and its wide range of integration partners through the Affiliates Program, which allowed them to allocate the right resources and expertise to each aspect of the project.
“Anyone who needs to use any of the spaces can access the audio, video and lighting from the Crestron control panels on the wall,” says Jones. “Working with Jeff was great on this project, and the choices of Crown Audio Video and Trinity Group International met our installation needs. We had a vision of what we needed to achieve here, and Jeff and GC Pro had the resources to pull that all together and make it happen. It all worked out exactly the way it was supposed to.”