Worship AVL July-August 2018

A/V LIGHTING SOUND REINFORCEMENT RECORDING STAGE SOUND BROADCAST

July–August 2018

A CLEARER MIX Streamlining operations at Riverview Church

FUTURE FOCUS

Streaming and more at Jesus House

LIGHTING DIRECTION

MIND THE GAP

Developing the skills you need

Upgrading Malaysia’s National Mosque

Singapore: MICA (P) 032/07/2017 PPS 1644/05/2013(022954)

Perfecting the Art of Live Sound Official Yamaha Pro Audio Instagram Account

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CONTENTS

Issue 53

July–August 2018

NEWS STREAMING AUBURN GRACE Spearheading streaming at AGCC in California

4

HILLSONG REACHES ASIA Chauvet lights up Hillsong Church Bali

6

HARMONY FOUND AT ROYAL HOLLOWAY K-array meets the chapel’s needs

8

ADDING A THUMP TO SERVICES Bolarum’s Holy Trinity adds a Mackie solution 8 TAKING REAL GUTS TO LIGHT TULSA CHURCH Adding punch with Elation

9

STEERING A COURSE OF HISTORY Córdoba church adds Renkus-Heinz

10

CONSISTENT CONTROL Allen & Heath’s double solution for Silverdale Baptist

10

LENZIE UNION FACES THE ELEMENTS HK Audio provides the sound in Scotland

12

ELEVATING THE GOOD SHEPHERD Yamaha handles the mix in Seongnam

12

TURKISH MOSQUES FIND A D:SCREET SOLUTION Necklace mics prove popular

14

FLEXIBILITY AND RELIABILITY @1330 DiGiCo ticks all the boxes in Melbourne 14 VYING FOR CONTROL IN WESTMINSTER Solving reverberation issues in London

16

CRU’S BIG VISION FOR WHITESTOWN Video networking in Indiana

18

POWER CONTROL IN GUATEMALA Casa de Dios opts for LynTec

18

PROJECTS A MODERN TRANSCENDENCE Graha Bethany Nginden upgrades its video system 20 PRUDENCE PAYS OFF Singapore’s Riverlife Church benefits from Rivage PM10 22 FUTURE FOCUS Jesus House looks to an IP-based future

24

MIND THE GAP An analytical approach to upgrading Malaysia’s National Mosque 26 REVOLVING DOORS Evolving AVL technology at Church of Our Saviour

28

UNDER CONTROL Updating audio at Alabama’s Cathedral Church of the Advent 30

LEADER As regular readers will know, every now and then we dedicate an entire issue of Worship AVL to one specific subject. I’m pleased to say that this is one of those occasions. Following the conversations we have had with houses of worship around the world, we decided that we needed to spend some time exploring streaming technology.

Streaming presents a tremendous opportunity for HOWs to reach a greater audience. With the ubiquity of platforms such as YouTube and Facebook Live, it has never been easier to present your message to more people from all over the world.

But this is not the only option the technology facilitates. It is possible to stream services from the main sanctuary to a satellite site, create an internet radio channel as well as stream live audio to a mobile phone for assistive listening or translation applications.

With the diversity of options presented, it is little wonder that some people can feel a little overwhelmed. To help with this, we have put together a string of features highlighting practical examples of houses of worship that benefit from streaming, as well as looking at the equipment you will need for every aspect of a production and what you should look to invest in.

Hopefully, this will all help to provide some clarity and get you on the right path to benefit from the opportunity that streaming presents.

Enjoy the magazine!

COVER: A CLEARER MIX FOR RIVERVIEW Streamlining operations in Australia 32

KNOWHOW DEVELOPING LIGHTING DIRECTION SKILLS John Black on the three main areas 34 STARTING A LIVE STREAMING MINISTRY Where to get started with streaming

38

James Ling Editor

DERIVING A SEPARATE STREAMING AUDIO MIX Gordon Moore explains all

40

Telephone: +44 (0)1892 676280

MAINTENANCE Map your wiring: system diagrams

42

TECHNOLOGY CATCHING THAT STREAM OF LIGHT How to light a set for streaming

44

Email: jling@worshipavl.com MEET THE TEAM

Richard Lawn:

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UNDERSTANDING STREAMING AUDIO The importance of audio in your stream 46 STREAMING DISTRIBUTION FORMATS How to tell your H.264 from your HEVC

50

BUYING GUIDE What equipment do you need for a live stream?

54

PRODUCTS Equipment launches and updates

56

THE TECH VIEW Trying something different at St Andrew’s Paddock Wood

70

IN THIS ISSUE 20

28

GENERAL MANAGER

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

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LICENCES Singapore: MICA (P) 032/07/2017 PPS 1644/05/2013(022954) All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the copyright owners.

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NEWS

Streaming Auburn Grace

USA: Auburn Grace Community Church (AGCC) in Auburn, California has become media-driven in its approach to engaging with its community. Video has become an integral part of the church’s operations, with live streaming playing a key role in 2018.

‘We live in a media-driven culture, making video essential for any house of worship,’ says Alan Koshiyama, AGCC media director. ‘Video is your first chance to make an impression on potential members and can improve your connection with existing members; it also allows you to share sermons and events with those who can’t attend, such as the elderly, ill or travelling members.’

Spearheading AGCC’s streaming efforts, Mr Koshiyama established

The Auburn Grace video production booth a live stream workflow using AJA’s Kona 4 8-lane PCIe 2.0 video and audio desktop I/O card and Io 4K mobile Thunderbolt I/O. ‘There’s growing demand for high-quality video during services and through social platforms, which is why we’re investing in gear like the Kona 4 and Io 4K,’ explains Mr Koshiyama. ‘It helps us bring more

relevant and visually compelling live content to members across different platforms.’

AGCC’s live streaming equipment can be found inside a video production booth. It is used for streaming content to the sanctuary’s in-house A/V setup and to YouTube for those watching from elsewhere. Sunday services

are captured in HD by a Sony DSLR and the feed is output via HDMI and converted to SDI by an AJA HA5-Plus mini-converter before being input to the Kona 4, which is installed on a PC. vMix live streaming software broadcasts a live stream to YouTube, where it is ultimately archived. When streaming remote events outside the church, a similar setup comprising the DSLR, a MacBook Pro, a Thunderbolt 2-equipped AJA Io 4K and vMix streaming software is employed.

‘We work with a lot of volunteers who have never touched this sort of equipment before, so the gear itself needs to be reliable, and easy enough to use that you don’t need an engineering degree to figure it out,’ says Mr Koshiyama. ‘The AJA kit is that for us, and inspires volunteers to get involved, because a lot of them want to get their hands on high-quality production equipment for the experience.

Kona 4 and Io 4K just work, so we never waste time troubleshooting and, if I’m ever in a bind, I know AJA’s support team will go above and beyond to help me out.

‘We’re a small church with a modest A/V budget,’ he concludes.

‘We may be working in HD now, but we’re just getting started, so it’s nice to know that we can grow with our AJA gear; it supports our current HD needs, but leaves room to easily make the switch to 4K in the future.’ www.aja.com www.auburngrace.com

Worship Technology Event announced UK: Exhibition organiser Marked Events is adding a new show to its calendar aimed at the worship/ church technology market. The inaugural edition of Worship Technology Event will be held on 6 and 7 November at the !Audacious Church in Manchester, England.

Worship Technology Event is a trade show aimed at the specifiers, installers and end users of sound and lighting technology for places of worship. Marked Events states that while the worship technology industry is well established in the US, it is growing quickly in the UK.

4 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

Therefore, this event is intended to provide a place for worship leaders and systems integrators to network and view products from a range of manufacturers and distributors.

Technology on show will include

sound and lighting products, video and live streaming, security and web solutions.

Marked Events has created the show along with GIG, an event for professional entertainers,

following the closure of its BPM Pro entertainment technology event. ‘As we all know, times have changed; the way we market, the routes to market and our sales channels have all gone through significant transformations over the last decade,’ comments Mark Walsh, Marked Events’ CEO. ‘Rather than trying to mould BPM Pro into something it’s not, I wanted to re-group and re-focus our offerings.’ www.audaciouschurch.com www.worshiptechnology.show

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NEWS

Hillsong reaches Asia INDONESIA: Hillsong Church started its life in Sydney, Australia and has spread throughout Europe and the Americas. One of the latest additions to the megachurch’s growing list of campuses is Bali, Hillsong’s first international site in Asia.

Hillsong Church Bali’s building is relatively simple in its structure, a low-key building along a treelined street. To ensure a warm and inviting atmosphere for its followers, the church sought immersive and colourful lighting, which it found in the form of a Chauvet Professional lighting rig installed by ASIIS.

‘The people from Hillsong first saw us at an exhibition,’ recalls Andy Mulya Sutikno, owner of ASIIS. ‘It was clear pretty quickly that we shared the church’s vision for the kind of environment they wanted to create.

Having the right lighting was a big part

Amhaze Whisper fog machine. The Ovation fixtures serve as key lighting for speakers and the musicians. ‘The colour temperature and nice even light field we get with the Ovations creates very natural skin tones,’ says Mr Sutikno. ‘They also help people show up very well on camera, which is important given the musical performances hosted at the church.’

Meanwhile, some of the Colordash fixtures are flown over the stage to deliver down lighting. The others are positioned on poles either side of the stage for side lighting, as well as on upstage risers for back lighting.

The Strike 4s that are positioned overhead throughout the building

create a welcoming environment.

‘We are thrilled with the end result,’ enthuses Mr Pippett. ‘Whilst the project had its logistical challenges, ASIIS was responsive throughout the entire process and went above and beyond to fulfil the vision that we had for the campus.’

‘Seeing this church and knowing its significance, we are very pleased with the way it turned out,’ concludes Mr Sutikno. ‘Lighting plays a very big part in creating the atmosphere here.’ www.asiis-indonesia.com www.chauvetprofessional.com www.hillsong.com

of achieving that vision. We worked very closely with Stephen Pippett, the head of creative technology from Hillsong, to make it happen.’

ASIIS installed six Chauvet Ovation F-165WWF Fresnels and three Ovation E-260CW LED ellipsoidals with 12 Colordash PAR-Hex 12 fixtures, eight Strike 4 multiformatted warm white lights and an

Making personal monitoring a breeze USA: Lance Unrau is the worship director at Seabreeze Church in Huntington Beach, California and a member of the church’s contemporary worship band.

The band plays an average of five Christian Rock songs to 750 congregants during each of Seabreeze’s three Sunday morning worship services.

To ensure the band plays at its best, rehearsals are key. This played a driving factor for Mr Unrau as he recently sought a new personal monitor mixing and recording solution for the band.

In looking for a system that would offer a combination of good-quality audio and simple operation, he chose a myMix solution.

‘The myMix saves us so much time during our rehearsals,’ reveals Mr Unrau. ‘There’s less coordinating between the A/V

6 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

A myMix personal monitor mixing and recording solution is used by Seabreeze Church’s worship band booth and us, and we can even rehearse without even having to turn the house speakers on. We just power up the myMixes and practise through them. It’s been so

helpful for us to not have to rely on the booth for rehearsing and that has increased our productivity.

‘I don’t think anyone in our band has ever had much experience

with monitoring,’ he adds, ‘but it was pretty easy to get everyone on board and up and running.

Even the backend features such as adding effects are intuitive. I usually only have to show someone once or twice, and they are good to go.’

As for the sound quality, the myMix system has already had an impact on Mr Unrau’s singing and the rest of the band’s playing.

‘I think it’s improved my vocals personally and has helped the whole band blend together,’ says the worship director. ‘Using the myMix, we are better able to focus on our individual parts because we can hear our parts more clearly.

As you are singing the sound is literally right in front of you.’ www.mymixaudio.com www.seabreezechurch.com

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NEWS

Harmony found at Royal Holloway College UK: The historic chapel at London’s Royal Holloway College boasts gilded walls and bas-reliefs designed by Italian sculptor, Ceccardo Fucigna.

But beauty to the eye doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with sweet music to the ear.

Designed with reflective hard surfaces, the chapel is highly reverberant and previous sound reinforcement systems have struggled to properly address the problem. One of the biggest challenges for integrators has been the necessity to preserve the overall aesthetics of the chapel that was completed in 1886. A previous system had loudspeakers positioned high within the chapel, firing down and across the interior of the structure. That meant a lot of the coverage seeped out of the window.

It was this picturesque backdrop and the fact that loudspeakers were not permitted to be hung onto the walls due to the chapel’s listed building status, that Whitwam AV Integration was called upon to devise a near invisible system that would leave the 19th-century design untouched by modern-day

problem in Winchester Cathedral,’ he says. ‘We felt they would be perfect for the Royal Holloway chapel. Our first decision was to put in a form of line source column, meaning the vertical dispersion would be reduced without the loss of effective horizontal dispersion. We knew that would also mean we could locate the speakers much nearer to the listeners, thereby reducing the effects of the building. We started looking around to consider what might work aesthetically. Royal Holloway College chapel is beautiful, so a large, standard column speaker certainly wouldn’t be visually acceptable.

second plate beneath the grille and bolts going between the two. That meant that the timber of the grille was sandwiched between the plates and then the metal rod upon which the Vyper KV50 is mounted was able to rise from the plates, with the cable running internally. ‘Nothing is screwed in and there is no effect whatsoever on the building,’ he notes. ‘The installation could be removed at a future date and leave no marks at all.’

Along with the Vypers, four Rumble KU44 subwoofers were fitted beneath the chapel’s rear pews, providing low-end support.

A pole-mounted K-array Vyper KV50 technology. To do this, it selected a K-array system from local distributor 2B Heard that would allow discreet intelligibility.

Looking to past experience, Whitwam’s David Harding and his team got to work. ‘We used a stacked pair of K-array Vyper KV50 line array elements to overcome a very specific

Under one of the pews ‘The chapel is all plaster, tiled floors and gilding,’ he adds. ‘There actually isn’t a lot inside that is absorbent, aside from the people.

2B Heard gave us all the support we needed, and they also did some EASE work for the project.’

Overcoming the problem of not being able to attach loudspeakers to the walls was also helped, in part, by a wooden radiator grille no longer being used by the chapel which runs between each of the pillars. Mr Harding and his team designed a flat plate that sat over the grille, with a

The system was powered by two Kommander-KA24 amplifiers.

‘We had brackets made for the subwoofers. There were 1-inch ventholes in the floor, and we picked up the fixing through those holes, with a plate beneath the floor to which the bracket is bolted. When the bolt is unscrewed, the enclosure just comes off and there’s nothing fixed to the building.’ www.2b-heard.com www.k-array.com www.whitwam.ltd.uk

Adding a Thump to services INDIA: Located in the Secundrabad suburb of Bolarum is The Holy Trinity Church, which plays an active role in the local community by offering a raft of social initiatives in addition to speaking the word of God during services.

To invigorate church services, Holy Trinity recently explored its options for a new sound system. The aim was to inject a dose of energy and enthusiasm.

‘We were in the process of a complete overhaul and were seeking an efficient and

8 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

aesthetically pleasing loudspeaker system that would deliver top-quality reinforcement for speech and music during our regular services,’ elaborates Mr Nelson, a member of

the church and its A/V tech team.

‘We opted to go for the Mackie Thump 15A powered loudspeakers owing to our trust in its great quality and delivery, and also for the fact

that it was one of the most priceefficient products in its range.’

The Thump 15A speakers were delivered by Mackie’s Indian distributor, Sonotone.

‘These speakers deliver a feature set that no other model in its class does and that’s what’s most impressive,’ Mr Nelson adds.

‘We’re keen to add more of these units to our church in the near future.’ www.mackie.com www.sonotone.in

NEWS

Taking real Guts to light Tulsa church

USA: Back in 1992, Pastor Bill Scheer envisioned a church that he hoped would provide an extraordinary experience for everyone, particularly people who don’t necessarily like churches. Fast forward 26 years and Guts Church is providing programmes and services to thousands from its three campuses and is one of Tulsa’s largest congregations.

Guts Church’s Daniel Yarbrough It has been an impressive turnaround for the pastor who has an affinity for leather and motorcycles and, in 2017, it was time for a new lighting system solution at the 1,500seat main sanctuary that would – in the words of technical director and director of worship at Guts Church, Daniel Yarbrough – have ‘a really good punch’.

Elation Professional Artiste DaVinci moving head lights got the green light. ‘We wanted an extremely versatile profile fixture that was both efficient and powerful, packed with features and an extremely rich palette of colours,’ notes Mr Yarbrough.

‘When I saw they included gobos, an incredible zoom and a wide array of other parameters at that price point, it was an easy sale. What I have seen is a fixture that does not compromise on quality and service for a better cost. I would highly recommend these to anyone looking to add to or update their look in any way and for any format.’

Installing the new system was Toucan Productions with the upgrade replacing the older 575W and 700W discharge fixtures. Although the Artiste DaVinci houses a 300W LED engine, they output over 13,000 lumens, which is comparable to 700W discharge lamp fixtures.

‘Brightness was a huge factor for us,’ continues Mr Yarbrough. ‘I needed something that even in darker colours can be punchy and effective.’

The Artiste DaVinci fixtures, used in weekly services and for special events, fulfill a few different roles.

A pair of fixtures hang midway back in the sanctuary, over the audience, and are used as spotlights for vocalists. This was made possible courtesy of the colour temperature and tight zoom. Other DaVinci fixtures are located upstage and are used in conjunction with other Elation lights for worship effect lighting. Others are spread out on the deck to create more eye-catching looks.

‘William Bennyhoff, Chauncy Harris and the entire Toucan team have been incredibly helpful in their support in this project,’ continues Mr Yarbrough. ‘I came to William with a blank palette and a desire for a major production upgrade and he brought up the DaVinci for me to demo along with some Elation matrix panels and ACL Bars. I knew that these fixtures were what I was looking for. I went to the drawing board and created a design with our chief lighting programmer, Chris Collier. We sent it over to Toucan and a week later they were here installing the fixtures.

They have been incredible with their service and support.’

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NEWS

Steering a course of history SPAIN: San Nicolás de la Villa is one of 12 Fernandine churches built in the city of Córdoba after its conquest

by King Ferdinand III of Castile in 1236. The Gothic-Mudéjar-style church has had many updates over the centuries, including the addition of its Renaissance-style main portal

by Hernán Ruiz the Younger in the 16th century and the octagonal tower, rebuilt with a defensive appearance during the age of the Catholic Monarchs above an existing minaret. The baptistery dates from 1555 and further elements were subject to modification throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, resulting in the San Nicolás de la Villa’s current Baroque appearance.

The church recently underwent another update. This time it was the installation of a new sound system, with Malaga-based LDA Audio Tech called upon to work with a local systems integrator to provide a new solution for reinforcement.

With so much history behind the church’s construction, the main challenge when deploying a new sound system was to protect and preserve the building’s architecture.

As a longstanding partner of Renkus-Heinz, the LDA team knew that an Iconyx beam steering solution could help keep the number of loudspeakers installed to a minimum.

‘From our many projects with Renkus-Heinz systems in other environments, we were confident that the Iconyx system would be able to deliver the substantial improvements to intelligibility that were required,’ says Diego Velazquez, LDA Audio Tech area manager for Spain and Latin America. ‘Working in close

Mixing rehearsals at North Ooltewah

Consistent control for Silverdale Baptist cooperation with our install partner, the result is a new system that uses just six IC7-II arrays to cover the entire worship space.’

The IC7s are grouped into two pairs within the altar area, ensuring coverage for the front of the congregation, while two further single units are placed in the middle of the sanctuary, delivering coverage throughout the rest of the church.

This was the first project for LDA within a house of worship, and it has reportedly achieved great results.

‘I am delighted to say that both the priest and parishioners have commented upon the improved clarity of the sermons,’ says Mr Velazquez. ‘Our installation partner is also very pleased with the results and we expect to be working on further projects in the worship space, which is great news for us as it really means that we are opening up an additional market.’ www.diocesisdecordoba.com/ parroquias/san-nicolas-de-la-villa www.lda-audiotech.com www.renkus-heinz.com

10 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

USA: As the saying goes, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. The saying applied to house of worship technical teams quickly becomes true if they find a solution that works for them, why deviate from the winning formula?

Silverdale Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee recently acquired an Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing system for its North Ooltewah campus. The system was purchased from local A/V equipment supplier Solid Rock Live and comprises a C3500 Surface, a CDM48 MixRack and a DX168 Expander.

‘The more we listened to it and played with it, the more we loved it,’ recalls Mr Johnson. ‘All Silverdale campuses have a band on the stage and the Bonny Oaks campus typically has a 30 to 40 person choir. But, our congregation is diverse. So we meet in the middle between traditional and contemporary styles. The dLive fitted our worship needs and could be scaled to each of our campuses while meeting our budget.’

The volunteer team at North Ooltewah immediately took to the dLive system. ‘We’ve got a rock-

The second dLive inside the Creekside campus recording studio The church’s technical director, Matt Johnson, and media minister Mark Randolph were so impressed by the sound control setup that a second dLive system, formed from a C3500 and CDM48, was subsequently ordered for Silverdale’s Creekside campus and another is planned for the flagship Bonny Oaks campus.

‘We’re trying to unify what we do, console-wise,’ explains Mr Johnson.

‘That way, a volunteer from another campus can walk up to the console and find things generally in the same locations.’

