Shadow Mountain recently upgraded its 2,500 seat main worship centre with a new InnovaSON Sy80 digital mixing console, taking care of both FOH and monitor duties for a full band, a 35-piece orchestra, 160-voice choir, praise team and numerous soloist, groups, speakers and guests. The worship centre is the focus of the Shadow Mountain campus which with up to 40 events each week, has a worldwide potential audience of millions, broadcasting services and sermons to over a thousand TV and several thousand radio stations around the globe.
Technical director Timothy Hunten admits he has his hands full, but the Sy80 helps keep it together: "Each Sunday I'll use between 60 and 80 inputs in various combinations and all needing something different," he explains. "Our Sy80 is set up to go to the house, the five stage monitor sends, eight monitor sends, eight record sends, backstage overflow, choir sends and other locations. I have everything set up to run simultaneously and because you can stack outputs underneath each other, as I adjust the main fader there can be 8 to 12 outputs tracking that fader. I can set up a different mix to send up to record, a different one to the mix - anything I want to do. And most importantly it has a very short learning curve, which is important with so many visiting engineers."
In addition to the tremendous amount of inputs and all the time saving features of the Sy80, the small footprint was a major benefit due to limited space at the FOH position. According to Hunten, comparably featured analogue consoles needed twice the space, requiring major expansion and remodelling.
Christ United Methodist Church in Sugar Land, Texas, runs a wide range of services, events and productions - from preaching to choir singing to live bands, and has opted for an InnovaSON Compact Sy40 'All-in-One' digital console, supplemented by an InnovaSON Stage Box that allows for expanded I/O capabilities. The Sy40's ease of operation and straightforward scene recall reduces the amount of time church staff need to prepare and the console, installed in a balcony booth, is set up to handle both front-of-house and monitor positions. "With the ability to control each and every parameter as presets, it simplifies the job of the sound person and enables them to do a much better production job," says Doug Black, President of Core Systems. "Scenes can be stored to memory and the whole system can be configured very quickly by just hitting a recall button. For modern churches with multiple styles of services, like Christ United Methodist Church, this is where the Sy40 really shines."
(Lee Baldock)
