Switching a few key technology platforms makes all the difference for this suburban Atlanta church
By Dan Daley
Every puzzle has a single keystone piece. The hard part is figuring out which one it is. That’s what Dennis Pope, the technical coordinator and FOH mixer for the Wildwood Baptist Church in Acworth, GA had to work out. The veteran live-sound mixer had been mixing Sunday services for five years at the 50-year-old church where their PA system consisting of a four-box central cluster had been in place for a decade. However, he found that the console that was installed at that time, wasn’t up to job of controlling the room’s reflection issues, particularly in the lower frequencies. The church had installed some acoustical treatments, most notably bass traps, but the issue persisted. “I’d pretty much exhausted what I could do with the EQ on the mixer and we’d brought some third-party outboard EQ in,” he recalls. “That helped some but it also adds noise and complexity to the system.”
But it also focused Pope on the console as a possible link in the signal chain that would benefit most from an upgrade. “Replacing the entire PA system was more than we could bargain for in terms of cost,” he says. “So we looked for a solution at the console.”
After comparing several new boards, Pope recommended a Soundcraft Vi1 console. He says the integrated onboard EQ had enough horsepower to overcome the midrange and low-frequency slapback the room had been experiencing. “Changing the console out was the logical step, really,” he says. “You compare the cost of upgrading the PA itself and there wasn’t
Comments
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.