A dLive setup was initially chosen following an onsite demonstration held at the Bonny Oaks campus.

solid crew and the guys were willing to dive in,’ says Mr Johnson. ‘The simplicity of dLive’s setup kind of threw us for a loop – it is as easy as dragging and dropping. dLive makes it easy to assign inputs to layers in each bank.’

Mr Johnson is also impressed with the system’s speed and versatility.

‘Allen & Heath has given us a console that I can scale from a 200-seat venue all the way up to a 2,000-seat venue and operate the same across all variations while being cost-effective,’ he concludes. www.allen-heath.com www.silverdalebc.com www.solidrocklive.com

Just concentrate on worship ...

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NEWS

Lenzie Union faces the Elements UK: Nestled in the middle of the Scottish town of Lenzie, six miles north of Glasgow, is the Lenzie Union Church of Scotland. It is a traditional church building with a long and tall main sanctuary that houses a balcony to the rear. This can of course make intelligibility a challenge and so, to ensure clarity for the music and spoken word during its services, the church turned to systems integrator Toasty Audio for a new PA setup.

‘To deliver a consistent and distributed volume, we chose HK Audio Elements E 435 mini line arrays for mid/highs throughout,’ recalls Toasty Audio owner and engineer, Alaistair Deacon. ‘Three pairs of E 435s are mounted along each length of the sanctuary with an additional pair as side-fill in the transept area. The excellent directivity spreads the sound

evenly throughout the area, while minimising reflections from the ceilings and floors, providing the clarity required.’

Bass is handled by a pair of HK Audio’s E 210 Sub AS subwoofers located on the floor in front of the main organ pipes. The manufacturer’s Premium PR:0 10 XD monitors serve the band area.

A PreSonus StudioLive Series III

console and three Lab.gruppen E 8:2 Class-D installation amplifiers provide control and power for the entire setup. The StudioLive desk is programmed with multiple matrix outputs with associated EQ and delays to drive the E 8:2s directly and it can deliver sermon recordings direct to an SD card.

Delays were set up throughout the system to minimise the reverberant

effects within the long room.

‘We were delighted with the way the team from Toasty Audio worked closely with us and the Church of Scotland’s Committee on Church Art and Architecture to ensure that the installation met all the architecture guidelines, with the speakers being very discrete and all the cabling hidden within the wall,’ comments Margaret McCartney, convener of the church’s communications team.

‘I was so impressed with the sound of the HK Audio speakers when they were demonstrated,’ adds Reverend Dan Carmichael. ‘I didn’t know that different speakers would have such an impact on the sound quality.’ www.hkaudio.com www.lenzieunion.org www.toastyaudio.com

Elevating The Good Shepherd KOREA: Every Friday evening, The Good Shepherd Church in Seongnam holds a full service. There are also a total of five services throughout each Sunday. Sound for the services is marshalled by a dedicated team of audio engineers, supported by a number of volunteers. The church’s busy schedule and the need to elevate the church experience for the congregation recently brought about changes to the acoustics.

Having used an older analogue console to perform mixing duties in the last 15 years, a decision was recently made for an upgrade as the engineers began having problems

maintaining the system while struggling to deliver performances achievable with more modern technology. A church taskforce selected an 80-input x 30-output Yamaha Rivage PM10 system, which was installed by Seoul-based Sound Korea ENG. ‘We researched and trialled systems by all the main manufacturers and chose Yamaha,’ says church engineer, Cho Chi-hyuong. ‘Apart from satisfying our sonic and ergonomic needs, one of the main criteria was that the system had to be extremely reliable. Our experience with Yamaha consoles while working at rental companies, and of three years using them at a Hillsong

The church audio engineers have been trained by a Yamaha specialist to operate the new system

12 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

The recently installed Rivage PM10 system at the church Church in Australia, gave us the extra reassurance that the Yamaha would serve us well for many years to come.

‘Once we’d had training from the Yamaha Korea product specialist, we were able to start building our sound. The analogue console had a sound that we liked but, at the end of the day, it was just one sound.

The possibilities with Rivage PM10 are endless.’

Training recently got underway for volunteers to also get acquainted with the system that will be deployed for the 2,500-seat worship hall.

‘With the new system, the quality of our sound recordings and broadcasts is much improved,’ adds audio team leader, Kim Hyun-suk.

‘Such is the fame of Pastor Yoo Ki-sung that every single service is broadcast live on the internet and

simultaneously recorded. We record from the Dante network straight into Nuendo or Pro Tools for the larger worship band recordings. For the simpler voice recordings of the sermons we go via AES/EBU into Adobe Audition.’

A very useful feature of the control surface, explains Mr Kim, is being able to split the fader banks into two, which allows one of the in-house engineers to operate FOH on one fader bank, while a supervised volunteer mixes monitors on the other. ‘We think it is very important to understand the possibilities of the combination of the preamps, the Rupert Neve Designs SILK settings and the plug-ins, so it is a big focus for us at the moment.’ www.soundkoreaeng.com www.yamahaproaudio.com

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Turkish mosques find a d:screet solution TURKEY: Two high-profile mosques in Istanbul are seeing the benefits of using necklace microphones. Both the 15 Temmuz Sehitler Mosque and the Mimar Sinan Mosque have adopted this technology following demonstrations from Elit Light/Sound Technologies.

Elit is the local distributor for DPA Microphones and saw the benefits that the manufacturer’s d:screet 4561 could offer mosques. ‘Necklace microphones are very easy for the imams to use,’ explains Elit’s Emre Defne. ‘People often aren’t comfortable wearing a headset mic and sometimes lavalier microphones can get stuck under clothing, but a necklace mic is easy to put on and take off and is always in the right position.’

Mr Defne also highlights that the necklace mic can help preachers overcome challenges such as facial hair as well as those presented by the multiple positions that imams take during prayers. ‘When they turn their heads, it is always the same sound

Mimar Sinan Mosque because the distance from their mouth to the mic is the same.’

Following the benefits experienced by these two houses of worship, Mr Defne is convinced that there is potential for other mosques to follow the same path. ‘The potential of necklace microphones is very high because there are 80,000 registered mosques in Istanbul alone,’ he offers.

‘Even if it is just two microphones per mosque that is a potential market for 160,000 microphones just in one city.’

More importantly though, the mosques have both reported a

Flexibility and reliability @1330 AUSTRALIA: ‘Our 700-seat auditorium is used for both Sunday church services, as well as operating as part of our fulltime conference facility,’ explains Trent Young, associate pastor at Melbourne’s Church@1330. ‘We have lots of functions of varying types from school musicals to corporate presentations.’

With such varied needs, Mr Young recently approached Forefront Productions to upgrade the aging Yamaha M7, which had served the church well for many years.

‘We really wanted a stage soft patch solution to minimise set/reset times and to increase reliability,’ says Mr Young. ‘We needed the system to flip between dual [FOH and monitors] and single operators

depending on the situation. We considered multiple consoles and, after discussion of our scope with Forefront, felt that the DiGiCo SD12 ticked all the boxes.’

Multiple DiGiCo Racks were installed. ‘The dual solo busses on the SD12, coupled with an iPad Pro, allow us to have a fully separate monitor operator but quickly flip back to a single operator from the SD12 surface,’ adds Mr Young.

‘The extensive onboard routing and matrixing has allowed us to do customised stage and tech comms and the various building feeds required.’

USA: Grace Point Church in Indianapolis sought a complete production solution for its annual youth rally that would complement worship with energetic live music per formances. The church hires an outside venue to host the rally, and therefore cannot rely on the systems installed at its campus, so instead turned to Cincinnati-based Access Audio.

‘The acoustic hurdles in this room were severe,’ recalls Chris Knueven, director of operations at Access Audio.

‘The main stage was located in a large 45m x 34m multipurpose room with a concrete floor and metal walls. With content that included everything from

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14 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

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www.1330.church www.ffp.com.au

positive experience with using the necklace mics. ‘The mosques that have started using the d:screet 4561 so far are very happy with it,’ reports Mr Defne.

The setup

rock to spoken word, reverb time and reflections were an obvious concern.

In addition, structural limitations prevented flying the PA from the room’s ceiling, so we needed to bring in lifts as well.’

Access Audio deployed an L-R setup of six Vue Audiotechnik al-8 compact line array elements per side with ground stacked al-8SB subwoofers. VueDrive V6 and V4 series systems engines provided power and processing, while at FOH a Yamaha CL-5 handled the mix and was networked via Dante to a Lake LM-44. www.accessaudio.com www.vueaudio.com

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Vying for control in Westminster UK: The Emmanuel Centre is a historic listed building in Westminster, a stone’s throw away from London landmarks such as the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. The building was designed by Sir Herbert Baker and completed in 1928, featuring a circular main auditorium that seats up to 1,000 people and is capped by a domed glass roof held aloft by 24 pairs of marble columns. High arched windows allow natural light to fill the space between panelled walls

and tiered seating constructed from polished English oak.

While a visually stunning piece of architecture, the Emmanuel Centre presented quite the acoustic challenge, with a reverberation time in the main auditorium of approximately 3s. This was a great hindrance to speech intelligibility in the space, which not only serves as a venue for hire for a variety of events but is first and foremost a trans-denominational international church. With speech intelligibility and musical clarity essential for church services and the myriad events held in the multipurpose venue, Emmanuel Centre’s head of sound, Elvis Uriona, employed the services of the church’s long-term sound systems integration partner, Autograph Sales & Installations.

Peppe Mallozzi, who led the system design for Autograph, faced a multilayered challenge, as the building’s listed status forbade his team from drilling into the structure, therefore ruling out the installation of a flown sound system.

Fortunately, the Emmanuel Centre’s sound team already had an idea of the new audio solution it required.

One of the venue’s frequent visitors is Hillsong Church, which had brought in its own PA system to facilitate its rock-and-roll style services – a ground-stacked d&b audiotechnik V-Series system.

To ensure even coverage without overexciting the room, Mr Mallozzi specified a pair of Vi-Subs, which were placed on 600mm risers and topped by two Vi12 speakers that are aimed at the front half of the room with 120° horizontal dispersion. Above the Vi12s are two Vi8s per side that target the further reaches of the seating area with their 80° horizontal dispersion pattern. For front-fill, four d&b E8 enclosures have been installed on the stage lip, while a further pair are atop the ground-stack as out-fills to complete the 180° coverage.

The setup is powered by d&b 30D amplifiers and preset control is offered by R1 remote control software. Autograph also supplied

a DiGiCo SD12 mixing console and provided training to the Emmanuel Centre staff in how to operate the entire system. d&b’s Oran Burns, education and application support engineer, offered support to Mr Mallozzi and the Emmanuel Centre technical staff, while Adam Broom, technical sales engineer at Autograph, managed the project. www.autographsales.co.uk www.dbaudio.com www.emmanuelcentre.com

St Anthony seeks intelligent speech USA: Established in 1837, St Anthony Church in Davenport, Iowa is the second oldest Catholic church west of the Mississippi River.

Throughout its history of almost two centuries, the church has struggled to achieve reliably clear and intelligible speech, although it was not through a lack of trying.

St Anthony Church was equipped with a decades-old sound system that had been subjected to various component updates throughout the years. However, a full system upgrade was recently made possible rather unexpectedly following an act of generosity.

‘We had an elderly parishioner here for many years, and she would let us know that she found it hard to hear at Mass,’ recalls John Cooper, St Anthony Church’s pastoral associate and business manager. He went on to note that when the lady passed away, her family made a donation towards the church so that it could invest in a new sound system.

Mr Cooper and the St Anthony team turned to local systems integrator Communications Engineering Co (CEC), which installed a new sound system featuring six Bose Professional Panaray MSA12X modular steerable array loudspeakers flown in an L-R configuration above and behind the altar. Processing, networking and system management are managed by a ControlSpace ESP-1240 processor, a Bose Dante network

16 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

card and a ControlSpace CC-64, respectively.

The amplifier and speaker operate as a single unit and a Dante jumper in between them distributes the network signal directly to the speaker. A coverage pattern was established using the Bose Modeler software to ensure sound is dispersed across the entire seating area.

‘These types of environments need very precisely laid out coverage

to be effective, and the Panaray MSA12Xs gave us better coverage than any other speaker could have here,’ says CEC systems engineer, Leo Smith. ‘The sound is precisely mapped to avoid all of the reflective surfaces in the church, and there are many of them. Architecturally, churches like these are among the most challenging environments in which to achieve intelligibility, and the MSA12Xs handled it perfectly.

We have very precise control over all of the sound beams.’

‘We’ve had many compliments about the new sound,’ concludes Mr Cooper. ‘And it looks great, too, in the sense that you can’t really see it. It blends right in, which is important in a classic church like this one. We’ve waited a long time to get sound like this, and we’re glad it’s now here.’ pro.bose.com www.cecinfo.com www.stanthonysdavenportiowa.org

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Cru’s big vision for Whitestown USA: Whitestown may live in the shadow of neighbouring Indianapolis but the modest town with a population of 6,600 still has a vital role to play for the Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru).

Being the fastest growing municipality in Indiana, with its population having almost doubled since 2010, the Cru local chapter saw Whitestown as the ideal location to open its new 12,000m2 IMMI Conference Center.

The conference centre – which can seat 1,000 people and is being described as a multi-use space – features a video system employing Visionary Solutions E/D4100 PoE, 4K UHD-over-IP, encoders and decoders.

‘Along with the other users, IMMI, the company that owns the building, makes seat belts and such for school buses and other large vehicles, and they can roll their buses into this building, show them off, and host large conferences and trade shows for the company,’ comments Brady Davis, director of sales for Force Technology Solutions, which designed the video systems for the centre

which is also equipped with three video projectors.

‘Cru wanted an easy-to-operate solution so anyone could plug in

Designer control software, we can put video into any projector they want.’

Mr Davis and his team then went on to tie the Visionary Solutions

their laptop and be able to use the video projectors with little or no help,’ continues Mr Davis. ‘With the Visionary Solutions network and the QSC Q-Sys platform, they can plug in their laptop, the video goes into a Visionary Solutions E4100 encoder and from there it’s distributed to all three projectors. Also, with the Q-Sys

video system into the existing audio system, which is a point-source system due to the ceilings only being around 6m high. Alongside the Visionary Solutions network, Force Technology installed an HD SDI video network for large-scale productions.

‘When a production house comes in, they can run a full system like

Power control for Guatemala’s largest church Control Breaker Panels. Apart from the switching capabilities for lighting, audio and projector systems, the breakers also provide audio protection from in-rush damage, while the system is also described as being designed to extend life and cut down on energy costs with regards to maintenance of the LED lighting system.

‘LynTec is a standard on our projects, but it was especially vital

The mammoth main auditorium GUATEMALA: With a loyal following of 25,000, the Casa de Dios church was founded in 1994. In 2013, the church’s extensive area stretched to 270,000m2 making it one of the biggest houses of worship in the world. As its popularity continues to grow and so does the demands on its A/V technology.

Having worked with systems integrator Michael Garrison Associates (MGA) in the past, Casa de Dios turned to the US company once again following a decision to simplify power control of the new children’s theatres and to make regulating the power circuitry for the AVL systems user-friendly. MGA, in turn, opted for LynTec’s RPC Remote

18 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

The Children’s Auditorium

they would do for IMAG or large conferences or concerts,’ he adds.

‘The production link can be controlled through Q-Sys but it’s all routed through broadcast switchers. That way the production house can just plug in and have a full professional broadcast system over HD SDI, which is the broadcast standard, whether they want to do IMAG or do different types of switching on their own.’

Inspired by the conference centre project, Mr Davis has now set his sights on another challenge, using Visionary Solutions’ PacketAV Duet Dante-enabled video encoders and decoders later in 2018. ‘We’re taking the dual network idea that we did for Cru, with a broadcast system next to a Visionary Solutions network, and we plan to do it on a much larger scale, using Dante. Not only is Visionary Solutions’ technology very fast, it’s very easy for the end user to change around if they wish.’ www.cru.org www.forcetechsolutions.com www.qsc.com www.vsicam.com

as we worked out the logistics of working overseas on a project of this scope,’ comments Michael Garrison, president and principal consultant of MGA. ‘The proven safety and universal platform of LynTec’s power control solutions eliminated managing additional overhead and hurdles within our design and installation process. We knew that it would provide the power protection and simple control the facility needed, while enabling us to simplify the wiring for the electricians.’ www.cashluna.org www.lyntec.com www.mganow.com

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A modern transcendence Being the largest Christian church in Indonesia, Graha Bethany Nginden knows exactly what it means to move with the times. John Leonidou reports from under the dome ‘OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE new’ goes the saying and that has been a familiar trend for Graha Bethany Nginden in Indonesia.

Located in the eastern Java city of Surabaya, the charismatic Christian megachurch has constantly adopted new methods and technologies that will enhance the worship experience for its weekly congregations.

A further 13 satellites operate under its umbrella. As such, the church conducts a total of 33 services every Sunday across all of its sites. At Graha Bethany Nginden itself, Pastor Joshua Tanuseputra and his team report for duty at 5am each morning in order to conduct the daily services. Managing such an operation ensures advanced planning and a reliance on fail-safe technology.

Audio is routed from the Carbonite Black Plus for recording on Sony PMW-1000s

Graha Bethany Nginden has upgraded its lighting systems with DTS fixtures

20 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

With a capacity of over 30,000 seats, the vast church structure continues to be the largest domeshaped evangelical house of worship in South East Asia. Since its inception in 1977, it has grown exponentially, making it the largest Christian church in Indonesia today. As the church expands, the requirement for adopting the latest technology has become paramount for its production team.

In 2012, an extensive L-Acoustics K1 loudspeaker system was installed prior to the construction of a new church facility four years later. In that same year, a direct lightning strike completely destroyed the FOH and monitor positions and in came Studer VistaX digital consoles normally associated with high-grade broadcast facilities.

A recent assessment of the broadcast and lighting systems called upon hiring the services of SI Galva Technovision. ‘The time had arrived for an upgrade that would provide a better worship experience for our congregations, whilst preparing our technical staff for future advancements,’ comments Pastor Tanuseputra. ‘We also wanted to create an improved technical layout allowing our volunteers to be more creative and efficient.’

Following the adoption of Ross Video Xpression graphics generators in 2013, the church preferred to adopt the same user interface for its operations in the new facility. ‘In addition to being within our upgrade

budget, the Ross Video switchers are user friendly. Nor have they created any problems when training our staff over the past five years, including our newest volunteers,’ Pastor Tanuseputra continues. ‘The entire installation was very quick. It actually took longer for the items to arrive than the actual installation process, which was less than a month.’

The adoption of a Carbonite Black Plus Frame switcher at the core of this impressive video system heralds a new era of production within the church. ‘The latest DashBoard control system provides intuitive access and a better understanding of settings within our entire video system, including the NK router and the OpenGear platform. The switcher’s main focus is on the cameras and video graphics projection supplying our in-house screens.’ With continued expansion, the previous Ross Video inventory continues to serve the church’s needs. The previous switchers – the Carbonite Panel and the Carbonite Multimedia Chassis – together with the Avolites Sapphire Touch lighting console and Sony Ex3 cameras have since been dispatched to smaller campuses.

Flexibility, diversity and reliability were cited as the main criteria for Pastor Tanuseputra and his team.

Within the OpenGear 3.0 platform, an SPG card inserted within an OG3-FR frame acts as the house clock, whilst the VEA, ADA and SRA cards distribute the visuals to other

PROJECTS outputs from the switcher. In addition, the Carbonite Black Plus Frame routes the audio feed to the Sony PMW-1000 recorders and studio monitors. Receiving both camera and media server video inputs, the NK router directs various video signals to the LED screens via the video processors. Video distributors have been added to the signal path for the smaller assistive viewing LCD screens situated towards the rear of the hall.

In terms of cameras, Sony continues to be the church’s preference for which six HSC-100RF optical fibre broadcast cameras are connected to HSCU-300RF camera control units. Providing wide panaromic images, two of these cameras are permanently positioned in the centre of the hall, whilst a third

is tasked with close-ups, a fourth feeds wider images and the final pair run on dolly tracks. Monitoring is provided by two HDVF-EL20 0.7-inch HD colour OLED and four DVF-L750 7-inch viewfinders. The addition of cranes and dollies from Jimmy Jib and lenses from Fujinon have also added to the improved visual experience.

‘Being full HD cameras ensures they fit into the standard requirements today,’ continues Pastor Tanuseputra, when explaining the benefits of the Sony setup. ‘I chose the HSC-100RFs for their CCD sensors as we have a problem with low light in our hall. The 100m-diameter, rounded hall rises to a height of 34m at the top of the dome. As such, it’s impossible to get even lighting across the hall with a

The church wanted to create even lighting across the whole venue

even lighting across the whole stage.

The Cores are very flexible units as they are all-in-one fixtures providing beam, spot and wash options.

Furthermore, the NRG 1401 is very versatile on account of its multiple functions such as outer and inner rings or single pixel controls.’

A grandMA2 controls the new lighting fixtures lot of spots being darker than others.

Here, the CCD sensor helps resolve those issues.’

Helping to bring other dark spots into the light are new DTS Lighting fixtures and MA Lighting consoles. Having previously relied upon fewer beam and spot fixtures, reinforcements in the form of 42 Core moving heads, 42 Nick NRG 1401 LED wash moving heads, 20 Scena LED 80 projectors and 20 Profilo 80 LED-based profile spots from DTS create a dazzling service. A grandMA2 lighting console together with an MA on PC Command Wing provide lighting control.

