Located approximately 130 feet out from the stage at the rear center of the hall and under the lip of the balcony, the house mix position housed a Yamaha PM5D-RH digital mixing console.
This console served as the main mixer for the Saturday evening concerts and was alternately manned by DiBona, Tom Young, and John Grasso, who frequently assisted the mix engineers that traveled with the performing artists. While channel counts varied from act to act, DiBona reports that 40 channels was an average channel count for these concerts.
For Sunday services, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association’s own sound crew consisting of Fred Truntz and Fred Steelman manned the Front of House position. Once the Yamaha PM5D-RH was pulled, the church’s crew replaced it with a 24-channel Soundcraft Delta analog mixer.
“The guys at ACIR did a great job with the entire sound system,” said Truntz. “By setting up all the system EQ and delay with the Yamaha DME24N, all we had to do was patch the master outs from our board into the processor and we were ready to go. The sound quality was excellent and consistent from week to week.
“The entire ACIR crew was a pleasure to work with, and Ed DiBona was very thoughtful and helpful throughout the entire season. For that first Sunday service, Ed was there to ensure that our console was correctly patched into the house sound system. We were very pleased with the entire outcome of this endeavor.”
Another Yamaha PM5D-RH console resided at monitor world, which was positioned adjacent to stage right. Similarly, DiBona and Grasso shared mixing chores. Like the house console, the monitor console was pulled each Saturday evening. This was accomplished using a regular direct split, with the snake and stage boxes remaining with the installation, making it easy to re-patch the console into the system each week.
ACIR provided a variety of microphones. Eight channels of new Sennheiser Evolution G3 series wireless systems were made available, while cabled mics were chosen from a variety of equipment manufacturers, including Heil Sound, Shure, Audio-Technica, and Sennheiser, as specified by the various artist riders.
The Best Compliment
With the summer season at the Great Auditorium now complete, all reports indicate that ACIR’s handling of the sound system was a huge success. Jonathan Quitt, Technical Director for the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, commented on the system’s performance. “This was the first year that ACIR Professional handled the sound reinforcement system for us,” Quitt said, “and I can honestly say everyone in our organization was very impressed.
“Sound quality was consistent throughout the hall – without any dropouts – and both speech intelligibility and music reproduction sounded very natural. Further, the entire ACIR staff was courteous and professional. As we move forward with subsequent seasons, I envision us working together for quite some time.”
R. Maxwell is a freelance technical audio writer.