NEWS
Forefront brings the power of Quantum to Enjoy Church AUSTRALIA
The new DiGiCo Quantum 338 at Enjoy Church Forefront Productions has assisted the technical production team at long-term client Enjoy Church in Sunshine, Victoria, as it prepared for its Adore 2021 Women’s Conference. The HOW hosts the Adore Conference annually and Forefront has been onboard since its inception 13 years ago. Adore
2021 presented Forefront with an ideal opportunity to road test its newly acquired DiGiCo Quantum 338 and KLANG immersive in-ear mixing system. “It was great operating our new Quantum 338 on its inaugural outing,” said Nick Burns, Forefront’s managing director. “After what seemed like a year
of worldwide lockdown, it was such a joy to get behind the new console and put into practice a lot of my workflow revisions I had been conjuring. “Mustard processing opens up a whole new range of options and colour for the sonic palette, and we’ve had fantastic results with Nodal processing – it’s such a great feature to exploit – and the recently updated spice rack is sure to prove a favourite. The ergonomics and workflow of the 338 are also great; the new screens and scribble strips are responsive, clear and tactile.” The event also saw Forefront provide musicians with 3D monitoring thanks to KLANG’s immersive mixing system, providing performers with a 360° in-ear listening experience. “We’re very excited about the application of KLANG for many of our installation and church clients,” continued Burns, “firstly, for its great user control interface and secondly for its sonic impact. For many of our
installation and church clients who have challenges with the time to spend on pulling great in-ear mixes, the instant spatial impact of KLANG gives so much separation and clarity, instantly allowing musicians unprecedented mix quality. Not only that but mixes can be saved, even song by song.” Run via a KLANG DMI card inside a DiGiCo Orange Box, Forefront made use of the immersive mix technology through a DiGiCo SD9 console, which was set up as the event’s stage monitoring. “We’re already seeing a lot of positive feedback from our use of KLANG,” added Burns. “It was great hearing chatter from the musicians and singers backstage on how they could suddenly hear everything, but at the same time felt their own performances were cutting through the mix.” www.digico.biz www.klang.com
FUMC puts audio intelligibility first USA Constructed over 100 years ago, First United Methodist Church (FUMC) in Prattville, Alabama, has spent the last 12 months refurbishing and renovating its sanctuary. The works included restored systems that will better meet the needs of its 1,000-strong assembly and provide for a wider range of service presentations and performances. Key to the upgrade is an audio system that provides clarity during live performances and intelligibility for spoken word services. For designing and installing the new audio system, FUMC turned to AV and lighting supplier JM Anderson at Auburn AV. Previously, the church had used a variety of loudspeakers dating back to the 1970s that greatly varied in size and performance. In turn, the large speaker collection prevented the space from carrying a clean and uniform aesthetic in addition to poor quality sound performance for the congregation. “Acoustically, the sanctuary is very reverberant,” commented Anderson. “It has stained-glass windows, hard walls,
floors and sloped ceilings. Our main goal was to employ a digitally steerable sound system that could focus down
services offered by the Californian manufacturer. Possessing extensive experience of digitally steerable arrays,
on the congregation and away from the reflective surfaces. The Renkus-Heinz ICLive X system was a perfect fit for this project as it delivers excellent, controllable audio with great coverage from a small footprint.” The Auburn AV team took advantage of the Loudspeaker Recommendation
local representative Richard Hembree oversaw the initial design until it become a commissioned system. “In addition to the need to avoid reflective surfaces such as the large balcony face and tall plaster walls, this sanctuary has three distinct audience areas,” explained Hembree. “The
ICLive X system allows the reinforced sound to focus as needed to evenly cover the congregation with a high level of intelligibility and full-range audio in the high balcony, low under balcony and wide near-field area between the platform and the balcony.” Working with Hembree to finalise the specifications, Anderson and the Auburn AV team installed an L-R array, each consisting of one ICLive LX, one ICLive X and one ICLive XL module. The resulting 0.25m x 2.5m (WxH) array is capable of pattern control below 200Hz. Extending the LFs when required, a pair of Renkus-Heinz dual 12-inch PNX212 subwoofers are discreetly located under the platform behind a grille cloth. “We ended up with a high-intelligibility audio system with minimal interaction between the reinforced audio and the room,” finalised Anderson. “The room can remain live and rich for the organ and choir, yet at the same time have very high speech intelligibility.” www.renkus-heinz.com
4 WORSHIP AVL November–December 2021
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