‘The Cores and the Nick NRG 1401s are installed both on the stage and above it. The Fresnels and Profiles installed at the far front of the stage as well as up above the stage create

Keeping pace with increased membership, the technological upgrades within this remarkable church continue. As such, Pastor Tanuseputra is currently planning to create a dedicated broadcasting and recording studio suite. In the grand scheme of things, no dome is too high for Graha Bethany Nginden. www.bethanygraha.org www.dts-lighting.it www.gtv.co.id www.malighting.com www.pro.sony www.rossvideo.com

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21

PROJECTS

Since being rebuilt in 2005, Riverlife Church resisted upgrading its audio system until now

The FOH production suite in Riverlife Church’s sanctuary

Prudence pays off Singapore’s Riverlife Church has taken possession of a Yamaha PM10 console and now there’s no looking back, discovers Richard Lawn

Jerry Chua enjoys overseeing services at the helm of the Yamaha PM10 console at his local Riverlife Church

SINCE 2006, SOUND SPECIALIST and Pasir Ris resident, Jerry Chua, has taken fulfilment and pleasure overseeing the A/V systems at his local Riverlife Church that better serve the musicians and technical volunteers. He’s certainly a great asset at the 5-level house of worship, and his credentials were recently enhanced in the form of a Grammy nomination in the ‘best pop instrumental’ category.

The experienced recording engineer and percussionist currently presides over the control surface of a Yamaha PM10 digital console in the centre of the sanctuary, where the upgrades are coming to the fore.

1/4 horizontal

22 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

Owing to a growth in its congregation – currently numbering close to 3,000 members – the independent, inter-denominational house of worship was rebuilt in 2005.

Like many houses of worship, Mr Chua labels Riverlife as prudent when it comes to updating its technical systems. ‘Equipment here is well maintained to ensure as long a life as possible and much of the A/V setup within the church has lasted well over a decade without needing to be replaced,’ he explains.

Having prudently acquired a PM10 for its FOH and monitoring mixing requirements, loudspeaker

PROJECTS demonstrations are currently being evaluated by Mr Chua and the Riverlife Church committee. ‘Many of the JBL speakers are no longer functioning as drivers have blown or are degraded,’ furthers Mr Chua.

Monitoring has fluctuated over the years between JBL wedges and Aviom in-ear monitors. Currently, Riverlife favours the Digital Audio Labs LiveMix platform. ‘The 12 units we have here provide 24 channels of individual monitoring whereby the engineer can listen in on any to assist them to get the right mix when required,’ comments Mr Chua. ‘It’s Dante networkable and, as such, integrates with the PM10 perfectly.

‘I originally looked at the PM10 in 2015 and was impressed with the audio silk preamps and the eight plug-ins for inputs and outputs per channel. As my background is from the recording studio field, I was attracted by the plug-ins and flexibility this flagship offers. Since we took delivery in January 2018, it is like a dream come true. In terms of audio quality, it’s like going from HD to 4K resolution as it provides so much

Twelve Digital Audio Labs LiveMix personal mixers provide 24 channels of individual monitoring

in Singapore has been amazing,’ he furthers. ‘I have become great friends with the team there and I know that, should the worst happen, Lawrence [Tan] and his team will immediately assist us. They always carry back-up stock should there be a failure and that is great peace of mind. When MediaCorp bought the first PM10 in Singapore last year for their new facilities, it was a testimony that this console was ready for the market.’

The PM10 console dispensed with the racks of outboard but Mr Chua won’t sacrifice his beloved Drawmer gates, compressors and limiters more clarity, width and definition.

There’s an excellent integrated reverb that now replaces the TC M350 effects reverb processor and the Yamaha SPX unit. It sounds so natural that most people think it’s actually coming from the architectural acoustics rather than the console.

We used to record the services through Logic Pro on a PC, but MP3 or WAV files can easily be taken off

Mr Chua started to hear the cymbals more clearly when he switched the drum overheads to JTS CX506 mics

the PM10. I take the files back to my home studio and mix in stereo to evaluate better.’

Additionally, and importantly, Mr Chua is not relied upon to mix all the services. ‘The volunteers have really taken to the PM10 quickly, finding it very easy to navigate with very little training.’ Whilst most of the PM10’s attributes are being explored and used, the Stagemix App has no value for Riverlife’s current needs. ‘Three volunteers normally mix FOH vocals, FOH instruments and monitors here at any given time.

‘If you have a microphone on stage, the PM10 captures the ambience so naturally and accurately,’ adds Mr Chua. ‘The new Rupert Neve 5045 plug-in reduces the ambient noise levels without affecting the vocal characteristics. Future firmware updates will ensure this board is up to date and current – in summary, it’s a great investment.’

In addition to the feature set and ease of navigation, Mr Chua also cites local support as a major factor in prudent consideration of the purchase. ‘The support we have received from Yamaha here

The BOH engine serving the Yamaha PM10 console provides Dante network control As the last Singaporean megachurch to enter the digital domain, Riverlife Church asserted its claim as being conservative in character.

The purchase of the PM10 may not represent a risk but being the first HOW in Singapore to own such a status console does depict it as rather unique, preferring to charter its own audio path rather than follow the crowd. www.riverlife.org.sg www.yamahaproaudio.com

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July–August 2018 WORSHIP AVL 23

PROJECTS

The view of the 2,000-seat sanctuary from FOH

The new TriCaster 460 in the editing room

Future focus As it builds towards an NDI-based infrastructure, Jesus House has upgraded a key tool in its broadcasting arsenal JESUS HOUSE IN LONDON’S BRENT Cross is a rare entity in the United Kingdom’s worship landscape.

Not only does it boast an enviable 2,000-strong congregation of active worshippers, but this gets boosted even further online as services are streamed and communities are built up through social media and the church’s 24/7 radio station.

Some of its success comes from being part of the global network of churches, the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), but the ability to inspire a younger generation of worshippers often also comes through its embrace of technology.

For the multimedia production manager at Jesus House, Ayobami Olunloyo, this was an early realisation in his career and has shaped the media landscape at the church ever since. ‘While I was still at university, I had to do a series of presentations to try and secure some funding for a project,’ he remembers. ‘I created some flashy PowerPoint presentations with imagery and sound, and that for me was ground zero in realising the power of multimedia production in being able to affect minds and make a case.

‘Around that time, I started getting involved with Jesus House. Media and technology use here were not as advanced as they are today. The thing I’m very grateful for is that we have a leadership who understand the power of technology, and not just that, they are ready to invest in it.’

Mr Olunloyo is not overstating this claim either. As Worship AVL walks into the main Jesus House sanctuary, long hangs of L-Acoustics Kara loudspeakers powered by LA8 amps flank the stage, together with large projection screens and a multitude of moving head fixtures and banks

Ayobami Olunloyo, multimedia production manager at Jesus House of Sennheiser wireless ew 300 G3 and ew 500 G3 mic systems. Audio, video and lighting are all central to services and the sanctuary boasts an equipment list to rival even theatres. While stage and FOH audio are mixed on Yamaha M7CL digital desks, images are captured on Sony PMW320 XDCAM EX cameras before being fed through to the Sony BRS-200 mixer, and ultimately to a NewTek TriCaster 460. All with the aim of producing professional, modern productions for both physical and online audiences.

‘The reason why we would buy speakers that are high end and things like that is because someone thinks it’s worth it,’ says Mr Olunloyo.

‘You only can do that in a place like this because the leadership believes in it. We’re fortunate that it has not been tough convincing people, but at the same time it can sometimes be tough managing everything, because everyone wants to use the technology. You become a victim of your own success.’

The latest addition to the Jesus House arsenal has been the NewTek

24 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

TriCaster 460, which was supplied by Michael Ogundeji from Highway Audio Visual and is used to produce the broadcast feed for video streaming.

‘At one point, our weekly news programme, 7News, was produced live as it was being filmed,’ explains Mr Olunloyo. ‘At that time, all of the cameras were fed into the TriCaster, which was also used for overlaying graphics.

‘Of course, it meant a faster process from end to end but it required particular expertise,’ he adds. ‘So, we moved back to a traditional “shoot and edit” setup, and the TriCaster took on the role of broadcast. When we started live service broadcasts, we also had a studio presenter who would open the programme.’

The TriCaster switches between the various feeds and then also streams out to the church’s online platform, plus it allows the team to provide control and to add graphics and song lyrics.

‘Occasionally we do special events when we need to stream to Facebook or YouTube, but we can also do that

through the TriCaster. It has really changed the way we approach our broadcasts because, prior to that, a lot of what we did was simply using Adobe streaming software on a dedicated computer.

‘We’ve recently updated to the TriCaster 460, and we have some good arguments for why our next video mixer would also be a TriCaster, and that’s because of NDI and all that it offers in terms of connectivity. Although we’re not really using NDI yet, we’ve tested it as a proof of concept and seen it work well. What we want to do next is to invest in certain equipment, such as the NewTek Connect Spark and products like that. One of our leaders has been doing a lot of research into the new NewTek

Jesus House also runs a ‘round the clock’ radio station for followers technologies and he has a plan for us to get quite a few new mobile video devices that might be as simple even as iPhones.’

As is the case at Jesus House, new technology doesn’t always present itself with new opportunities immediately. While the old TriCaster was up to the job, the new model used by the church allows it to carry out its long-term technology vision piece by piece. www.jesushouse.org.uk www.newtek.com

PROJECTS

Azizi Bin Ala

The installed Renkus-Heinz Iconyx speakers at the National Mosque

Conducting an STI test

Mind the gap The analytical approach has proven beneficial for Acousticon as highlighted by its recent National Mosque project. Richard Lawn reports ‘I READ A THOUGHT-PROVOKING article on the Medina Mosque in Saudi Arabia which used an AVB solution and identified a gap in the market here in Malaysia,’ reminisces Acousticon Sdn Bhd founder, Azizi Bin Ala. It proved to be a Eureka moment. The year was 2009 and, in the nine years prior to this, Mr Ala had become increasingly aware of this niche market during his employment at systems integrator, Digistar. His mission to enhance audio intelligibility amongst Malaysian mosques had begun.

‘The overriding problem with mosques is that they are highly reverberant spaces. Although the dome is always seen as the main challenge, the building surfaces are hard, the prayer areas are expansive and there are many pillars. Quality audio production in mosques is lacking so I wanted to increase standards on a par with Christian houses of worship.’

Highlighting how the audio could be improved in Malaysian mosques, Mr Ala soon realised that his target audience was not initially receptive and that his hardest work would be in educating his potential customers.

‘As soon as I adopted a more scientific approach using the right

XL2 Acoustic Analyser set tools to assess acoustic analysis, measurements, reports and demonstrations, the business took off. I conduct tests that will determine the directivity, background noise, frequency response, distortion, RT60, SPL, signal-to-noise ratio and STI readings in addition to acoustic measurements. For the electroacoustic assessment, we use NTi Audio products including an XL2 Acoustic Analyser set, Talkbox and DS2 Dodecahedron speaker set.

Once all the data has been collated, I can submit an analytic report for the

26 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

client and this is used as a base for an assessment and a proposal using EASE 4.3 modelling. Finally, we use Smaart v8.0 software for fine-tuning.

‘You have to identify the problem to get to the root cause. For example, I sometimes recommend reducing the RT time from 3s to 2s by changing the acoustics, which results in outsourcing to an acoustic contractor as we simply provide the loudspeaker systems,’ he continues. ‘However, acoustic works are usually expensive and most proposals and solutions are cost-based. There has to be an appreciation of technology by the client but cost plays a large part and so we are continually educating the market here in Malaysia.’

Mr Ala identifies two key elements of audio service within a mosque that require very different audio settings: firstly, prayer mode where effects such as delay and reverb create a more rhythmic live setting and, secondly, lecture or speech mode where intelligibility is paramount.

‘The DSP has to combine various effects although the imam should be required to control this with a simple on/off operation whenever required. Mosques do not require

a specific audio operator and their personnel usually possess little audio knowledge. To overcome this you need a system that is fully automatic for things such as feedback elimination and autogain control.

If a user forgets to turn off the microphone, you need to ensure there is an automatic on/off mechanism.’

The successful audio integration conducted at Malaysia’s biggest mosque – the Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz in Shah Alam – in 2016 has furthered Acousticon’s reputation. So when the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur called upon Mr Ala’s expertise, the barrier was once again set high. The outdoor space is generally used as an overspill area should the indoor worship hall be at full capacity.

Naturally it is beset with all manner of audio challenges.

Following the submission of the report, Mr Ala made several recommendations. ‘I generally favour a high-fidelity steerable column solution,’ he discloses. ‘For passive I generally recommend TOA, Bose or JBL, whereas for active I recommend Renkus-Heinz models. For this particular project, the Renkus-Heinz

PROJECTS distributor, Mercoms Systems Sdn Bhd, lent me a set of ICX7 speakers for an outdoor demonstration and it convinced them of the benefits of using a bespoke system.

‘There are usually budget constraints and, as such, passive is the norm,’ he continues. ‘This compensates for poor acoustics, but an active system yields better results. The poor acoustics of the highly reverberant spaces surrounding the National Mosque can be compensated for by integrating the recommendations highlighted in the report.

‘Many smaller mosques proceed with a more cost-effective passive solution following my analysis.

However, the National Mosque came with many constraints requiring multiple demos and approvals prior to what would become a highly customised installation. For example, special speaker brackets had to be made to allow the 24 Renkus-Heinz ICX7 outdoor passive columns to tilt down at an angle of 5° vertically and minimise any gaps aesthetically.’

The interior phase will follow with an extensive system of Iconyx32 models. Here the aesthetics are of primary consideration and so no audio equipment can be displayed obtrusively. The 5m ceiling height in the 46m-long hall also poses a

great challenge as the SPLs lessen considerably after a distance of 25m.

However, the Renkus-Heinz Iconyx models can achieve even SPLs for the full 46m distance by utilising the ‘moveable acoustic centre’ features.

Until recently, all mosque audio operations in Malaysia have operated in the analogue domain, but Mr Ala is attempting to upgrade all the mosques he serves with digital solutions. ‘I love the analogue sound but, unfortunately, so many users are inquisitive and want to play around with the settings and, over time, this leads to a degradation of sound, as the system is not reset.

‘A high-power DSP solution with a user-friendly interface is the way forward,’ he continues. ‘I generally propose the Q-Sys platform for larger mosques with a simplistic touchpanel concept using Q-Sys iPad Control.

The GUI can be fully customised

A customised GUI

DS2 Dodecahedron speaker set to a mosque’s needs with zoning capabilities built in. With this digital solution and the preset features integrated into it, the system can be returned to traditional settings.’

Feeding the delayed speaker systems, QSC CXD-Q amplifiers receive the audio signal from a Q-Sys 110F Core processor over a Cat-6 network. ‘It’s not Dante as this is cost prohibitive – we simply promote the AES67 open protocol. For the National Mosque here in Kuala Lumpur, I proposed a fully digital AES67 protocol solution using a network switch to connect all the equipment, including microphone panel, rack devices and steerable speakers over a Cat-6 network.

‘In future, mosques may need to be monitored for highlighting fault detections or if a user forgets to plug in a microphone. The current status of a system can be controlled, whilst alerts can be triggered and SMS texts and e-mails sent to remote engineers when a fault is detected.

This is a great monitoring system but, to enable a service department in the mosque, you need an internet connection and that is not always available.’

Acousticon is now also providing video consultancy for Malaysian mosques. ‘They need to distribute HDBaseT video signalling networks throughout the larger buildings and, in the future, mosque-to-mosque video streaming will become common.’

Looking to the future, Mr Ala realises that Acousticon is only as good as its last project. ‘We have merited our reputation in the marketplace and, as such, most referrals come from word of mouth.

But I am not taking anything for granted and continue learning and attending workshops and seminars.

Once a good project has been completed, however, the community talks and social media plays a role in enhancing our image.’ www.acousticon.com.my

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Next Generation

July–Augustwww.codaaudio.com 2018 WORSHIP AVL 27

PROJECTS

Revolving doors With an expanding neighbourhood on its doorstep, Richard Lawn discovers how Church of Our Saviour is enhancing its AVL systems to appeal to new congregants

Jonathan Hemsley joined by Anders Teo and a colleague in the FOH technical area HAVING RENOVATED AN OLD cinema complex to create its home for the past 40 years, Church of Our Saviour (COOS) remains astute and wary with current technological advances. The surrounding neighbourhood of Queenstown, Singapore is rapidly transforming with new housing and condominiums opening up and, with it, potential new congregants. The 1,200-seat auditorium within the 5-storey complex hosts six charismatic worship services every weekend, for which the audio, video and lighting technology continues to play a crucial part.

A technical masterplan was drawn up in 2004 to develop its performance systems by systematically replacing or upgrading various systems.

A full upgrade was enacted over the following three years with the assistance of technical consultant, Lim Kheong Sen. The stage lighting system added a motorised FOH bar together with a variety of ETC and Selecon luminaires, six Vari*lite VL1000TS moving heads and an Avolites Pearl 2004 console. Further Vari*lite VL2500 washes and spots were added to the lighting mix in 2007.

Sound and Video Professional was called upon to install the new audio system combining L-R ceilingsuspended EAW MQ and BH models.

3D computer-generated simulations were used by qualified structural engineers to highlight points where the loudspeaker arrays could be

suspended safely within the limits of the building structure in addition to providing the most precise coverage.

Fourteen Crown Macro-Tech amplifiers powered the speakers, while the audio signals from the Yamaha PM5D consoles at FOH and monitors to the BSS Soundweb London Blu-80 processors were routed via CobraNet. Front-fills were added later

by Electronics & Engineering Pte Ltd (E&E) consisting of JBL Control 29AV cabinets together with 12 channels of Shure UHF wireless microphones.

Fulfilled by 10 years of faithful service of the original EAW components, COOS drafted the EAW distributor back to its facility to design, supply and install a new EAW loudspeaker system. Having

The new 350-seat chapel adjacent to COOS will be used for additional services and weddings

EAW MK2396i speakers provide first tier upper balcony-fill coverage

The EAW FOH loudspeaker system combines Quad 12-inch QX models with SB1002 subwoofers

previously represented JBL, BSS and Crown for 18 years, E&E returned in 2017 as the EAW distributor for whom Jason Yeo served as project manager.

‘In addition to the MQ speakers, some of the Crown Macro-Tech amplifiers were in need of replacement,’ explains senior technical executive, Jonathan Hemsley. ‘We’d listened to the QX models and were impressed by the true stereo full coverage they provided.

‘Despite having relocated to Melbourne, Kheong returned from Australia and assisted us with the new design as he knows this church hall very well,’ furthers Mr Hemsley.

‘We did look at line array solutions.

28 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

PROJECTS However, we had to rule against it as the hangs would conflict with the sightlines of our projection screens.

We eventually settled on the QX500 speakers as our senior pastor was impressed with the clarity of the vocal range and the overall dynamics.’

As a testimony to Mr Kheong’s excellent planning 10 years previously, the initial loudspeaker positions that had been earmarked for FOH in addition to the fills were re-employed.

Each L-R FOH cluster comprises four quad 12-inch QX loudspeakers, providing controlled directivity to the main downstairs and balcony seating areas. The QX594i, QX566i and QX5441 speakers provide 90° x 45°, 60° x 60° and 40° x 40° coverage, respectively, with tri-amplification per speaker. The lower frequencies have been extended courtesy of the existing four BH822 dual 12-inch subwoofers suspended as a centre cluster. Rather than conduct the entire works within one week as had occurred in 2006, the latest upgrade was staggered in three weekly phases over a 3-month period. Scaffold towers were erected each week, but work was completed without disrupting the church’s weekend service programme.

‘You don’t immediately realise how long a decade is in terms of technology until you undergo a refit such as this,’ furthers Mr Hemsley.

‘The QX speakers not only provide much improved directivity, but they also weighed significantly less when hoisting into position. We noticed that there was much more fidelity and clarity over the first three months of using it. When I recorded an SPL level of 120dB during testing, yet still had plenty of headroom, I was quite amazed.’

An interim upgrade in 2011 as a result of I/O expansions at FOH included the addition of a DiGiCo SD10 console for its evolving services. ‘So far, the SD10 hasn’t demonstrated any limitations and the firmware updates have really

benefitted us. The addition of iPad control has been useful when training new volunteers, allowing a supervisor to have oversight without needing to be at the console.’ In the same year, the Avolites Pearl console was replaced with a Titan Mobile with a PC touchscreen from the same manufacturer.

LG displays have been added for restrictive views behind pillars

The EAW QX main speakers are triamplified by Powersoft X8, X4 and Ottocanali 8K4 DSP+D amplifiers whilst various Ottocanali models serve the fills

Mr Hemsley. ‘With increasing building construction in the area, and up to 50 channels of wireless equipment in use, we needed to take special care of our frequency coordination and monitoring to avoid interference.’

Recently, COOS expanded its premises with a 5-storey annex building next to the existing main auditorium. With the addition of the newly built facility, COOS will be able to better serve its congregation all under one campus. Located on level four of the annex building is a multipurpose hall to be used for weddings in addition to Filipino and Chinese youth services.

A 5.5m x 3m, 3.9mm pitch, 2,885Hz refresh rate Liantronics indoor LED videowall display is managed by a Novastar VX4S LED processor, while video switching is handled via a Ross Video Carbonite Black Solo video switcher for visual production. An Allen & Heath dLive C3500 mixing surface, dLive CDM32 stagerack with Dante and Waves v.3 expansion cards, two DX168 stageboxes and five Shure PSM900 wireless IEMs take care of all the audio routing, mixing and monitoring for the venue.

