To achieve this, the church needed to undertake a major upgrade of its audio system, which has seen a pair of DiGiCo CSD5 consoles installed, one at front of house, the other in its integrated studio facilities.
"We had been using a 36 channel analogue console since 1992, but had issues with not having enough channels and were looking for a long-term solution, one which would be enough to take us through the next ten years," says Levenstroom music pastor Andre Zijlstra.
"At first we hadn't really thought about going digital, we were just thinking of expanding the existing system," adds the church's main sound engineer and system tech Rob Gips.
"We tried to stay below 48 channels at first, but whichever way we looked at it, we ended up with wanting more than 48 because we have such a wide variety of praise nights. We often work with a choir or an extended brass section and re-miking and re-patching was causing so many headaches.
"We inevitably started thinking about digital and so made a list of the number of channels we would need. The count got ever-higher and we realised fairly quickly that the CSD5 was the ideal solution."
The church already had a relationship with Utrecht-based TM Audio, DiGiCo's Dutch distributor, so it was a seamless process to discuss their requirements with the company's Jaap Pronk.
Installed by Jonathan van Klaveren of JVK Sound Control, TM Audio supplied the two CSD5s, plus two MADI stage racks, two local racks, an RME MADI bridge, two RME MADI PCI cards, an Apogee Big Ben master AV clock and a comprehensive Aviom personal monitoring system.
(Jim Evans)
