January 2005
Live Sound International 59
the last row on the main floor to the
point where shadowing from the bal-
cony begins to occur. The DSP
allowed optimizing the focus of cov-
erage to the balcony level as well.
Prior to the installation, the loud-
speakers were painted a brown hue that
blends well with the sanctuary’s color
scheme. As a result, they’re quite unob-
trusive to the aesthetic of the room.
To add a boost on the low-end, a
single Mackie SWA1501 (15-inch-
loaded) powered subwoofer was
installed on the floor, at the rear of
extreme stage left. “We tailored the out-
put of the main loudspeakers to stop at
100 Hz, with the subwoofer then taking
things down lower, adding punch and
fullness when they want it,” Zandstra
says. (The subwoofer is fed source
material via an auxiliary bus on the new
Crest house console. More on this later.)
SMART AND SAVING
A QSC DSP30, located at the mix posi-
tion, provides processing and time/sig-
nal delay of the two EAW Commercial
SMS5 compact loudspeakers mounted
on the underside of the balcony. This
also provides a feed to four more EAW
CIS400 ceiling loudspeakers distributed
in the church lobby.
Some smart, and budget-saving,
planning went into the stage monitor-
ing approach. Four Mackie SRM450
powered loudspeakers can be quickly
removed to serve double duty as a
portable system for Haven’s youth
room, as well as for other events out-
side of the main sanctuary.
With the purchase of a couple of
Ultimate Support loudspeaker stands,
a Whirlwind 24-8 cable snake com-
bined with a portable Mackie SR24-4
mixer, the church now has a very use-
ful portable system. “When only two
monitors are needed, or if the sanctu-
ary is not in use, they have a portable
solution that’s easy to set up in a mat-
ter of minutes,” adds Zandstra.
Back to the new console, which
heads up the mix position at the front
of the balcony and does double-duty
for both house and monitors. The for-
mer 24-channel board was replaced
with a recently introduced Crest
HP840 40-channel console.
The console was so new, in fact,
that a couple of months were needed
to fulfill the order for a production
model, a factor that turned out to be a
blessing in disguise. The system oper-
ators were able to get used to the new
left-right configuration while operat-
ing on the much more familiar exist-
ing console, helping to lessen the
immediate learning curve.
In addition to 40 channels, the HP
Series desk provides 10 aux buses,
two matrix mixes, eight subgroups,
four mute groups and four bands of
equalization with two overlapping
bands of sweep for the mid-frequency
region. An intended purpose of the
HP Series was to hit an attractive
“price and features” point for applica-
tions like this one, and Zandstra notes
that the mark has been hit pretty
much dead-on.
With the additional routing and mix-
ing capability, the church decided to
invest in Shure PSM200 wired and wire-
less personal in-ear monitoring (IEM)
systems. The wired units receive feeds
from the new floor boxes that also
serve the powered monitors, with a
total of six discrete feeds available.
In most cases, musicians use the
wired IEM systems and/or monitors,
while the worship leader goes the wire-
less route both for IEM and microphone.
The new system was rounded out
with a new distribution amplifier and
compressor for recording to CD and
tailoring a feed for live broadcast via
the Internet, as well as a computer
hard disk recording system and a
“good old fashioned” cassette deck.
According to Timmer, this will be
the last of any significant additional
audio upgrades for the foreseeable
future. Next up, the sound team will be
looking for ways to expand facilities
for musicians, in addition to cutting the
stage levels they can produce.
Linda Seid Frembes
is a regular contributor to
Live
Sound
and can be reached at [email protected].
The new Crest HP Series console heading up
the balcony FOH position that meets func-
tionality needs at a nice price point.