The level one, 1,200-seat auditorium Similarly, the visual services have been significantly enhanced between audio upgrades. A Ross Carbonite video switcher accepts Panasonic HE-130 PTZ camera inputs in addition to graphics fed from four Mac minis, a GoPro camera used for baptisms and a roving camera. The resultant images from three Panasonic PT-DW100 XGA projectors are output to the main fixed screen behind the stage in addition to two 5m x 3m screens on either side of this. LG displays throughout the church building provide overspill and assistive viewing behind balconies.

Like the evolution in loudspeakers,

Anders Teo operating the DiGiCo SD10 at FOH

the 4- and 8-channel Powersoft amplifiers take less than half the rack space of the older Macro-Tech models and provide much higher power supplies. A Dante network has been created between the Powersoft amplifiers and signal from the SD10 FOH console is delivered via an 8-channel digital AES output card in the DiGiCo SD rack. ‘DSP settings such as the crossover point for the subwoofers and all system EQ have been created using the Powersoft Armonía software. We have also created zone management so that the upper balcony can be switched off when there is nobody upstairs.’

Five different bands each comprising between five and seven musicians provide six charismatic church services each Sunday. They all rely on Allen & Heath ME-1 personal monitors running over MADI to a DiGiCo SD1024 monitor console at stage left. The worship leaders and pastors prefer to use Shure ULX4D wireless handheld microphones with a combination of Beta 87C and KSM9 capsules during services. DPA d:fine ear-worn microphones are used for preaching.

‘Wireless Workbench software programming helps us troubleshoot the congested bandwidth,’ explains

Six EAW JF8 speakers serve as frontfills built into the lip of the stage Four EAW QX396 loudspeakers, which are tri-amplified per speaker, four EAW JFL118 subwoofers and four EAW VFM129i stage monitor speakers are powered by three Powersoft Quattrocanali 4804 DSP+Ds, one Quattrocanali 2404 DSP+D and one Quattrocanali 1204 DSP+D power amplifiers.

For lighting, an MA Lighting dot2 core console driving eight Osram Kreios profile lighting fixtures were chosen. A Datavideo NVS-25 H.264 encoder has been added to provide bidirectional broadcasting of services throughout the campus.

The return of Mr Kheong in 10 years’ time cannot be guaranteed, but it can be safely assumed that COOS will have evolved significantly in terms of technology over that time span. Going full circle, perhaps the church will add a cinema as part of its services? www.coos.org.sg www.enepl.com.sg

July–August 2018 WORSHIP AVL 29

PROJECTS

A single Danley Genesis Horn GH60I speaker was installed above the transept

Under control The Cathedral Church of the Advent has taken control of its audio with help from dB Integrations. James Cooke listens in

An IP8 remote controller can manage the sanctuary sound system

Each zone has individual volume control

TECHNOLOGY CONTINUES TO improve at a rapid rate. While in some instances the need for an upgrade can be questioned, when it comes to sound systems, there has been an obvious improvement over the years. You may not be able to see it, but you can certainly hear it.

An update to the sound technology employed at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama was unquestionably needed. The church’s old system produced unwanted feedback and did not offer the speech intelligibility required.

‘We gather in an old, historic cathedral, whose wood and stone surfaces and layout don’t make it

easy for amplified sound without a lot of reverberation, muddying intelligibility,’ explains Reverend Zac Hicks. ‘Additionally, we’re attempting in some of our services to tastefully amplify and mix our ensembles with modern musical instrumentation, which is notoriously hard to do in a reverberant room without acoustic treatment. Because we prize our classical heritage and the physical and auditory aesthetics of our room, treatment wasn’t an option for us.

Our choir and organ are also a vital part of who we are. We therefore required a system that could handle all of these diverse needs.’

To help get the audio under control

30 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

for the variety of services inside its sanctuary, the church turned to dB Integrations, an A/V systems integration firm based in Gainesville, Georgia with an extended reach across the southeastern USA. ‘We approached dB Integrations upon recommendation because the type of system we were looking for had to be specifically tailored to our unique situation,’ recalls Reverend Hicks. ‘The project was pitched to several companies, and dB was the one that offered a unique solution.’

The dB Integrations team began by conducting acoustic modelling to find a way to control reverberation without installing acoustic panelling.

As a result of this modelling, a single Danley Genesis Horn GH60I speaker was installed as the main PA system, above the transept. It was selected in part because its coverage aligned perfectly with the dimensions of the sanctuary, helping to tame the acoustics by focusing the sound completely on the congregation and away from the walls. Meanwhile, a pair of Danley’s SM60FI-B cabinets serve as additional fills for the seating areas that the GH60I coverage couldn’t reach, an SBH-20-W column speaker is used as a monitor for the choir in the chancel and a TH118I-B subwoofer delivers enough low-frequency coverage for the entire room.

The Allen & Heath C3500 Surface can be wheeled in when required

PROJECTS As is often the case, it wasn’t enough to simply install new speakers and switch them on. The Advent required further control of the setup to optimise the sound for its different services. Different settings are used for traditional services with choir and organ than those employed for services with more contemporary music. Therefore, dB Integrations sought a digital mixing console that would handle the church’s large number of audio inputs, while also offering ease of use for church volunteers to operate. Allen & Heath’s dLive C3500 Surface with a DM64 MixRack was chosen due to its 64 inputs and its Snapshot functionality that enables the volunteers to recall settings for the various services at the touch of a button. These settings are referred to as scenes.

‘As we had recently ushered in a service on Sunday evenings that incorporated more modern instrumentation, we needed a system that would be versatile and powerful enough to mix a full band for the evening service and simple enough to operate by our volunteer staff for the traditional services,’ says Kent Michael, mix engineer at The Advent.

To meet the church’s request to not have a permanent control booth in the sanctuary, the dLive desk was installed on a rolling rack, allowing the church staff to wheel it out when needed. Even when hidden away, the mixer can be controlled via an IP8 remote controller.

‘I’ve got a scene for the modern service, another for the traditional morning service, and a scene with automatic mic mixing for events and services that are unmanned,’ adds Mr Michael. ‘I’ve got the IP8 paired with the MixRack so we don’t have to roll out and set up the full surface for our traditional services.’

As well as the dLive system, Allen & Heath ME-1 personal mixers and an ME-U personal mixing system hub has put the power of control in the hands (and ears) of the church musicians, enabling them to manage their own monitor mixes. ‘The musicians in our evening service use in-ear systems with the ME-1s,’ notes Mr Michael.

The level of control that dB Integrations has implemented over the church’s audio doesn’t end outside the sanctuary either. The systems integrator designed a distributed audio system that relays the audio from services across the rest of the church campus, including the chapel, the garden and even in the kitchen, which are all equipped with speakers and individual volume controls. In addition, the Clingman

Commons parish hall and the refectory house their own microphone and auxiliary inputs as well as QSC speakers, allowing these setups to serve as standalone PA systems for separate events or to playback audio from the sanctuary.

QSC’s Q-Sys platform sits at the heart of this distributed audio setup.

A 7-inch touchscreen, installed on the master equipment rack, facilitates audio control over all rooms and zones across the campus. A remote interface that facilitates the selection of I/O options can also be found in a small equipment rack in the refectory, which is connected to Q-Sys by a single Cat-6 cable.

23 – 25 September, 2018 Dubai, United Arab Emirates

www.prolightsoundME.com

Let’s master it.

QSC’s Q-Sys platform offers control for distributed audio across the entire facility ‘dB Integrations did an amazing job helping us find exactly what we needed,’ says Reverend Hicks.

‘We’re particularly pleased with the engineering of our main Danley loudspeaker and the usability, flexibility and integration of the Allen & Heath audio system. They work together seamlessly, and they make both the spoken word and our modern mix sound fantastic. And we didn’t need to treat any surface. I’ve served several churches like this, and I’ve attempted several sound projects in these kinds of spaces, and I’ve never seen a system do that.’

Mr Michael concurs: ‘The new system solved our feedback and intelligibility issues and the dLive fits our needs really well,’ he says.

‘It’s intuitive, easy to program and a delight to mix on. The preamps sound very natural and clean and the processing is top notch.’

Whereas words lost their meaning with The Cathedral Church of the Advent’s old sound system, dB Integrations’ installation of not only a new PA solution but a Q-Sys controlled distributed audio setup ensures that the church’s message reaches everybody who steps foot anywhere on site.

1/2 Vert

Crystal Clear Sound and Visuals for Houses of Worship A house of worship deserves the best that modern technology can offer when broadcasting its message. Find an unmatched range of bespoke worship broadcast solutions at this year’s foremost lighting, audio and AV event, featuring every solution you need in one place.

For more information on visiting, go to www.prolightsoundME.com/Visitor

www.adventbirmingham.org www.allen-heath.com www.danleysoundlabs.com www.dbintegrations.tech www.qsc.com

July–August 2018 WORSHIP AVL 31

PROJECTS

A clearer mix for Riverview Perth’s Riverview Church has welcomed back its congregants after a year of upgrades. Richard Lawn reports FOLLOWING 12 MONTHS OF worshipping offsite, flocks of young adults and families enthusiastically returned to the rebuilt Riverview Church venue in Burswood in early November 2016. During those 12 months, the church had renovated its main sanctuary by raising and adding a new roof in addition to extending the lateral walls. As part of the A$13 million refit, extensive audio, video and lighting upgrades added to the wow factor including an extensive d&b audiotechnik V-series loudspeaker system. However, the leadership team of this nondenominational, charismatic church was far from finished.

Drafted from a church in Singapore, Riverview’s current technical director, Thomas Chow, explains what happened next. ‘The musicians, singers and worship leaders have been using a large number of IEMs on stage for many years and, as such, required a standalone monitoring console for their own mixes,’ he recalls. ‘As the 48-channel digital console used for monitoring was nearing the end of its shelf life, I was simply looking for a board that would provide more flexibility with an improved workflow as a replacement.’

The Allen & Heath dLive S7000 console at FOH interacts with the C2500 at monitors A demonstration of the latest Allen & Heath dLive C2500 by Technical Audio Group’s (TAG) WA sales manager, Marc Sharman, promoted the notion of linking a dLive S7000 at FOH with the C2500 at monitors. ‘I realised that we had been operating two different makes of digital console at FOH and monitors that had little compatibility, and realised that we had been missing out on a large number of benefits as a result.

Additionally, the cost per channel was very competitive.’

32 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

The compact C2500 control surface features 20 faders over six layers, built-in audio I/O, an audio networking port, a 12-inch capacitive touchscreen and a Harmony user interface. The same UI is incorporated within the 36-fader S7000, which comes with 216 assignable fader strips and dual 12inch touchscreens. A DM64 MixRack – or the brains as Mr Chow puts it – serves the two control surfaces.

The 64-in, 32-out analogue channel MixRack routes most of the inputs

and outputs, mixing 128 inputs to 64 outputs at 96kHz. The demonstration definitely made the sale for Perth-based dealer Audio Technik, as the one ecosystem operation was shown to significantly streamline operations. ‘For our volunteers, ease of operation with an intuitive work surface is vital and the dLive work surface provides that.

The configuration is straightforward and we now have more than enough channel and buss counts. We’re not a 1-room venue and this configuration allows us to expand to other rooms within the current building in addition to future satellites.’

Incorporating AES outputs, the DX32 32-channel expander is rackmounted in with the amplifiers and is capable of providing two services simultaneously. Inserted with AES67 cards, the DX32 is attached between the DM64 MixRack and dLive surfaces. The digital output has been extended to the amplification network via d&b’s Rope software to the amps and speaker components courtesy of further cards inserted into the rear of the d&b audiotechnik D80 amplifier.

The addition of Automatic Mic Mixer (AMM) features, multi-surface capability, a range of new installation hardware and new DEEP processing

PROJECTS models came with the V1.6 firmware update for the dLive mixing system in late 2017. This posed great advantages – and risks. ‘We were coming up to Christmas and didn’t want to jeopardise, in any way, our biggest service of the calendar,’ explains Mr Chow. As a result, TAG leased an extra rack for their needs until the firmware was downloaded in January 2018. ‘Marc came in to oversee the update. Normally, there is a software issue or IP addressable problem, but the consoles and MixRack fired straight back up. So to my surprise, when I exclaimed “it works” out loud, Marc just reverted “of course it does”.’

The AMM can handle up to 64 microphones, assigning mics to four different AMM configurations in classic gain-sharing and Number of Open Mics (NOM) algorithm modes. The multi-surface capability with gain tracking allows up to four dLive Surfaces to control a single MixRack, providing FOH/monitor splits and surface redundancy. V1.6 also supports the dLive hardware range for installed sound, including the GPIO interface, IP1 wall plate controller and DX expanders.

‘We can now split 16 effects between the networked consoles,’ furthers Mr Chow. ‘In future,

A Ross Carbonite video switcher is located in the BOH broadcast production suite

A dedicated monitor console is required to accommodate the large number of Sennheiser ew300 IEMs Riverview can expand into new rooms adding wall-mounted volume controls in addition to streaming between consoles via Cat-6 cabling natively on the same platform.’

The first of three Sunday services begins at 9am. Some two hours prior to the celebration commencing, Mr Chow or one of his technicians begins FOH duties by flicking a Furman RS-2 remote panel switch on. This is merely the interface for a number of distributed CN3600SE power sequencers providing orderly power supply for the racked equipment, speakers and consoles.

From the exterior of the Perth inner suburb church, it is hard to believe that the neighbours previously complained about the excessive SPLs. The former warehouse had previously lacked absorption and insulation materials, leading to the renovation incorporating extensive acoustic works. For the congregants who converge on the 1,000-seat, fan-shaped sanctuary, music and

dynamic teaching is the reason they return each week. ‘The SPLs average 95dB during worship, yet they don’t register beyond the church perimeter,’ confirms Mr Chow.

In the BOH broadcasting production suite, five volunteers oversee the Sony camera inputs in addition to computer-generated images and lyrics feeding into a Ross Carbonite switcher before being output to the synchronised L-C-R screens and distributed signage. ‘We also plan to add another Allen & Heath work surface into our BOH broadcast suite,’ furthers Mr Chow.

The works are never done at Riverview, for which upcoming projects include a move to an LEDbased lighting system because of strong environmental values held by the church. ‘We’ll retain the mixture of Martin and Claypaky moving heads, but will do away with the traditional Fresnels and spots. In addition, we’re looking to replace the existing comms with an IP addressable version.’ Having added value and multiple feature benefits through digital console compatibility, further vistas of possibility are opening throughout Riverview. www.riverviewchurch.com.au www.tag.com.au

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July–August 2018 WORSHIP AVL 33

KnowHOW

Developing lighting direction skills A lighting director may have to wear many ‘hats’ at their HOW. John Black outlines some of the responsibilities these technicians face in enhancing the worship experience BEHIND EVERY SERVICE IS A team of individuals who have come together, combining their various skill sets to create and support the vision or message from within their area of responsibility. For the event to succeed, teams are led by individuals who ensure that the efforts of their team support and reinforce the vision in tandem with the other departments.

The lighting team is led by the lighting director, though the actual responsibilities or ‘hats’ that he or she has can vary greatly from organisation to organisation. Some houses of worship may have a small team or even a single volunteer who looks after service lighting and the lighting equipment. Larger organisations may have a full-time professional lighting staff, including a lighting director, lighting designer, programmer, master electrician and others.

Regardless of the scale of your service or whether the lighting team is volunteer or salaried, if any type of lighting is installed in your facility, the primary goal of those who make up the lighting team remains the same – to create and maintain an environment that enhances (rather than distracts from) worship.

To achieve this goal, I’ll summarise three key areas that exist within the scope of responsibilities for a lighting director in the majority of houses of worship, as well as some tips on how you can further develop your skills in each area. Let’s dive in!

Hat #1: lighting director as steward How would you feel entering a house of worship and noticing that half of the sanctuary light bulbs are dead?

What if you had a hard time seeing the pastor because the lighting fixtures used to illuminate the platform were broken or pointed at another area of the stage?

No matter the size of the facility or the number of volunteers or staff that make up the lighting team,

MEET THE AUTHOR John Black serves as the theatre manager for Seoul Foreign School in Seoul, South Korea. Holding a degree in Theatre Design, he provides technical production support and design in three stateof-the-art performance venues on campus for over 40 major concerts and productions a year in the areas of sound, lighting, video and staging. He especially enjoys sharing his passion for entertainment technology with high school students each year through his student production team, Crusader Live!, giving students the

John Black, theatre manager for Seoul Foreign School opportunity to learn and work with professional-level technologies

Working together as a team the lighting director should concern him or herself with looking after the maintenance and upkeep of the lighting equipment. This may include simple tasks such as replacing light bulbs in the facility hallways and auditorium, or it may be more technical such as repairing stage lighting fixtures, cleaning automated lights, cleaning dimmer rack filters or updating console firmware.

The lighting equipment is the lighting director’s tools used to create and maintain a worshipful environment and to support the service message. These tools break, need fixing and need replacement from time to time. Being a good

34 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

steward of these tools means that they will function and be available for use longer, helping to create a positive environment and also saving the house of worship time and money spent on lighting equipment in the long run.

Developing the skill of stewardship is important for any lighting director.

The first step is simply to learn to recognise – and then act upon – when something needs replacement or repair. It’s easy to forget to look ‘up’ and take count of how many auditorium light bulbs are dead. Get into the habit of regularly turning on all of the fixtures in your rig and checking for any lamps that have

in a demanding production environment.

burnt out or any gels that may need replacement.

Second, write up and post in your facility a maintenance plan for your equipment and build it into your routine or the lighting team’s schedule. Set some time aside to be able to clean, reorganise, do some repairs and update control systems and fixture firmware. Record a log of when this maintenance happens and when a piece is fixed so that you can track specific units with repeated issues.

Third, educate yourself on the equipment that you have so that you know how best to take care of it.

Read through the product manuals, learn where the filters are, learn how to clean the components and develop the skills needed to perform basic preventive maintenance. If you have a lighting team, train them and get them involved – make it a party! This will help your equipment perform as it should as well as help ensure that you maximise its useful life.

Hat #2: lighting director as designer In the largest houses of worship, it may be that there actually is both a lighting director and a lighting designer on the lighting team. This is not uncommon in other areas of the entertainment industry. In

KnowHOW the majority of worship situations, however, chances are high that the lighting director will also be responsible for the lighting design for services and events.

While wearing the hat of designer, the goal should be to enhance the message rather than distract from it.

To do this, the lighting director should have a clear understanding of the vision that is set for the service, the demographics of the congregation making up the service, the lighting needs of other departments (such as the video teams) and the equipment available and how to use it most effectively.

Lighting design is much more than simply illuminating a stage.

Lighting designers use intensity, colour, direction, distribution, texture and movement when creating an environment. These are referred to as the properties of light that can be controlled. All of these elements are intentionally manipulated to serve the functions of lighting, which include composition, visibility, modelling, focus, information and mood.

Developing lighting design skills as a lighting director is extremely important. Anybody can point a lighting fixture towards a subject and it will be visible. However, welldesigned lighting can – without us even being aware – evoke emotional responses and understandings of the message or presentation being made due to our psychological association of certain lighting situations. Lighting can be a powerful element of a worship service and, when done well, those leaving the service shouldn’t be talking about the lighting on their way out.

If you’ve never taken a lighting course, there are many resources available online. Begin building your skills as a designer by studying some lighting design theory. Do a quick Google search for ‘functions of

A variety of looks set the mood for performances at Gospel Skouspel (photo courtesy Janco Haywood)

stage lighting’ or ‘qualities of stage lighting’ and you will find a number of resources. One of my favourite resources to send aspiring lighting technicians is Vincent Lighting Systems’ lighting articles found on its company website (www.vls.com/ lighting-resources). They have done an excellent job at creating easy-tounderstand resources covering the basics of lighting theory.

Another way to build your design skills is to continually learn about the craft through networking with other lighting directors and lighting designers, reading online blogs and articles specifically about lighting design and looking through images of designs that may be inspiring to you. Websites such as www.worshiptechdirector.com and www.churchstagedesignideas.com are great resources you can begin with.

Finally, one sure way of learning how light works and what is effective is to simply do it and get feedback.

You may not want to do this during a service so as not to create a distracting environment but, as you are able, experiment with different angles, colours and settings and show others who you trust to give you honest feedback. Just as people can view the same painting and react

Lighting bars lowered for maintenace

36 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

differently to it, the same is true with lighting. It will be helpful for you to learn the variety of reactions that people can have to the same lighting situation.

Hat #3: lighting director as servant The final hat worn by lighting directors that may sometimes get lost in the technical and design demands is that of servant. It is easy to get wrapped up in tight schedules, quick

technology and forget that, in reality, the lighting director is leading people.

In a house of worship setting, it is especially important to serve the other members of the team and ensure that they feel valued.

This can be accomplished through engaging them in activities outside of the normal work schedule, including them in design decisions, involving them in prep and set up work, adding fun team activities to cleaning and maintenance work sessions, or any other number of creative ideas. The lighting team will function the best when there is a unified sense of purpose and belonging.

Second, lighting directors also have a responsibility to serve the needs of the worshippers. It has been mentioned many times that it is important that the lighting enhance the worship experience and not distract from it. Most worshippers are not attending the service to experience the lighting. As such, the lighting director would do well to not only solicit feedback from church leaders and others on the technical teams, but also be willing to receive feedback from worshippers.

