The process to outfit the venue with a complete audio/visual system took roughly three years from conception to completion, spearheaded by senior project engineer Andrew Prager of New Jersey's Diversified Systems with the aid of BYU-Idaho's audio engineer David Mann. Diversified's commitment encompassed the project's design and implementation, installation, and final testing and training of the in-house staff once the gear was in place.
As a representative of the venue and its principals, Mann's number one design criterion for the system was overall speech intelligibility. "As this is primarily a worship facility," he explained, "the spoken word is the reason the facility exists and was of utmost importance to everyone involved."
Armed with that missive, Prager identified the scope of the system and its components, which included a front end and monitor mixer, digital signal processing, amps, and speakers. As for the mixer specifically, it needed enough inputs/outputs to be shared between both the FOH and monitor mix consoles. Additionally, it needed to be digital and fiber-optic based. The sale comprised the two SD7s and six DiGiRacks - one dedicated to each console at FOH and monitor world, with four shared between the two.
Having a fibre optic-based system was also top priority with a majority of advantages - price notwithstanding - including latency and speed. "It's very cost effective to run fibre," stated Mann. "Obviously, the cost benefit of fibre is much more budget-friendly, but also the amount of information you can send via fibre optics is incredible.
"The things that come to my mind when we're talking about digital audio traveling as light instead of through copper is that it's faster in terms of latency," Prager continued. "It gives us a smaller cable pathway rather than big fat copper hoses running around the place, and there is a built-in immunity to grounding problems, which can be caused from different power ground and sources. We have a third party digital audio transport system running MADI over Opticore - a dual ring of fibre that goes between the mixer and the DiGiCo stage racks. It's a very robust, very redundant system and because it's a ring there's a connection of fibre and the signal can just come from one way or go the other. "
The consoles are being put through a rigorous pace since their installation, on events ranging from BYU-Idaho's on-going weekly Tuesday devotional service to a small number of musical and theatrical productions.
(Jim Evans)
