Rhema Bible Church, founded in Randburg, South Africa in 1979 and now one of the largest church organizations in the Southern Hemisphere, recently upgraded the audio capabilities in its flagship venue with three Allen & Heath dLive mix systems, with assistance on the project provided by South Africa AV distributor Audiosure.
In May 2022, founder Pastor Ray McCauley handed the reigns of the organization over to his son Pastor Joshua McCauley and his wife Pastor Tara McCauley, and it is under this new leadership that the church decided on the audio upgrade.
“This is one of the largest churches in the world, so they needed an audio solution to match,” explains Audiosure digital mixer specialist Lesedi Maponya. “The church was already running front of house, monitors and broadcast systems, but having grown a sizable online congregation, they desperately needed a modern update to provide the best possible audio quality across all platforms. Additionally, the system needed to be easy to use for both technical and non-technical operators.”
Maponya and the team at Audiosure recommended the dLive platform for all three roles (FOH, monitors and broadcast) within the church’s audio infrastructure. “As soon as the church’s engineers road-tested a dLive, it was a no-brainer to go ahead and integrate it,” adds Maponya.
At FOH, a 28-fader dLive S5000 control surface is deployed alongside a DM64 MixRack for audio processing and analog I/O, and a Dante card is fitted for multitrack playback and recording. A second DM64 is utilized at the monitor position, partnered with a 24-fader C3500 surface, and for the broadcast system, another C3500 is employed with a DM0 providing the processing. In addition to the MixRacks, a DX012 audio expander providing switchable analog and AES outputs is installed.
Audio is passed between the three systems via dLive’s tie-line feature, allowing signals to be patched directly to digital outputs via installed gigaACE cards without consuming any of dLive’s 128 input processing channels or incurring additional latency. “The tie-line features on the console are one of the most useful, and powerful, features in the system,” notes Maponya.
For mixing, the engineers employ dLive’s integrated tools that include the suite of DEEP Processing compressors and preamp emulations, 16 RackExtra FX slots, plus dynamic processors. “With four bands of dynamic EQ and multiband compression, the Dyn8 is a game changer,” Maponya says. “It gets constant use, in fact, it’s now hard to think of a time where dynamic EQ was not an option!”
On the stage, an Allen & Heath ME personal mixing system gives the worship musicians control of their monitor mixes via 10 ME-1 personal mixers, all connected to the ME-U hub, which handles PoE and audio transport.
“The aim here was longevity and flexibility,” concludes Maponya. “The access to support and training for a church is important because everyone on the team should be able to operate the system. This is the beginning of a relationship that can grow from strength to strength.”