Adjusting lighting fixtures is a crucial part of the lighting director’s remit turnovers, maintenance tasks, tech rehearsals, meetings or problem solving and forget that, in the house of worship setting, perhaps the greatest role of any leader is that of servant. The role of servant has a number of different perspectives, all of which are important for a lighting director to keep at the forefront of his or her mind.

First, lighting directors will often have a lighting team that they work with regularly. Whether the lighting team is comprised of volunteer adults or teens, or hired lighting professionals, the lighting director is responsible for the culture and relationships of the team. It is often easier to focus on the tools and

This takes some humility, but it is vital that the lighting director fully understands that their role in the worship experience is helping people worship. If they can’t do that, then the lighting – and the service – has not been successful.

While there are many more hats that can be worn by lighting directors in houses of worship, I believe that these three exist in the vast majority of situations. Whether you are an aspiring lighting director or you currently work in the role, I hope that this has either given you some inspiration for how to grow in your craft or reminded you of the deeper calling of working in a house of worship.

Evolving with you.

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KnowHOW

Example of the kit required to stream via Streambox

Starting a live streaming ministry Livestreaming is a popular tool for many modern HOWs, but it’s not always easy to know where to start, discovers Worship AVL

IT USED TO BE THE CASE THAT A church service meant everyone gathering together in a physical location for a shared experience. In 2018, there are a variety of ways to share experiences without ever meeting in person. For a modern church community, having the ability to take services to congregants that, for whatever reasons, are unable to attend in person is an invaluable tool. Those ministries that have fully embraced the digital world also tend to be the ones that continue to see swelling membership at a time when others are struggling to maintain numbers.

This is also not to say that all churches should live stream their services just because they can. If you have a small congregation of less than a couple of hundred members, it might not be both practical and cost

effective to do so. Other methods exist, such as podcasting, that may be more suitable to your needs (see Worship AVL November–December 2017, p48).

But for the purposes of this article, you’ve decided that you want to take your services online. How do you turn your church into a streaming ministry?

While there are really just three pieces of core technology – cameras, an encoder and a good internet connection – the answer can be more complicated than you might imagine.

Ironically, it is the smaller churches that might have it easier here. When first starting to stream, many will mount a single camera in the back of the sanctuary to capture their Sunday sermons. Without complex multicamera setups and other equipment to negotiate, traditionally consumer platforms provide a simple entry

38 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

point. One thing for certain is you will need manpower in the form of willing volunteers that can lend a hand with setup and operation during services.

The Archdiocese of San Antonio is a ministry that, while it already produces a traditional broadcast, has recently adopted Facebook Live as an additional and uncomplicated method of reaching viewers. ‘Facebook Live helps us get beyond the terrestrial limitations of our broadcast channel.

We can reach more Catholics, in other cities, states and countries,’ explains Dagoberto Patlan, operations manager at Catholic Television of San Antonio. ‘With a traditional website, people have to know who you are to find you. Facebook makes it easier to reach people.’

Compare it to a traditional broadcast, which requires a lot of planning and expense to set up, reaching a limited viewership.

Facebook is so entrenched in everyone’s life nowadays that being able to stream live video to it lets you reach your audience with efficiency.

There are a variety of streaming encoders that have support for Facebook Live and other consumer streaming platforms built in. All that’s needed is input from a camera. However, the problem with these platforms is typically that the quality is not great, services can be unreliable at times and, for some public live streaming platforms, you have no control over who can join and watch your stream. Depending on

the viewpoint of your leadership, this could be both positive or negative.

Dedicated streaming solutions come in both hardware and software formats. If you don’t already possess physical video production hardware like a switcher, the software-based approach could be best. A computer with a video capture card and streaming software such as vMix or Wirecast that lets you add captions and mix multiple camera views is ideal. Hardware switchers such as the Blackmagic Design Atem 4K tend to require a bigger investment but also provide a larger feature set, such as the ability to output in every common broadcast format and a greater number of transitions and effects.

A dedicated hardware control unit may also be preferred by some tech teams.

Another aspect to consider aside from choosing your preferred streaming method would be to try and find cameras that can be operated by a single user. Remotely operated PTZ cameras are both traditionally cheap to buy and can allow one operator to control a multi-camera setup if required, but they may not provide the necessary flexibility to film a service the way you like.

Furthermore, as your church scales up in size, the requirements for a good livestream also scale up exponentially. After all, you’ve already invested in professional equipment to make your sanctuary look great to those attending in

KnowHOW person. That expectation of quality is just as important online. If you produce slick-looking services, your viewers are likely expect a livestream that captures the service from a variety of angles and positions, just like a television production.

This can be demanding and was a challenge recently faced by Victory World Church – a megachurch that welcomes 15,000 people to three separate campuses every weekend – as it sought to improve its video production.

‘We have a bunch of studio cameras already, but we wanted to add some mobile cameras into the mix too,’ explained Mike Paschal, live video director of Victory World Church at the broadcast campus in Norcross. ‘This video gets sent to 60 different TVs around the broadcast campus along with all of the TVs in our two other campuses. If we were going to do it, we wanted to do it right.’

But this presented a challenge.

Since the camera feeds needed to be transported to a production switcher behind the audience, extending cables through the large auditorium was out of the question. A new wireless transmission system for the mobile cameras was the answer.

What started as a simple equipment upgrade quickly had knock-on effects.

As has hopefully become apparent, the process of scaling up the backline infrastructure required to record and broadcast services is not always as simple as just adding an additional camera here or a switcher there.

Those willing to pay for a betterquality streaming service can turn

PTZ cameras are a less expansive alternative to compex camcoders for static shots

JVC’s GY-HM200HW 4KCAM live stream video cameras are used at Springs Community Church to a dedicated Content Delivery Network (CDN) which can be tailored to a specific use. However, the cost of these services is not insignificant for a smaller HOW. Having a good plan in mind for how your ministry’s livestream requirements may develop over time will definitely pay dividends in the long run.

You’ve now got the tools in place to send a livestream out to your

congregation with the right kind of camera setup in place. Is your lighting still up to the job? While it is not the purpose of this article to explore lighting technology suitable for streaming, it is a key area that should not be overlooked. Worship AVL’s ‘Catching that stream of light’ article on p44 of this issue provides some advice on this topic.

The final step before ‘going live’

is to have a good think about your church’s online presence. If you’re not streaming via consumer platforms, you will want to design a dedicated webpage for your viewers to tune in to. Bear in mind that some people might visit your church online before they have a chance to visit your building in person, and you want your online presence to convey the same environment and feel. It can be invaluable to take inspiration from other churches that have been successful at moving their church online. But if your ministry is considering streaming online, then you are likely to already have some form of online community via social media. These are the people you really want to please and cater to. Do they just want to watch your services or to also interact with its participants? Do they require 4K picture quality or is 480p good enough?

Feedback from your congregation about its preferences should be placed above and beyond everything else mentioned in this article, and advice from friendly congregations that have undergone similar transitions should be heeded. If it is, there is no simpler way of extending your church presence to a greater number of people.

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July–August May–June 2018 43 July-August 2017WORSHIP WORSHIPAVL AVL 39 25 September–October 13

KnowHOW

Deriving a separate streaming audio mix Gordon Moore explores how an audio technician can create a successful mix for HOWs streaming their services live to the internet THE INTERNET HAS BECOME THE platform that has replaced the cassette tape for people who could not attend services in person such as shut-ins, people whose jobs force them to work during service times and those who participate remotely.

Streaming a service allows a church to expand its presence beyond the walls of the building into homes anywhere in the world.

Mixing audio for a streaming feed to the internet, however, presents new challenges for the sound technician.

It is not as simple as just splitting the house feed and sending it directly to the feed for the streaming service.

The house mix has several factors that do not exist in the stream mix.

The house mix takes into account the acoustical signature of the worship space. The house mix has equalisations and filters that affect feedback nodes. The house mix can have a wide dynamic range from a solemn whisper during prayer, to a crescendo from the chorus, to a huge finish by the praise band.

None of these situations should hold true for streaming audio. There is no feedback in a live stream. There is no need for filters that account for room acoustics, and the playback on a computer, phone or tablet through tiny speakers requires a completely different equalisation. The dynamics must be set so everything is heard clearly regardless of volume level – the dynamic range (a whisper to a shout) must be kept small.

So, how can the audio technician create a successful, easy-to-hear mix for a live streaming feed?

The first step is to give the sound engineer a feed that lets them hear that mix after it has been converted and streamed onto the network. For the purpose of creating a good mix, they need to hear the mix after it has travelled the full route. There are three situations we need to discuss: the house system with a full digital board that can record and play back discrete tracks; a dual mixer situation where a second mixer is used to provide the mix for the streaming

service; and, in the third setup, there is only an analogue board available with no recording capability.

Digital systems Digital boards often have discrete record and playback functions – if your house system has a digital board with available recording and playback functions that can feed a DAW (digital audio workstation), creating a good mix setup can be easy to achieve in ‘off’ hours – when there is no service. The mixer should have a dedicated output (aux send or digital feed such as Dante) for which you will be creating the new mix.

First, record a full service or two with all of the normal inputs in full use. Record the inputs to discrete tracks so you can play back the service later and create a new mix for the streaming feed. Next, set up your streaming service so you can feed the playback to the appropriate webpage – this page should be ‘blind’ where the URL is not visible yet to the outside world. You really don’t want someone ‘clicking’ on your feed while you are trying to create a clean mix.

Log in to the stream itself using a phone, computer or tablet and plug in a set of headphones so the feed can be easily heard and monitored.

If you are mixing at the sound booth, turn off the house and monitor feeds. The only signal you should be

40 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

listening to is the streamed audio.

Now, run a full sound check using the playback function of the system.

Treat this session just as you would a live pre-service sound check. Begin with each individual channel of the mixer (solo) and EQ according to what you hear in the post-stream audio in the headphones. You will not need feedback filters for this feed, so eliminate those from the signal chain.

Make your changes slowly and wait a few moments before making another change. There is a lot of latency (delay) in a streamed audio mix. You will not get an immediate reaction as you make your changes.

You will, however, want to pay attention to the dynamics more carefully. In all likelihood, you will need to add compression to every channel to reduce the dynamic range to around 20dB to 30dB between the softest signal and the loudest signal.

Don’t get too aggressive – that will only increase the noise floor when the compressor releases. But try setting a lower threshold and use a 4:1 to 6:1 ratio. The cellphones and tablets will have difficulty with very soft passages, so adding compression will allow you to increase the level for the soft passages while preventing the loud ones from overloading the signal chain.

After setting each individual channel in solo mode, begin creating the mix, layering your lead vocals first, then

instruments, then the vocal backline.

Once your mix has been settled into a pleasing balance, listen carefully to the entire service. Are the spoken word sections loud enough? Is the music significantly louder? Balance accordingly, then listen again. Are the soft sections too soft or the loud sections too loud? If so, apply a compressor to the output channel providing the mixer – start with a 3:1 ratio with a threshold at 0dBu. If you can’t hear any difference, increase the output level – the soft parts should get louder and the loud parts shouldn’t get a lot louder. Try a higher ratio to get the balance you need.

Experiment carefully.

When you are finished, save this scene and make notes of the difference between your live feed settings and your aux feed for streaming. These notes will be helpful when you come in for a service and find they have added another set of instruments or microphones – you can make similar changes on the fly if you know what worked during your set up session. On many digital boards, you can set the channel feeds for the aux sends to be post-fader so the streaming feed will then follow the channel adjustments you are making during the service.

All of the above is easy in the digital realm with record/playback isolated channel capabilities. But how can you handle this during a live service when all you have is an analogue board?

Analogue systems: house mixer plus monitor mixer The process is similar but, in this case, you will be forced to do everything during a live service, switching between the role of FOH engineer and live stream engineer (typically the person also running monitors). Ideally, before you go ‘live’ to the outside world, you will have the chance to run a couple of services for practice and setup. It’s always best to make your most serious mistakes

KnowHOW when nobody can hear them and learn before going live to the outside world.

In this scenario, remember that your house mix must be your first priority.

During each section of the service, make certain you are good for the house feed. Then switch over to the headphones that carry the streaming feed and listen carefully. This can be very difficult – the latency of the streaming feed will be quite some time after the house feed. A really good pair of isolating headphones will help a great deal and you will need to ‘tune out’ the sound of the house system. An analogue console will not typically have compression on the individual channels, so your best approach is good compression on the mix itself from the aux feed before it hits your streaming hardware. A separate EQ will also be important.

You will want a different equalisation for the streaming feed. The signal should go to the EQ first, then to the compressor.

The best analogue system scenario involves two boards – one for the house and one for the monitors/ streaming mix. The second mixer can be a software-based mixer installed on the computer (provided you can get individual channel feeds from the FOH mixer) or it can be another analogue mixer with direct feeds from the first mixer or mic splitter.

This setup generally takes two technicians or engineers – one to run the FOH and the other for the monitors/streaming mix. If you have two people available, consider having the streaming mixer located in a separate acoustical space away from the amplified house mix. By having a separate location away from the sound of the live area, the streaming engineer can listen only to the mix for which they are responsible instead of trying to ignore the amplified levels with all the latency complications.

In all cases, it is especially important to monitor the final result through a

phone, tablet or computer from the website. The mix you create locally may sound great on the solo feed from the board but may be severely lacking in quality at the other end.

One analogue board only The final scenario is creating a mix that streams, but you have only one analogue mixer and one sound technician. In this particular case, the best approach is to route the feed for the streaming audio through a DSP for equalisation and compression – in that order. (Standalone analogue EQs and compressors are also fine for the task.) Keep the low frequencies pretty shallow – roll off anything below 100Hz and roll off the top end at 12kHz. Put a presence boost into the audio around 7kHz of about 3dB, about ²/³ octave wide. Cut any ¹/³ octave that sounds muddy (see the Summer 2013 issue of WAVL entitled ‘How to sweeten your mix’).

Set your auxiliary feed to be postfader so that the changes you make to the faders for the front of house mix is reflected in the mix being sent to the stream.

Pay close attention to the compression of the streamed audio – streaming will be very hard on soft sections so boosting your feed level and having a low threshold with a 5:1 ratio will help keep the soft parts loud enough without the loud parts distorting or causing discomfort to the listener.

Follow the copyright rules of your country! In many countries, streaming the live band with copyrighted music without arranging to pay for copyright fees can get you and your church in a lot of trouble. If you are unfamiliar with copyright regulations regarding live music, please spend a little money (or find an attorney in your congregation) and get answers first.

It is always less expensive to pay a copyright fee upfront instead of paying lawyers and fines later on.

In any of the three set up cases we have discussed, your last step will be to enable public access to the page (URL address) where they can ‘tune in’ to your services. Make your new service visible to the world!

Streaming a service live is a great way to reach out in your ministry.

Done well, with good audio, the message can be spread at a rate faster than we ever dared imagine a few decades ago. Just remember, a live stream is not a live performance space. It needs a unique mix with unique settings for EQ and compression.

Mix well and be blessed.

1/2 Vert

July–August 2018 WORSHIP AVL 41

MAINTENANCE

Map your wiring: system diagrams Like a map helps you find your way, system diagrams help you navigate your AVL interconnections. Frank Wells shares a plan for labelling and charting your HOW’s systems IN THIS SPACE IN JANUARY, WE took a look at troubleshooting HOW audio systems. The same principles apply to lighting and video systems. Beyond the functional block diagram approach, your arsenal of tools should include a full system wiring diagram and connection lists for each of your AVL systems.

A block diagram is typically somewhat simplified, revealing only the details needed to track signal flow and control points. A full system diagram can have even less detail inside the blocks representing pieces of gear, along with full detail of a system’s interconnection wiring.

Labelling required Cabling should be labelled. Labelling is often overlooked, especially when systems are added to over the years and additional cables dropped on top of older cabling or repurposed with new gear. Now, you could simply put a letter/number designation of your creation on each end of a cable, which is fine for individual mic cables, patch cables or Ethernet jumpers on a routing panel. A better approach for multipair cabling, cabling bundled together, and for cabling used for long distance runs, is to designate cables by what they are connected to at the main system hub.

For audio systems, the hub would mean labelling cabling according to how they are connected to the nerve centre of the system, the audio console. With analogue multipair cabling, the main cable jacket would be marked at both ends and then the individual leads in a cable fanout would be numbered sequentially.

For lighting cabling, labelling would indicate the connections to the lighting controller and, for video, the switcher.

Networked digital interconnections are a bit different. An 8-pair analogue snake cable might have

Sommer Cable’s AUD3-S multipair audio/AES Siemens male to XLR cable a single connector on the console end, like a 25-pin D-Sub, and eight XLR connectors on the other end. A single Ethernet cable carrying digital audio can easily host eight times that number of signals. DMX lighting control signals would similarly carry a universe of channels from a lighting controller to be daisychained amongst the fixtures. Most houses of worship don’t network their digital video systems. That said, some with large operations and those with sophisticated switchers do deploy digital video networks where similar logic applies, though with smaller channel counts required compared to digital audio.

With AVB networks and the recent codification of the SMPTE 2110 networking standard, networked audio and video will increasingly share an Ethernet path. Still, label such cables on both ends.

Top is A is Left is 1 This simple mnemonic ‘Top is A is Left is 1’ references a de facto standard for sequential alphanumeric labelling of gear and cabling. It simply means if you have a vertical stack of gear, the top piece will be labelled ‘A’ or ‘1’. If you were wiring stereo audio gear and the next pair of wires from a snake were pair 3 and 4, 3 would

42 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

be assigned to the left channel out and 4 to the right. In a row of connections, the left most would be ‘A’. Top down. Left to right.

This is the pattern in the western world. Where languages are read

of gear, and each physical path is indicated by a line connecting between various boxes. System diagrams can be drawn by hand given time and patience, but using a computer drawing program makes the work far simpler and allows the drawings to be updated when hardware system changes are made. While such drawings can be made with the common drawing programs included with many computers, the use of software designed specifically for audiovisual systems makes the task relatively simple while producing sophisticated results. By carrying over your wiring labelling nomenclature to your diagram, oncomputer viewing of system diagrams allows you to focus in on individual lines and connections. Printing such drawings large and posting them

System and rack diagrams produced with Stardraw software right-to-left, it might be that the approach is different. The main thing is consistency within whatever sequencing you choose.

System diagrams With wiring labelled and numbered, you’re prepped for documenting your systems. System diagrams can get busy-looking quickly if every path in every cable is shown, but that’s the point of the exercise.

Simple boxes can represent pieces

on a tech room wall can serve as a training tool and a maintenance/ troubleshooting tool.

Don’t overlook the value of a simple list of your connections by device.

A book of lists, or a PDF document that can be viewed on a tablet computer, can be carried with you as you troubleshoot an issue. Such lists can also inform you as to unused wiring paths that can be pressed into service when special needs arise, of a faulty path or device has to be bypassed in a time of crisis.

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TECHNOLOGY

Catching that stream of light Live streaming is today a big part of HOW sermons and services.

But many have yet to see the light, as John Leonidou reports

Stephen Ballast is technical arts coordinator at Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Texas WHEN ONE THINKS OF LIVE streaming for a house of worship, it is safe to assume that a camera, tripod, computer and maybe even a streaming box would be the essential items that first spring to mind. But how many HOWs would ever think about the need to properly invest in good lighting equipment for their stream?

So if lighting is essential for a video shoot or a live television broadcast, then why not for live streams which, in most instances for HOWs, are broadcast to even bigger audiences – albeit digitally? According to one technical arts coordinator, lighting and proper exposure are the secrets to making images look great and that should serve as a reality check for many. Lighting may not be as interesting as say cameras and switchers, which is why HOWs may be willing to dig that bit deeper into their purses to spend more on cameras for a quality stream. But not spending on lighting and paying more for video quality would actually do more harm than good and the reason is a surprisingly obvious one: a good camera will simply show more detail of how bad the lighting is. Therefore, getting a good grip on lighting is imperative for a good live stream.

‘Streaming will make poor lighting even more apparent because of the compression that takes place,’ explains Stephen Ballast, technical arts coordinator at Cedar Springs

When it comes to lighting a stream, the first major factor that needs to be taken into consideration, according to Mr Ballast, is the creation of an even wash. That means every position must be lit with two points of light with the best angles being 45° out horizontally and 45° up. Going deeper than that would create long shadows under the eyes and chin that won’t look good.

Going below 45° would run the risk of the light shining into the subject’s eyes. If the selected area for lighting is too big for the two lights to cover, then another set of two can be added. ‘The

A bird’s eye view of two points of light positioned at a 45° horizontal angle Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Texas. ‘A lot of people don’t understand that what looks good to your eye doesn’t always look good on video. Cameras can only deal with a certain amount of dynamic range – the difference between the brightest and darkest part of the image they can accurately represent – without losing information in the image.

‘Unfortunately, I think there is a lack of understanding of how much lighting affects and plays a role in how your video looks. You’ll come out way ahead if you focus on your lighting first instead of spending more on expensive cameras as a way to deal with “poor light”. With good lighting you can make just about any camera look good. I think people often see stage lighting as something scary and expensive, but you’d be surprised the difference a small investment in lighting can make in the way a video or stream looks.’

44 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

Going below 45° runs the risk of shining a light into the subject’s eyes first thing I would look at is getting a front wash that is nice and even across the stage,’ he adds. ‘Make sure there are no hot spots that cause the cameras to overexpose, especially on the subject’s face, or dark shadowy areas as someone walks across the stage.

‘My favourite fixture is still the ETC Source Four PAR. It gives you a lot of light output and a nice even wash without costing you a whole lot. It’s my go-to light for creating my front wash.

Adding a diffusion gel in your lights, like a Rosco 119, will help when blending two areas together,’ notes Mr Ballast, who goes on to detail another important component of lighting a stream called separation, which highlights how the subject is appearing against the background. ‘Does the subject fade into the background, or pop out distinctly from the background? That is why a third point of light from behind, called backlight, can be used to create separation. You may also need to add some light to the background so it’s not too dark, or you may need to dim the background so it’s not competing with the subject.

Uplighting on stages is a big culprit of this. LED bars can create some nice saturated looks to the eye in the room but, on camera, they get over-exposed and look bad.’

LED lights are growing in popularity when it comes to lighting stages for video or streaming, but it is crucial that any HOW purchasing these fixtures ensures that they are flicker-free and made-for-video. Then comes the tricky bit of actually making separation come about with the use of the lights and, of course, maintaining safety. ‘Anytime you hang things over people’s heads, you want to make sure you’re doing it safely. This should be the first priority. While I think any production members can learn to do lighting, they should definitely be qualified to do that kind of work.’

Apart from the 3-point lighting technique, another way to achieve separation is to control the light behind the subject. That can be achieved by, for example, making the background a different colour and slightly dimmer so the person being filmed will pop out from the background. Cameras are much more sensitive to differences in lighting than the human eye, which basically means that something that may look nice and interesting to a person’s eye may not have the same point of view with the camera.

Another good tool is to use a WFM monitor, a display that shows

TECHNOLOGY The bottom of the display is black and anything under that line would be underexposed. In most situations, a well-lit image will have variations in lighting but all will exist within those top and bottom lines or boundaries. So to ensure a perfect lighting exposure, there can be no whites-clipping and no blacks-clipping in the shot.

see where the face is on the WFM monitor. The lighting would then be adjusted accordingly to get the most consistency in every area of the stage that has been lit.

‘Cameras also love bright light and don’t do well when things are dim, which usually means lighting things brighter and with less contrast for

Using a backlight is important when it comes to separating the subject from the background a graphical representation of the exposure the camera is seeing.

Once the initial lighting setup is done, a test can be conducted where a person walks across the washlight to identify any hotspots or deadspots. ‘Without it, any television monitor that you are using is just an estimation of the image your camera is creating, unless the television has been properly calibrated,’ argues Mr Ballast.

Using a WFM monitor is said to ensure accurate and correct exposure every time. Over-exposure is revealed when the waves go over the top white line in the display panel. Anything

A WFM monitor is a display that lets you see a graphical representation of the exposure your camera is seeing More cameras may be needed to light an entire stage shown to be above the white line (which equals 100% exposure) is described as being ‘clipped’. If a part of the image is clipped then that means the shot is losing detailed information in that particular section.

The lighting technician’s aim will be to try and keep a subject’s face exposed to around the 50% to 80% line (depending on the highlights in the image) and to ensure that the face is never clipped. So when somebody is walking across the stage during a test of the washlight, a check will need to be made to

video than you would when just lighting for the eye,’ he adds. ‘This becomes more crucial for streaming because when video is compressed, especially at lower bit rates, dark areas of the image can turn to mush and get blocky.’ www.youtube.com/c/BallastMedia

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TECHNOLOGY

Streaming broadcast audio control at Wooley Springs Baptist Church in rural Alabama

The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection uses the Wowza Media Systems Server via Amazon EC2 web service

Understanding streaming audio While much of the focus for streaming systems understandably goes on the visual side, audio is also a key element that needs to be considered. James Ling reports WITH ITS HIGHER BIT RATE AND range of compression options, a lot of the technical focus for streaming is often centred on the video side.

However, this does not mean that you can simply ignore the audio.

‘As video is a multi-sensory content format, audio is incredibly valuable,’ states Chris Michaels, director of communications at Wowza Media Systems. ‘In fact, even if the video fails for a bit, an audience is more forgiving if they have audio and a still image, compared to bad audio and crisp video. Without the audio embedded (or closed captions), if there’s any narration the audience would be lost.’

‘Excellent audio goes hand-inhand with excellent video when it comes to live events,’ agrees Eric Chang from TVU Networks. ‘With

CTSA streams live to Facebook using TVU Networks’ TVUPack

TVU Producer Pro is able to reliably transmit HD quality video with sub-second latency houses of worship, clear audio must accompany live video because an important message is being communicated.’

‘Increasingly, houses of worship such as the First Christian Church in Huntington Beach, California are looking to differentiate their streaming feeds, not least by audio,’ observes Glenn LeBrun, VP marketing at Imagine Communications. ‘This allows for younger members of the community to hear music that is more engaging to them, while older audience members can hear a more traditional soundtrack for the service. One of the powerful advantages of the new SMPTE ST 2110 live production standard is that it allows for

46 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

Barix Redundix heals RTP streams by adding redundant data separate paths and processing for audio and video, while maintaining perfect synchronisation.

This allows for multiple, high-quality audio programmes to be created and inserted in the final output stream.’

‘The actual quality of the audio is important too,’ notes Tim Labelle, global account manager at StreamGuys. ‘A windy mic or overwhelming background noise really takes away from the content, even if your video quality is great.’

With the importance of the audio established, the next challenge becomes to integrate this into the overall stream. ‘When streaming both video and audio, then the key thing is how to keep them in sync,’ observes Reto Brader, VP sales and business development at Barix.

‘The technology needs to provide synchronised encoding and decoding.

Transport might not be in sync as audio decoders run at a different speed than video decoders, so only if the protocol supports audio video syncing can you get a streaming service that works.’

‘The standards for encapsulating video and audio together for streaming delivery are well-defined and, compared to the bit rates required for streaming video, the amount of data consumed by audio is fairly small,’ furthers James Liu, VP of engineering at Magewell.

‘From a user perspective, the main challenge comes if your video and audio signals are coming into your streaming system from separate sources – such as the video coming from a camera but the audio coming from a mixing board. Some hardware

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TECHNOLOGY encoders support separate video and audio inputs that can be combined in perfect sync, but some entrylevel offerings – as well as many capture cards used with softwarebased encoding and streaming tools – support only audio that is embedded within the video transport signal (such as the audio captured by the video camera). If you are planning to use separate audio and video sources, be sure to choose a capture device or encoder that supports both embedded audio and discrete audio inputs.’

‘If you’re mixing multiple audio sources, a staff member will need to be making sure the audio from each feed sounds good,’ adds Mr Labelle. ‘With multiple audio and video feeds, you’ll need to be able to mix those to get a single audio and video output. That single output likely goes into your video encoder as HDMI or SDI. With SDI video, you’ll have a

achieved that more often than not involves more equipment and more professional integration.’

While the technology available means just about any house of worship can stream services, there is a difference between an acceptable result and an exceptional one. ‘Quality audio has to do with what codec you use; that is driven by the bandwidth you have and what delay you expect,’ says Mr Brader.

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video quality for minimum bitrates,’ notes Mr LeBrun. ‘This is usually allied with adaptive bitrate (ABR) encoding, which ensures that the best possible quality is achieved for any connection, by switching between levels dynamically to the highest achievable data rate.

Modern codecs and ABR packaging require intensive processing at the encoder, which is best achieved by sophisticated software running on enterprise-class hardware.’

‘From a product standpoint, you want to start with an encoder that uses high-quality video and audio codecs, which are the algorithms that compress the video and audio down to bitrates that fit within practical delivery bandwidths,’ advises Mr Liu. ‘If you’re using a software-based encoder, you’ll also need a capture device to bring your video and audio signals into your computer, and you want that device to also preserve maximum quality.

From an operational standpoint, always start with the best-quality source signals possible. Video signals from low-end cameras often have “noise” in the video that makes it difficult to compress for streaming, and this results in visual distortions in the stream. Lighting is also a big factor in compression quality; video

separate audio feed like XLR. If the audio and video are in sync when they hit your encoder, your streaming server will also have synced audio and video.’

Of course, the other challenge that this presents is a more practical one: the need to focus on your congregation in the room as well as online. ‘Where you start to find challenges is in mixing audio for the in-person attendees and for the streaming audience simultaneously,’ states Jason Pruett, product marketing manager at NewTek. ‘While the stream is essential, the primary objective in most cases is managing the different feeds for live speakers, video playback and music to deliver the mix for the room, and then routing to and from various areas of a campus. The nature of the audio needed for the stream tends not to be equal, so there is a delicate balance that must be

shot in low light has considerably more “noise” than well-lit video, so is even harder to compress. Last but not least, choose your encoding settings (such as resolution and bit rate) carefully. If you’re streaming through a third-party platform like YouTube or Facebook Live, your settings should match the maximum allowed by that platform; the platform will then take care of reformatting the video as necessary for viewers with lesser-capable connections. However, be sure to set the parameters to fit within the bandwidth of your internet connection; higher resolutions and bit

Magewell’s Ultra Stream HDMI

Wowza ClearCaster has been designed to simplify the workflow and create broadcast-ready productions ‘High quality, low bandwidth means complex encoding and therefore more time. Once encoded, the transport layer is responsible for further degradation: for example, when using RTP as a transport protocol, packets can be lost and that leads to degradation such as audio glitches. There are redundancy technologies that heal RTP streams by adding redundant data.’

‘To maximise the quality for a given bandwidth, the stream should use a modern, high-performance codec such as H.265, which achieves excellent perceptual audio and

48 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

rates can actually result in stuttering video and other quality degradations if they exceed the capacity of your connection.’

But getting the best user experience is not only about the technology you choose to use. There is also an important role that the worship team needs to play that will ensure the viewer receives the best quality audio and video content.

‘As much as we all would love all of our technologies to be “set it and forget it”, by managing your equipment as if it were being used for the first time, you can resolve most issues before they have a chance to impact your production,’ suggests Mr Pruett. ‘Take the necessary time for setup and configuration, by checking, double-checking and then triplechecking all of your connections and settings. Beyond that, make sure that you have the bandwidth available to accommodate the live stream, and, if not, adjust your stream profile accordingly.’

‘The first step is to monitor it locally,’ adds Mr Michaels. ‘A confidence monitor will help check your feed locally and having an audio producer (even camera operator) wearing a headset to hear what’s captured is helpful. If you’re using a soundboard, your sound engineer should know how to adjust the levels and gain structure to ensure that audio is rendered correctly, balanced and no single channel is overpowering another. It’s always helpful to test your playback before live streaming. If you need the volume at 100% when you’re watching on a laptop, you need to bump the main audio out, or the levels in your video editing software. Gain does not equal volume. If you’re increasing the gain you have less room to adjust EQ or produce a balanced sound.’

While audio will never get the same attention as video for streaming, it is clearly a vital part of the mix that cannot be ignored. www.barix.com www.imaginecommunications.com www.magewell.com www.newtek.com www.streamguys.com www.tvunetworks.com www.wowza.com

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Streaming distribution formats What do you need to know to ensure video is compatible for streaming? James Cooke finds out ‘“MEDIA FORMAT” IS A TERM THAT is often used incorrectly but refers to the container format,’ begins Joe da Silva, director of product marketing at Extron. ‘It is often used to describe the file formats for stored media.’

‘While the term “formats” is often used to collectively refer to multiple aspects of streaming video deliver y, it in fact encompasses multiple distinct components: video and audio compression formats, containers and deliver y protocols,’ says James Liu, VP of engineering at Magewell. ‘The compression formats – such as H.264 for video and AAC for audio – specify the technical processes and algorithms used to reduce the bitrate of the media to fit within practical deliver y bandwidths, such as consumer

Extron’s SMP Series streaming solutions internet connections. Raw video and audio – par ticularly HD or 4K – produce too much data to be delivered reliably over most internet connections, so the video and audio are compressed to smaller data sizes.’

Compression? Containers?

Protocols? With such confusion all too commonplace, what do house of worship technicians and

volunteers need to know? ‘At least one volunteer on the team should have a technical understanding of the A/V signal flow and how to troubleshoot it,’ answers Tim Labelle, global account manager at StreamGuys. ‘Not all volunteers need to be technical; the impor tant thing is to have someone there who can help if things go wrong.’

Containers ‘Container formats, also known simply as containers, are like boxes that contain video, audio and metadata all in neat packages for software to read and/or playback,’ explains Tyler Riddle, IT system administrator at Teradek.

‘Containers define the standardised structure of how compressed video,

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StreamGuys charts where its solutions fit within a streaming signal chain compressed audio and metadata such as closed captions are “packaged” together for delivery,’ adds Mr Liu. Mr da Silva elaborates: ‘A container format packages or wraps video and audio along with metadata together into a single format for storage or streaming. A container can contain a single elementary stream or multiple audio and video data streams along with other data, such as metadata, and synchronisation information.

Examples of container file formats are AVI, FLV, WMV, MOV, MP4 or M2TS.’ ‘From a high level, a codec is the actual encoded media that lives inside a format,’ Mr Labelle says. ‘The container format holds compressed video and handles packaging, transport and presentation. File extensions usually show what the format is. For example, mp4 is MPEG4 and FLV is Flash Video.’

MPEG-2, H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), H.265 (HEVC), Motion-JPEG and JPEG 2000.’

‘Files that involve digital media are huge and need to be compressed/ decompressed in order to be manageable and readable,’ notes Mr Riddle. ‘Codecs (coders/decoders) compress these files, then package them into container formats for delivery.’

Mr Labelle points out that different codecs have different compressed sizes and qualities. ‘The H.265 codec is more efficient than the H.264 codec,’ he says. ‘That means your H.265 video file is smaller than your H.264 file, but appears to have the same visual quality. More efficient codecs save on storage and streaming bandwidth, but require

more CPU resources on the encoder, which is why H.265 encoders cost more than H.264 encoders. The codec is the actual digital encoding and compression of a file. In streaming, codecs are used to make files smaller for internet transport.

The codec is chosen by your encoder, which turns your video signal into an internet-friendly format.’

Inside the container ‘Within a container, you’ll find encoded video and audio, but the container format doesn’t say anything about how the audio and video is structured inside of it,’ says Mr da Silva. ‘Those details depend on the codec used. The codec defines how audio and video data is compressed and encoded. If raw video was just dropped into a container, it would take up a lot of space. Compression reduces the size of the data and allows the data to be streamed over lower bandwidth connections.

Compression can either be lossless or lossy. The word codec is a combination of the word encoder and decoder because a codec has to be able to do both. Video and audio from the source are encoded into a data stream and wrapped inside a container for transmission. At the decoder, the data from the container is decoded and output as audio and video. Common codecs include

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TECHNOLOGY Streaming protocols ‘While the codecs and the container formats define how the data is packaged, they do not define how to transport it,’ says Mr da Silva. ‘Video streaming protocols, or streaming transport protocols, are responsible for delivering encoded video and audio data across networks from encoders to decoders. Protocols are either push or pull protocols. In pull streaming, the session is initiated from the decoding device. In push streaming, the encoding device initiates the session. Pull streaming typically uses RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol). Push streaming is usually RTP (Real-Time Transport Protocol) or RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol).’

‘Video streaming protocols determine how the container format is delivered across the internet, from a streaming server to viewers,’ Mr Labelle confirms. ‘Major differentiators between protocols include browser and device support and latency. For example, RTMP is still a widely used protocol for getting video from a venue to a streaming server, but it’s not widely supported on modern browsers. On the other hand, HLS is becoming widely supported on modern browsers.

Chunked protocols like HLS and MPEG-DASH send data in chunks, which allows for smoother playback across mobile networks, but at the cost of increased latency.’

Compatibility ‘There are a couple of different aspects of compatibility to note,’ says Mr Liu. ‘At a technology level, not all compression standards, container formats and streaming protocols are compatible with each other. For example, the RTMP protocol does not support the recent HEVC (also known as H.265) video compression format. The good news is that users are generally shielded from these issues by their streaming tools; the streaming hardware or software will only let users choose combinations of formats and protocols that work together.

‘More important is making sure that the combination of compression format, container and protocol you choose is compatible with your target delivery platforms and devices – that is, the consumer devices or services your audience will be watching the streams on,’ he continues. ‘Different viewing devices – even different generations of device from the same manufacturer – support different

Magewell’s Ultra Stream HDMI is designed for ease of use in simple setups

formats and standards natively without requiring special apps or plug-ins. But rather than worrying about each individual device such as phones or tablets, users can choose to stream through popular services like YouTube or Facebook Live, which are viewable and accessible through all manner of devices. By doing so, users need only ensure those streams are compatible with those services, rather than every end device.’

‘Both the codec, container format and streaming protocol used by the encoder must also be supported by the decoder,’ adds Mr da Silva.

‘Since different types of containers and streaming protocols can be used, all elements must be considered.’

Mr Labelle states that compatibility ‘is not an issue that most houses of worship will encounter’.

‘MP4 and H.264 are the most popular video container and format on the internet, and they work well together,’ he says. ‘On the streaming side, browser and device support is a consideration when choosing codecs and protocols. Support for protocols and codecs is changing, so I always recommend talking to your streaming

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52 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

provider when choosing what to deliver to listeners and viewers.’

‘RTMP and HLS are complementing streaming protocols,’ adds Mr Riddle.

‘RTMP is used predominantly as an “ingest protocol”, meaning video being streamed to a platform is done through RTMP. Once delivered to the platform, the video stream typically gets redistributed to viewers via HLS.’

Conclusion ‘It’s more important to focus on the formats and protocols required by your destination, e.g. the final streaming site, and choose streaming products that support those requirements,’ says Mr Liu. ‘It doesn’t matter too much what production products are used in the signal chain prior to the encoding and streaming tools, so long as your encoder or capture device support the right type of input video signals and can create the formats needed for your destination.

‘Public distribution platforms like Facebook and YouTube have very specific requirements for formats, protocols, video resolutions and bitrates that you must adhere to.

For example, Facebook currently requires video up to 720p with H.264 compression and AAC audio,’ he furthers. ‘For point-to-point distribution between campuses, you have more choice of formats, but you must ensure that the products you put at each location are both compatible with your chosen specifications.’

‘If extending your message to the most people, on the most platforms is important, a standardsbased lossy codec like H.264 will give you the most accessibility,’

recommends Mr da Silva. ‘H.264 is a very good option considering its higher compression ratio and low bandwidth requirements. Because it’s a standards-based format, it will be supported by a much broader range of end user equipment such as TVs, set-top boxes and computers. When streaming directly to social media sites such as Facebook or YouTube, look for a product supporting the RTMP protocol.’

‘YouTube and Facebook ingest RTMP sources and output them in their own specific bitrate and protocol for end user devices,’ adds Mr Labelle. ‘A house of worship doesn’t necessarily need to worry about the end user protocol when streaming to YouTube or Facebook since they offload the content delivery.

‘HLS and MPEG-DASH are becoming the de facto replacements for Flash streaming to end user devices,’ Mr Labelle continues. ‘They are both chunked protocols, which means they send data in chunks. This helps with reliability since you don’t lose a stream when the internet goes down for a moment. If you’re streaming HLS or MPEG-DASH and move between WiFi and LTE, your video stream wouldn’t drop out.’

For streaming directly between campuses, Mr Labelle recommends SRT (Simple Reliable Transport). ‘SRT is a low-latency video protocol that’s well suited for the start of the signal chain because internet browsers don’t support decoding SRT yet. So you can’t stream directly to viewers in SRT. It helps stabilise video delivery over lossy networks. If you have packet loss between your facility and the streaming server, SRT can reduce the impact that has on your video streaming quality.’

There’s much more ground to cover on this topic. Too much to fit into these pages. With a little research you can get very technical; however, as long as you research the codecs and protocols compatible at each stage of your signal chain, you’ll be able to get to grips with what you need to know and avoid any confusion.

‘When it comes to streaming, many devices in the market make it extremely easy to understand and deploy live streams,’ concludes Mr Riddle. ‘User-friendly interfaces make it as simple as choosing a destination and clicking a button to start streaming.’ www.extron.com www.magewell.com www.streamguys.com www.teradek.com

BUYING GUIDE

Streaming services like Facebook Live and YouTube are popular choices for HOWs

Tripods are seen as essential tools of live streaming

Streamlining a HOW live stream Gone are the days where big productions are needed to broadcast live services.

Thanks to live streaming, thousands can tune in to watch provided you have the right tools. John Leonidou reports IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS OR SO, houses of worship have taken to live streaming like a fish to water and the reasons are many. The most obvious is the fact that HOWs now have the ability to reach beyond their worship confines in a way never before possible. Actually setting up a good live stream can be done at a minimal expense for any HOW, provided the obvious components are in place such as a camera, computer and a good internet connection. But what else is needed for a service or sermon to set sail across vast open cyberspace?

‘It can be pretty complicated or very simple,’ explains streaming media expert and Frost & Sullivan principal analyst, Dan Rayburn. ‘You need to have cameras but exactly what kind and how many depends on the kind of stream. Encoders are also needed but that could be one or perhaps five boxes. A high number of inputs could see things like soundboards, audio mixers and perhaps video mixers needed. Then there are things like connectors and switchers if streams include slides, graphics or chyrons – like wanting to have a name underneath a person on the screen.’

A good internet connection is needed to get the signal out. If getting a decent connection cannot be accessed then there is the extreme option of obtaining a satellite truck to dock outside the HOW to beam the signal to a satellite. However, the idea of big trucks docked outside a small shrine in a desert in Utah or Riyadh may seem a tad excessive for some pastors or imams.

There is also a way for those wanting to dip their toe in the water before diving head first into a big stream. ‘To get started, you can just use a mobile phone and Facebook Live, uStream or YouTube and pay just about nothing,’ says Jeff McFadden, principle software engineer, co-founder of sermons.io and CTO at LittleLea. ‘As you go up the ladder of cost, you can increase the quality of your stream by purchasing a better camera, using a dedicated computer to handle the streaming and patching in the audio directly from your soundboard. The sky is the limit, but the door is open to everyone.’

Some HOWs may balk at the idea of members of their congregation observing a sermon from the comforts of their home but the pros

54 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

Jeff McFadden still outweigh the cons. Apart from being a good way to reach members of the congregation that are immobile or out of town, it could also be a new way to expand a digital audience. The fact that live streaming can now be easily fed to social media platforms means there is no limit in terms of expanding the reach of a sermon.

When it comes to getting the equipment, then cameras will unsurprisingly be top of the checklist and there is no shortage of options there. A camera can cost as little as US$100 or as much as US$2,000.

But irrespective of price, the camera

must have an HDMI output (generally preferred by most HOWs) or an SDI live output. Not all cameras with HDMI output have full-size HDMI-out ports and will instead have a mini or micro HDMI port out of the camera.

A tripod may seem trivial but it is vital for a good stream. The quality of a video will be compromised and viewers could even experience motion sickness if the subject (like the pastor) is moving constantly across the stage and no tripod is deployed. A good tripod can be purchased for as little as US$40.

When it comes to streaming equipment, a computer or a dedicated streaming box can be used. Both would be tasked with receiving the live video signal and running it into the streaming software. The streaming software, in turn, would then relay that feed into any output whether it’s a monitor or a website or social media platform.

For Mr McFadden, choosing a computer is the best way to go for a HOW. ‘It offers the most flexibility, and most HOWs already have one available. For a HOW that doesn’t have an existing setup, or doesn’t need a customised solution, a

BUYING GUIDE dedicated streaming box can be the right choice. Budgets often have a big influence in this decision, as you might expect.’

‘When streaming with a computer, it means that a computer is custombuilt to do it properly which is basically the same as an encoding (streaming) box,’ argues Mr Rayburn. ‘Encoding boxes take all kinds of inputs such as SDI and XOR and so there are more options dedicated to encoding. When working with just one bitrate, then a computer will be fine. Most people will end up trying to do adapted bitrate, in which case a dedicated encoding box will be needed. There isn’t really a right or wrong; it’s a question of specifications.’

Which brings us to the video capture card – the hardware designed to capture video footage from the camera. A video capture card can range from one to four HDMI inputs or one to eight SDI inputs and is needed when running multiple cameras or inputs into the computer. But running many cameras into the computer will also result in more CPU and GPU usage, which makes it even more important to have a computer topped up with at least 8GB of RAM and an i5 or i7 processor.

Then there is the streaming software that can sometimes mix

Crosswalk Church is one of many HOWs streaming its services online the different input sources together depending on the exact software.

Some software packages that are free offer the bare minimum (four inputs and SD resolution) and are not generally recommended for professional use, while others start from US$60 and go up to as much as US$1,000.

The final piece of the puzzle is streaming the actual service. Free services like Facebook or YouTube are on hand and the obvious port of call for many HOWs, but there are other avenues too that are not free.

The downside to these freebies is that they can limit the quality being streamed, while there are also copyright algorithms that scan audio feeds for copy-written material. That can leave services liable to copyright infringements – particularly during

live songs or when mainstream music is playing the background. ‘When we first started, LiveStream.com was about the only game in town,’ continues Mr McFadden. ‘They had a great service, but the ads you were forced to include in your stream were a bit tiresome. Since then, YouTube has broadened the availability of their live stream platform to the point where now anyone can get access to it. Those two remain the most popular platforms for video streaming.

‘These days there are myriad streaming services, all with different features and trade-offs,’ he continues. ‘HOWs should use any livestream service that works best for them but I recommend YouTube for live video streaming. It’s free, well supported and viewers will have no trouble connecting to the stream.’

Those wanting to pay for a betterquality streaming service can turn to a CDN (Content Delivery Network). With a CDN, the HOW will have full control over the video stream. The players and controls can be customised and captions and chats can be added too.

Apart from the cost, the other disadvantage of a CDN is the additional legwork involved such as embedding and setting up a player because it involves directing the feed into a HOW website as opposed to Facebook or YouTube that are very much plug-and-play.

The shift from getting the service actually streamed to obtaining a highquality streaming service has already taken hold across many worship venues across the world.

To state the obvious, the better the product, the better the quality, and live streaming is no exception.

‘There is always a trade-off between cost and quality,’ concludes Mr Rayburn. ‘You can’t just skim off audio or lighting. You can use the best distribution network or transcoding gear but, if your audio sounds bad, then it sounds bad. The same goes for the lighting – your video won’t look good. There is just no way around it.’ www.danrayburn.com www.sermons.io

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A-ZCONTENTS

A grand new vision The next generation of MA Lighting’s flagship grandMA console series has been launched and brings several new and enhanced features to the platform AT THE heart of an all-new system architecture for MA Lighting’s grandMA3 are new fixtures, features and effects handling, as well as a redesigned user interface that the manufacturer says ‘makes practical tasks more intuitive’.

The grandMA3 comes in two form factors: a full-size and a light model, both of which feature large multitouch screens capable of displaying dedicated encoder and playback information. The surface houses dual physical encoders that can be custom mapped to functions.

Reducing weight and increasing durability have also been central to the new design, yet the console retains its familiar dual friction hinge format.

Motorised playback faders have been used across the entire grandMA3 range and incorporate a colour-changing light pipe on all models except the onPC command wing. A flexible assignment of playback functionality means there’s 30% more playback handles than any previous grandMA series

Adamson Systems IS7p/IS10p

62

Apart Audio

Kubo series/CM series additions

60 66

ArKaos

MediaMaster 5.2

Ashly Audio

DigiMix 18

64

Atlona

Gain Series/AT-HDVS-210U-TX-WP

63

Audinate

Dante AVIO series

64

Audix

M62/M65

62

AV Stumpfl

UHD Player/Wings Vioso RX 2.0

69

Ayrton

Mistral-TC/MiniBurst

57

beyerdynamic

TG Drum Sets

63

Chauvet

Rogue R1X and R2X

58

Christie

Apex 0.9mm LED videowall

68

DAS Audio

Vantec-20A/Vantec-118A

61

dBTechnologies

Opera Unica/ES1002/Sub 612

60

DiGiCo

4REA4

65

disguise

r15 software

66

Dynacord

IPX series

65

GDS

Fade To Warm

58

GLP

KNV/Impression FR1

57

High End Systems SolaFrame Theatre/SolaFrame 750

57

Hitachi

68

CU-HD1300FT-S1/SK-UHD4000

K-array

Azimut/Capture-KMC20

62

Kling & Freitag

Scena 12/Vida app/Vida M

62

Kramer

DGKat 2.0/VP-428H2

66

MA Lighting

grandMA3

56

NewTek

TriCaster TC1/IP Series VMC1

68

Next-proaudio

DPA4000

61

Panasonic

PT-RZ120/PT-RZ870

69

PR Lighting

Aqua 480 Beam/Omega

57

RCF

Evox J8 and JMix8/Z.Core DSP

61

Renkus-Heinz

IC8-HD/IC Live X/IC Live XL

60

Roland

XS-62S

67

Sennheiser

EM-XSW 1 Dual

65

SGM Light

Video Pixel Linear series

58

Tasker

C114/C100/C237/C238/C192TS

58

Telestream

Lightspeed Live Stream

68

TOA

Trantec S4.10

64

Vaddio

AV Bridge MatrixMix/RoboTrak

66

Vitec

MGW Ace and Diamond Encoders

69

Work Pro

PA 200 MX/MD 82 AX MkII

64

In addition to the lighting control capabilities, the grandMA3 software features an integrated 3D visualiser for pre-programming, and the ability to manipulate and playback basic media content directly from within the console. Optimum performance is resource dependent, therefore additional processing hardware will be required in some instances.

The full-size grandMA3 with top folded www.malighting.com

console, explains the company, while all playbacks have direct access to button pushes as well as intensity and timing changes thanks to the new rotary RGB backlit encoders.

Additionally, the desk’s control software utilises a new flexible fixture concept developed to replicate the real-world physical components of complex, modern fixtures. Fixture information is now generic and allows for the sharing of programmed data between fixtures. The manufacturer now supports the new GDTF (General Device Type Format)

56 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

protocol natively, allowing fixture manufacturers to ensure their own fixtures are controlled as intended.

Furthermore, dynamic effects are no longer restricted to just 2-step modulated parameters.

The grandMA3 software has a new effects concept allowing multistep effect sequences to be nested inside a cue or preset. ‘Phasers’, as they are called, are treated just like static parameter values and respect normal programming syntax.

The smaller grandMA3 light

PRODUCTS

Ayrton shines new light with Mistral-TC DEVELOPED WITH applications requiring colour reproduction, improved optical efficiency and compactness in mind, Mistral-TC is the new LED spot and wash light fixture range from Ayrton.

Mistral-TC is a 300W white LED source spot that shares a formfactor with its compact sibling, Merak. It features a new white LED module, calibrated at 7,000K, with CRI greater than 90 and high TM30 readings with an output of over 14,000 lumens. The new 13-lens proprietary optical system delivers a 8:1 zoom ratio with a zoom range of 7° to 53°. The optics, equipped with a 119mm frontal lens, can achieve a uniform flat beam that can render images in different conditions and beam angles.

Mistral-TC includes a CYM colour mixing system combined with a variable CTO and a 7-position complementary colour wheel for producing vivid pastels and saturated colours. The effects section includes

Sola power DESCRIBED AS ‘the industry’s first automated LED luminaire to deliver completely silent operation’, High End Systems has aimed at situations where fixture noise is simply not acceptable with its SolaFrame Theatre. To achieve this feat, the light has been engineered with no

‘the widest array of effects currently available in a fixture of its size’.

A final pair of additions to the Sola family of LED automated lighting fixtures are the SolaWash 2000 and SolaSpot 1000. The flagship SolaWash 2000 luminaire uses a 600W Ultra-Brite LED source, offers

Mistral-TC The SolaFrame family 16 interchangeable HD glass gobos on two wheels: one rotating wheel with seven positions and one fixed wheel with nine positions.

The effects wheel can be used in combination with the two gobo wheels to create graphical effects.

Also bursting onto the scene is Ayrton’s new MiniBurst, a strobe fixture designed with small dimensions. It is a quarter of the size of the MagicBurst and approximately the same size as the MiniPanel-FX at 285mm x 285mm. It features 960 mono-chip, daylight-white LED sources grouped into 16 pixels on a 4x4 matrix and is reportedly capable of emitting 60,000 lumens, with a flicker-free output, making it suited to lighting for video capture. www.ayrton.eu

fans. It also features a high-CRI LED engine, delivers 15,000 field lumens and includes the manufacturer’s fullframe shuttering system.

Staying in the Sola family, SolaFrame 750 has been created for smaller- to medium-sized venues. The fixture offers 11,300 field lumens, 6° to 50° zoom, a rotating gobo wheel plus fully continuous animation. The manufacturer describes it as offering

multiple colour and effects systems and provides a versatile zoom range.

The SolaSpot 1000, meanwhile, has a 440W Ultra-Brite LED engine and specially designed optics. It also offers a rotating animation wheel, fixed gobo and colour wheels, CMY/ CTO system, iris, frost, prism and zoom. www.highend.com

From Aqua to Omega THE AQUA 480 Beam and Omega are the latest products from PR Lighting, producing beams and zoomable blades of light, respectively.

Developed with outdoor use in mind, the IP65-rated Aqua 480 Beam is waterproof with a large aperture beam that can produce beam effects at an angle of 3.1°.

The central illumination is 182,000 Lux at 20m and 81,000 Lux at

Aqua 480 Beam

30m. It can provide a number of effects combined with a CMY linear colour mixing system, and has

18 fixed gobos and seven rotating gobos.

The Omega combines six RGBW 4-in-1 LEDs and is a moving zoom bar effect luminaire. Each pixel can be controlled individually, while the light output can be turned into a dynamic ray of micro beams in the air. www.pr-lighting.com

GLP gets into KNV groove DEVELOPED TO allow designers to build rigid lighting structures, KNV is described by GLP Lighting as being the first frameless modular LED unit on the market to combine strobe, blinder and pixel block.

The KNV Cube and KNV Arc components make up a modular LED system that can be used either as a single unit or combined in an interlocking system. Production designers can use them to create

various structural formations such as double units, quad clusters and large matrixes.

By combining the GLP KNV Arc, it is possible to create various shapes such as rings, wave designs and letters. Combined in a single module, the fixture has the capability to reportedly output 50,000 lumens.

Meanwhile, Impression FR1 features colour mixing and the ability to project a white light with colour temperature

control. Using a single, high-powered 60W homogenised RGBW LED at its core, FR1 has a 3.5° to 34° zoom range, allowing beam control over both short- and long-throw distances.

The fixture features 16-bit dimming and 16-bit position control through 540° of pan and 220° of tilt and bidirectional continuous pan rotation at varying speeds.

Impression FR1

www.glp.de

July–August 2018 WORSHIP AVL 57

PRODUCTS

Chauvet goes Rogue with new fixtures CHAUVET PROFESSIONAL has added two LED spot fixtures to its Rogue series: the 300W LED Rogue R2X Spot (11,000 lumens) and the 170W LED Rogue R1X Spot (6,700 lumens).

The R2X Spot features a 16.5° beam angle, two variable scrolling colour wheels with seven colours and split colour capability, 16-bit dimming, as well as a 3-facet prism and smooth gobo morphing between its dual gobo wheels. This can allow designers to create a number of

shape-changing effects.

The Rogue R1X Spot features a motorised iris and focus for beam shaping, 16-bit dimming, 16° beam angle and a colour wheel that features eight colours, split colour ability and continuous variablespeed scrolling. Its dual gobo wheels have seven interchangeable gobos with a 3-facet prism in place for aerial effects.

Both fixtures are RDM-enabled for remote addressing and troubleshooting, with other features

Versatility key for SGM Light fixtures BUILDING ON its VP Series, the four latest Video Pixel Linear fixtures from SGM Light have been designed to improve direct view, reliability and colour mixing consistency of complex light and video outdoor installations.

The new VPL 305-20 Opal, VPL 30520, VPL 1220-20 Opal and VPL 1220-20 fixtures are suitable for both linear and radial installations and are described by the

manufacturer as being ideal where high visibility and a very flexible setup are essential.

SGM has expanded the imaging area to 6mm x 6mm full colour, increased the pixel brightness and pre-mixed the colours inside the quad cluster. The company’s quadpixel technology, which applies passive thermal management

and implements In-Cluster colour mixing, has also been applied to the VPLs. Additionally, the four fixtures, each with a 19.05mm pixel pitch and a 120° viewing angle, have been developed with the aim of creating powerful pixel-mapping and media effects. The series is available in two different lengths (1,220mm and 305mm) and with either a clear or an opal front glass. The clear lens allows a direct view of sharp pixels with more brightness, while the Opal version offers a soft-frosted look for textures, even light distribution and diffused effects.

With a single multicore cable, it is easy to link up to 79.3m (65 VPL 1220-20 units) in one circuit, creating no gap between connected fixtures. Driven directly by 200 to 240 VAC, the VPLs can reportedly reduce power consumption and installation costs as there is no need for external power supplies.

The new fixtures are compatible with SGM’s VP Processor, VP Administrator software and the company’s latest VP-Net protocol, and, with its 2,000K to 10,000K colour temperature presets, can produce different effects. www.sgmlight.com

58 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

The Rogue Spot Fixtures including Neutrik powerCON power input/output connections for power linking, DMX channel profiles for programming, 3- and 5-pin DMX input/output connections and selectable PWM settings for flickerfree operation on camera. The R2X

offers a selectable LED maximum output, allowing it to match Rogue R2 Spot fixtures that are already in a rig, while the R1X can be matched to existing Rogue R1 Spot units. www.chauvetprofessional.com

A warm glow from GDS

RESPONDING TO customer calls to address the loss of red shift that characterises LED lamps, GDS has introduced its ArcSystem Fade To Warm, which gives users the possibility of exactly mimicking the actions of a tungsten lamp with an LED. According to the manufacturer, tungsten lamps traditionally retain their characteristic warm light temperature upon dimming, but this

feature has been sacrificed when retro-fitting to LED. Fade To Warm had previously been incorporated into the company’s ArcLamp range, providing ‘seamless dimming and fade to warm’. Now, the technology has been rolled out across the whole ArcSystem Pro range. ‘The capacity of an LED lamp to fade to that familiar comforting warm glow had eluded everyone but it remained firmly in our sights. Its application to the ArcLamp range secured the Plasa Award for Sustainability in 2016 and the success of its installation into leading theatres prompted us to apply Fade To Warm across the whole ArcSystem Pro range,’ explained sales director for entertainment, Matthew Lloyd. www.gds.uk.com

Taking house of worship cabling to task TASKER IS targeting houses of worship specifically with its new line of white and transparent A/V cables, designed to blend in with the décor of mosques, churches and temples.

For microphone installations, there’s the C114 dual 0.25mm² spiral shielded cable with a 6.3mm diameter and, for general audio cabling, the C100 series is also available in white or transparent variants, including the C237, C238 and C192TS. For video feeds, the RGB75 mini coaxial lead is an option, as is the RG59, which is better suited for the transmission of high-resolution video.

Should the cabling be required for

the video feed from a security camera, the C227 Komby cable may be more appropriate, comprising a coaxial line and another for controls. www.tasker.it

PRODUCTS

Renkus-Heinz moves up a gear EXPANDING ON its Iconyx steerable arrays line, Renkus-Heinz’ IC8-HD offers the highest definition of all products in its range, while both the IC Live X and IC Live XL deliver even higher SPLs than their predecessor, IC Live. All three models offer the company’s beam steering technology.

The IC8-HD performs beam steering by using 32 discrete amplifier/DSP channels to control its 24 highfrequency drivers and eight 4-inch low-mid woofers. It is compatible with all Iconyx Gen5 modules and reportedly enhances the lowfrequency response.

The IC Live X features two 8-inch woofers and six 1-inch high-frequency compression drivers that are individually controlled and amplified.

Its compact cabinet can be mounted on a tripod stand, pole-mounted above a subwoofer or installed in tall, continuous arrays. Presets allow for point-source use, with softwareadjustable vertical coverage angles.

Going up in scale, the IC Live X can be combined with IC Live XL – which employs four 8-inch woofers – to maximise scalability and flexibility. An

Kubo blends in

IC8-HD unlimited number of arrays can be used for mobile or fixed installations.

THE KUBO Series from Apart Audio is formed of four models: the full-range Kubo3 and Kubo3T, each with a 3-inch woofer, and the Kubo5 and Kubo5T 2-way cabinets, which house 5.25-inch woofers.

The Kubo3 and Kubo3T both offer 40W of power and measure 125mm high x 131mm wide x 109mm deep. The 5 and 5T models measure 155mm x 164mm x 136mm with 80W of power.

The Kubo3 and Kubo5 have an impedance of 81, while their ‘T’ counterparts are 161 versions. The T models also feature a rotatable 70/100V power-tapping selector.

All four models have been designed for easy installation with ‘installer-friendly’ end caps held in

place by 14 integrated neodymium magnets and an ‘In/Link’ connection with euroblock connectors for daisy-chaining multiple units. With a 140° vertical or horizontal installation angle, Kubo speakers can be hung close to walls and ceilings.

Apart Audio has also added to its CM range of ceiling loudspeakers.

The new models include a sealed back can and bass-reflex port to offer a ‘controlled sound performance in any kind of ceiling structure’. They have been tuned to optimise bass and midrange and maintain sonic consistency, as well as to be matched with other models in the series. www.apart-audio.com

www.renkus-heinz.com

Opera goes on the network dBTECHNOLOGIES HAS put networking at the heart of the latest additions to its Opera family of powered 2-way speakers. The Opera Unica series offers networkable capability via Aurora Net control software using the integrated RDNet ports. This allows for a complete EQ, delay and processing customisation and real-time monitoring of the PA system in use.

Away from the networking functionality, the 12-inch and 15-inch members of the Opera Unica feature

12- and 15-inch Opera Unica speakers

a Class-D Digipro G3 amp module capable of delivering up to 1,800W peak. The cabinets offer neodymium woofers, an asymmetrical acoustic design of the HF horn and linearphase FIR filters. The speakers also offer PowerCON In/Link connectors and have a stated SPL value of up to 133dB. Sharing the same Digipro G3 amp module, the Italian manufacturer has also expanded its ES family with the ES1002 biamped active PA system, which comes with a subwoofer and one column top, both powered by the Class-D amp.

The top satellite is equipped with eight 4-inch mid-hi woofers that have been aligned to deliver an asymmetrical vertical coverage pattern.

Each midrange woofer also features a newly designed phaseplug to widen the horizontal coverage.

The sub features two 12-inch woofers in bass-reflex configuration. It is also

60 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

The Sub 612

ES1002 home to the amp module and the control panel. The I/O section allows users to connect up to two inputs (XLR mono and RCA stereo with independent volume controls) and provides a balanced link out to feed a second system or a stage monitor. A

rotary controller with eight EQ presets helps users to tune the system.

Finally, dBTechnologies has also expanded its low-frequency offerings by completing the Sub 600 family. Designed to work with the manufacturer’s smaller full-range systems, such as Opera 10 and B-H 8 and 10, Sub 612 weighs in at 19.8kg. The unit features a 600W RMS Class-D amplifier with SMPS and can deliver sound pressure levels up to 129dB. Controls on the amp panel allow users to operate with a mono or stereo audio feed, activate polarity inversion and choose output link mode (True Bypass or X-Over).

The wooden cabinet also offers Sub Boost Mode switch EQ setting to enhance low-end frequencies. www.dbtechnologies.com

PRODUCTS

Vantec family grows DAS AUDIO’S Vantec-20A is designed for use in arrays of up to five cabinets and specifically for applications that don’t require the long-throw characteristics or power of large line arrays. As well as being flown in an array or stacked on the Vantec-118A subwoofer via the included Click-Lock rigging

hardware, the Vantec-20A can also be deployed as a standalone unit on a speaker stand or tripod with a variable angle pole mount that facilitates an up or down tilt of up to 13.5°.

To further simplify setup in arrays or to align with Vantec-18A and Vantec-118A subwoofers, Vantec-

Vantec-20A

Intelligent power NEXT-PROAUDIO’S DPA4000 power module with DSP is at the core of the manufacturer’s new range of powered speakers. The first cabinet to benefit from this is the LAs418A double 18-inch active reflex subwoofer.

software, it is possible to edit the six pre-loaded presets and store it in one of the two free memories.

Editable parameters are input equalisation, input delay, input high-pass/low-pass filters and the ‘Bass Enhancer’ function. A total

The DPA4000 is a 4,000W RMS, lightweight, Class-D powered amplifier module, with PFC switch mode power supply. The PCcontrolled networkable DSP runs at 24 bit/96kHz and features AD/DA low noise converters. An intelligent automatic standby mode is activated when the amplifier detects no input signal.

The unit provides six factorydefined and two user-defined presets that can be accessed by the front module panel or realtime edited by a PC, using the supplied Soundware II software, via RS-485 or USB remote control. With the Soundware II

of 255 units can be controlled simultaneously by the software.

As for the LAs418A sub itself, it houses two long excursion B&C 18-inch drivers and is capable of delivering down to 24Hz at –10dB. The 89kg, front-loaded, bass-reflex enclosure measures 1,030mm x 516mm x 920mm (WxHxD) and offers a maximum peak SPL of 143dB. The sub incorporates eight handles and is housed within a multi-laminate birch plywood enclosure, finished in a textured black semi-matte coating.

20A includes the DasControl interface, negating the need for external processing. Accessed by an LCD screen on the rear of the enclosure, DasControl facilitates the selection of presets for array size and HF compensation for throw distances. Alternatively, when the Vantec-20A is used by itself, the DasLink app can be used to stream music and remotely monitor and control the system.

The Vantec-20A also features FIR filters for linear phase response and precise impulse response.

Power comes from a 1,500W-peak Class-D amplifier in a biamplified configuration, which drives a DAS12F4C loudspeaker and twin M-60 compression drivers.

As for the companion subwoofer, the Vantec-118A is an active frontloaded bass system that can be flown in arrays or linked together ground stacked. It also houses a

The Vantec-118A companion sub 2,000W-peak Class-D amplifier as well as 24-bit DSP. A ‘Deep-Loud’ EQ switch facilitates the tailoring of the bass output to provide a low, subwoofer-type response via the ‘Deep’ setting or to achieve a ‘louder performance’ when in ‘Loud’ mode.

Controls are found on the rear panel for gain, polarity and a continually variable low-pass filter that ranges from 80Hz to 125Hz. www.dasaudio.com

RCF adds J Series to Evox RCF’S EVOX line of portable PA systems has been expanded with the Evox J Series, which adds an 8-channel digital mixer to the fray with the JMix8 and features a line source satellite module that comprises eight 2-inch full-range drivers paired with a 12-inch woofer in a bass-reflex enclosure. The two models in the Evox J Series, the J8 and JMix8, both feature a smaller footprint than the original Evox models and are in portable enclosures, with the only difference being the addition of the integrated mixer. The Evox design features constant directivity coverage stated to be 120° x 30° (HxV), while the vertical array is progressively shaped to provide consistent sound coverage from the front to the back.

The onboard 8-input mixer in the JMix8 makes use of Z.Core DSP also found in the manufacturer’s M Series

digital mixers to provide a host of mix functions as well as instrument effects and amp simulations, and a companion iOS/Android app also allows users to manage the system remotely. Connections include four combo mic/line inputs, four line inputs, including a Hi-Z input, and a switchable analogue stereo-in/ Bluetooth digital audio receiver.

The integrated DSP manages full loudspeaker processing, FiRPHASE filters, crossover and EQ, soft limiter and dynamic bass boost. Power comes from an internal 1,400W Class-D amplifier, and the mechanical aluminium structure of the amplifier also works to strengthen the unit during transportation and provides fanless heat dissipation. www.rcf.it

www.next-proaudio.com

July–August 2018 WORSHIP AVL 61

PRODUCTS

K&F bolsters speaker catalogue KLING & FREITAG’S Scena 12 aims to create the neutral reproduction of live audio through its monitor speakers as well as low feedback tendency. The system setup for the monitor’s compact dimensions is achieved using the K&F SystemAmps. Using an integrated switch (allocation switching from 1+/1– to 2+/2–), two monitor paths can be set up with just one NL4 cable. On a SystemAmp (PLM+, D-series), up to four monitor paths can be operated with three Scena 12 loudspeakers each. Flexible use is supported by the optional speaker stand flange.

Elsewhere, Vida M is the latest addition to the German

Scena 12

K-ARRAY’S AZIMUT package comprises two 10cm-long Lyzard loudspeakers, a Rumble-KU44-2 subwoofer, a Kommander-KA02 amplifier and a covert remote control. The mid-high speakers feature four ½-inch neodymium transducers to form ultra-micro line arrays.

manufacturer’s Vida line array family.

It features real-time beam steering that offers – apart from sidelobe free beam steering – individual control of each driver and has been optimised for speech. The IP54-rated speaker also offers both horizontal and vertical dispersion thanks to its BEMoptimised Vida waveguide. Control is available via the Vida app.

Ranging in four available sizes between 1.1m and 4.4m, Vida M comes with split beam capability, three different inputs by standard (Dante/AES/analogue) and a GPIO interface. Its mounting bracket is described by the company as being able to fit all sizes. www.kling-freitag.com

IS-Series gets to the point ADAMSON SYSTEMS Engineering has added a pair of point source speakers to its IS-Series of installfocused loudspeakers. The IS7p and IS10p in many ways replicate the series’ IS7 and IS10 line array cabinets.

However, both are 2-way point source cabinets with newly designed rotatable waveguides that are available with nominal dispersion

The IS10p and IS7p

Discretion key for K-array

patterns of 70° x 40° or 100° x 50°. These have been designed to provide a smooth transition from onto off-axis positions and a ‘natural sound’ without diffraction or lobing.

The full-range capabilities of the IS7p and IS10p can negate the need for a subwoofer in certain applications.

The IS7p features two 161, ND7-LM16 7-inch Kevlar low-mid drivers and an NH3-8 1.4-inch, 81 exit compression driver. The IS10p contains the same exit compression driver and a pair of ND10-LM 161, 10-inch Kevlar low-mid drivers. The drivers are housed within cabinets made from marine-grade birch plywood and aircraft-grade aluminium and steel.

SpeakON NL4 connectors are equipped as standard, while barrier strips are fitted on the alternative IS7pb and IS10pb models. The plate-andscrew rigging system present on four faces of the enclosure adds flexibility for installation. www.adamsonsystems.com

62 WORSHIP AVL July–August 2018

Azimut speaker The system’s two Lyzards are for horizontal coverage, while there is also an option to expand those loudspeakers up to six should more coverage and power be needed. At only 10cm deep, the Rumble-KU44-2 subwoofer can be integrated in its surroundings, including furniture and walls.

The system is also equipped with a wired remote control that allows volume control, Bluetooth management and the option to manage playlists. A LAN network can be installed

to control multiple rooms equipped with Azimut.

The Kommander-KA02 features analogue inputs and fibre optical input as well as plug-and-play capabilities with Bluetooth connectivity, USB ports and minijack input. Online streaming songs are available via the Azimut app which also has control for all the amplifier functions.

Meanwhile, the Capture-KMC20 is made up of eight 4mm cardioid capsules aligned in a line array configuration and is described by K-array as being the smallest line array microphone on the market featuring Pure Array Technology.

With a thickness of 6mm, the microphone aims to offer discretion for a variety of applications, including houses of worship. It is also said to have minimal variation of gain with distance and the capability to reduce noise behind the speaker when mounted both horizontally and vertically. Its frame is shaped from a 6mm x 6mm solid square brass bar using a milling cutter with bits less than 2mm in radius. www.k-array.com

The Capture-KMC20 microphone

Audix takes Micros to the install market AUDIX HAS called on its Micros hypercardioid condenser capsule for its M62 and M65 microphones.

More commonly found in musical applications, Micros technology is based on the circuit of the American manufacturer’s SCX series.

The M62 boundary microphone combines the Micros capsule with a patent-pending internal shock-mount suspension system. The mic has been tailored for vocal clarity and designed with logic remote or local programmable on–off switching and dual colour LED status indicators. It also has an off-set button for

interference-free operation, as well as a tail out or tail down cable exit to accommodate a variety of installation or mounting requirements.

The M65 desktop mic features a rigid tube construction, swivel mount which allows it to be laid horizontally when not in use, attached foam windscreen and black nickel-plating. www.audixusa.com

PRODUCTS

Atlona makes Gains

Changing the boundary

ATLONA’S NEW generation of wired and networked amplifiers has been designed to be compact, affordable and energy-efficient. Known as the Gain Series, it currently comprises three models: the Gain 60 (ATGAIN-60), Gain 120 (AT-GAIN-120) and Gain 120NET (AT-GAIN-120NET).

BEYERDYNAMIC HAS updated the boundary mic included in its TG Drum Set mic kits. The four new sets in the family (Pro S, Pro M, Pro L and Pro XL) will now include the TG D71 boundary instead of the previously supplied TG D50 or TG D70 bass drum microphone.

The TG D71 is a professional boundary microphone that works as a pressure gradient receiver and has a half-cardioid polar pattern. The condenser capsule (back electret) transmits frequencies of 25Hz to 20kHz and can handle a maximum SPL of 148dB. A 3-pin XLR connector is provided for transporting both the audio signal and the phantom power required for operation – the correct power supply is signalled via a red status LED. The mic weighs 413g and has dimensions of 90mm x 86mm x 27mm. According to the manufacturer, this makes it ‘perfectly suited for use in a bass drum, but also for various other applications’.

The TG D71’s microphone housing reportedly guarantees protection

encoders. The Gain 60, meanwhile, is UL 2043-rated for placement into assembly spaces and is suited for environments in which highimpedance systems are limited to 24V. The Gain 60 offers two channels of 30W into 41 or 81, as well as 60W (mono) at 24V, 70V or 100V. Both Gain 120 models offer 60W into 41 or 81 and 120W (mono) at 70V or 100V. Output modes are selected via a switch on the back panel.

Gain 60 All three offer low- and highimpedance outputs, RS-232 and Ethernet control, front panel metering and convection cooling.

Dual-impedance operation is also available on the amplifiers, allowing for simplified management.

The Gain 120NET includes an AES67 and Dante dual-channel audio bridge for inputting two channels over a network from a DSP, as well as Atlona’s OmniStream A/V

Gain 120 Atlona has also released the AT-HDVS-210U-TX-WP wall plate switcher. It is described by the manufacturer as ‘the industry’s first HDBaseT-compatible switcher/ transmitter with direct USB-C input support’. It is a 2x1 switcher with support included for HDMI connectivity. www.atlona.com

beyerdynamic’s Pro XL Drum Set now includes the TG D71 boundary mic against damage during day-to-day, on-stage use and, thanks to its construction, it can be positioned in the bass drum without additional fixings. The rubberised underside ensures a non-slip grip on smooth surfaces and a mounting device is provided for fixed installations. www.beyerdynamic.com

MADI Interfaces & Preamps

MADI This is Reinvented what perfect sound looks like

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MADIface XT

OctaMic XTC

394-Channel 192 kHz USB 3.0 Audio Interface · · · ·

196 Input / 198 Output channels 2 x MADI I/O optical 1 x MADI I/O coaxial 2 x Analog Mic/Line Preamp Input (XLR/TRS)

· 4 x Analog OutputThe LR18 pro-ribbon line-array · 8 x Mic/Line Preamps · 1 x MADI I/O optical combines a superb directivity (Main XLR + Phones) x PAD, 4 x Hi-Z switchable) · MIDI I/O over DIN, USB and MADI control and throw with a (4 fully intuitive linear response with · 1 x AES/EBU I/O via breakout cable · 2 The x Stereo Analog Outputs · Remote controllable over MADI industry’s lowest distortion.

LR18 enables a 1:1 reproduction · 1 x MIDI I/O via breakout · 4 x AES/EBU I/O · Word Clock I/O with SteadyClock of thecable original sound source, due to Alcons’ multiple-patented · 3 x virtual MIDI I/O via MADI I/O · 1 x ADAT I/O (2 x out S/MUX) · USB compliant audio (24 channels)

More Information:

www.alcons.audio

www.rme-audio.com

Digitally controlled Mic Preamp with Multi-Format I/O

38 WORSHIP AVL July-August 2017

pro-ribbon transducer technology.

But don’t take our word for it: The LR18 was recently tested in Germany. Read it on our website.

Man-made Sound Corporate Headquarters Asia / Australia: RME Trading Ltd. office@rme-trading.hk

July–August 2018 WORSHIP WORSHIP AVL 67 63 May–June 2018 January–February 71

PRODUCTS

Work Pro adds Bluetooth control TOA toes the line on simplicity TOA CORPORATION has expanded its line of 16-channel UHF wireless microphone systems by introducing the Trantec S4.10 in an effort to make multichannel wireless as simple as possible. The new plugand-play system replaces the Trantec S4.16. With a 5-year warranty, the Trantec S4.10 has a metal frame, simple interface and is described by the company as being able to work within a multitude of applications.

The S4.10 series works in the 500MHz band frequency and is available with the RXA receiver and the choice of dynamic handheld mic or lapel microphone with beltpacks, both of which contain the IR Sync function, numerical LED display

and have adjustable sensitivity. The receiver uses diversity technology and phase-lock-look quartz tuning, allowing the user to manually select from any of the available 16 channels, or search for an available frequency. The system can operate with up to 16 selectable frequencies and up to 16 simultaneous channels (dependent on region). This feature allows for multiple connections.

A frequency scan function can be used to find the right channel, while the manufacturer describes its IR Sync auto channel set up function as establishing the best channel connection. www.toa.jp

Ashly puts DigiMix in the rack

ASHLY AUDIO has made its DigiMix series of digital mixing consoles rack-mountable with the DigiMix 18 by including rack rails with the mixer as standard. Joining the DigiMix 24, the DigiMix 18, which can also be used as a desktop mixer, features 18 inputs and 12 output busses. It also offers optional Dante and USB digital I/O cards with up to 30 digital outputs and 18 digital inputs.

While these features are unique to the new member of the family, the DigiMix 18 shares a number of common features with its 24-input sibling. These include 16 Class-A mic pres, eight auxiliary channels, an intelligent meter bridge that displays input level for channels 1 to 16 or the channel volume fader position, six DCA/Mute groups, a variety of equalisation and dynamics processing options, two effects engines and auto-mixing functionality.

Further shared features are the 7-inch LCD touchscreen interface and single intelligent fader that can be used for any channel. Control is also possible via an iPad app.

The PA 200 MX doubles the power output of the PA 100 MX A PAIR of Work Pro installation products have become the first from the manufacturer to offer app-based control via Bluetooth.

The Spanish manufacturer’s PA 100 MX installation amplifier and MD 82 AX auto-mixer have both been updated to include the technology.

The PA 100 MX is a half-rack, 3-input 100W installation amplifier with two line inputs and one mic input, a built-in feedback destroyer and a switchable low-impedance (4/81) or 70/100V output. As well as adding Bluetooth control, the new PA 200 MX doubles the power output of the PA 100 MX to 200W while offering all of the features of the original. The MD 82 AX MkII also retains all the functions of the original auto-mixer (auto-mixing with a selectable target level and switchable phantom power for up to eight mic channels with full bass, mid and treble EQ, a 4-level automatic feedback destroyer function and high-pass filtering) but with all of these features

now additionally accessible and controllable via Bluetooth.

The Bluetooth control is via an app for iOS or Android devices and adds to the existing RJ-45-based network control. The user interface controls all the major features on the PA 200 MX including mic

The PA 200 MX control app channel input gain, the settings on the feedback destroyer, and output gain and those of the MD 82 AX MkII. Presets for two complete system configurations on the amplifier and three for the auto-mixer can be stored via the app and recalled remotely when required. www.workproaudio.com

The MD 82 AX MkII www.ashly.com

Adapting to Dante AUDINATE HAS entered the hardware market with a family of endpoint adaptors to connect analogue equipment onto a Dante network. The Dante AVIO series features six members including line-in and line-out analogue adapters, a bidirectional AES3/EBU adapter and a bidirectional stereo USB adapter.

The AVIO adapters act as an independent Dante network device.

The analogue adapters are available as dedicated inputs or outputs with one or two channels of audio. Analogue input adapters allow equipment such as mixers, mic preamps and stage DIs to connect to a Dante audio network, while the analogue output HKHW[LYZ JHU KYP]L HTWSPÄLYZ powered speakers or recorders.

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The USB adapter connects any computer to a Dante audio network without additional software, providing stereo input and output that can be used by any audio application. Meanwhile, the AES3

adapter provides stereo input and output for AES3-connected DSPs, mixers, compressors and preamps. www.audinate.com

PRODUCTS

Sennheiser caters to all budgets SENNHEISER HAS expanded its XS Wireless 1 series for customers with smaller budgets. The EM-XSW 1 Dual is a 2-channel receiver available separately or as part of two XSW 1 Dual sets that combine with two wireless microphones using either the e 825 or e 835 capsule. It features automatic frequency management with 1-touch synchronisation, antenna switching diversity and icon-based controls. Each receiver has up to 10 compatible, preset channels in eight frequency banks, and provides balanced XLR and unbalanced jack outputs. The sets are available in various frequency ranges within the UHF band.

microphone system’s EM 6000 receivers. The update enables a command function that lets users set up a talkback channel XS Wireless 1 Dual receiver The new version of the Control Cockpit, meanwhile, offers control of SpeechLine Digital Wireless along with further microphone systems, which now includes the Digital 6000, Evolution Wireless G3 and the Evolution Wireless G4 series.

The update is available from the manufacturer’s website.

A free update is also available for the Digital 6000 wireless

Firmware update 2.0 for Digital 6000 with suitable transmitters. Finally, the EM 6000 Dante has also been upgraded to now feature a secondar y Dante por t.

Control Cockpit

www.sennheiser.com

Dynacord goes permanently big with IPX

FOLLOWING THE release of Dynacord’s C Series amplifiers, the German manufacturer is bringing the same technology to mid- and large-sized permanent installations with its new IPX series of multichannel amplifiers that incorporate an Omneo IP networking architecture.

The series comprises three 4-channel models and one 8-channel model, offering a stated

power density of 5kW, 10kW or 20kW from a single amplifier with all channels driven: IPX5:4 (4x1,250W at 41), IPX10:8 (8x1,250W @ 41), IPX10:4 (4x2,500W @ 41) and IPX20:4 (4x5,000W @ 41). This is as a result of several power drive options utilising Dynacord’s patented VLD (Variable Load Drive) technology as well as newly developed parallel

‘ultra-low latency and a superior signal-to-noise ratio’. The three DSP blocks are split into user, array and speaker processing controls, each featuring a range of equalisation, delay, level options and asymmetric filters to adapt to different applications. Complete remote control and supervision is available via the Iris-Net software.

and bridged parallel operation modes. VLD technology (IPX5:4 and IPX10:8) allows the available output power of 1,250W per channel to be used at either 41 or 81, or via 70V or 100V lines in direct drive mode.

Additionally, the IPX series offers 96kHz digital signal processing for internal analogueto-digital conversion with what the manufacturer describes as

www.dynacord.com

IPX10:8 rear

DiGiCo is for real DIGICO’S 4REA4 processing engine and 4REA4 control software combine to offer routing, processing and mix control. The processing engine rack comprises four dedicated mix zones, each possessing a stereo master output, CGs and allocated effects. With 128 input channels and 48 bus output processing strips, users can allocate processing to zones as required.

The 4REA4 system includes a series of hardware control panels and external I/O units to handle the mixing and routing of each individual zone. These work in conjunction with the processing engine and control software to offer Ethernet connected control. Options include the wall-

DiGiCo’s 4REA4 solution

mounted, single-rotary AControl1 with a TFT display for managing small performance areas, the AControl6, featuring six ‘Push-n-Turn’ rotary

encoders and 18 soft touch panel keys, and the AControl8, designed for more complex mixing and control with eight 100mm motorised faders.

For managing local I/O boxes an extended distance away via Ethernet or Dante, options include the A168 Stage floor rack and the A164 Wall LCD box, both of which offer mic and line-level connectivity to reportedly ensure 96kHz audio is delivered across a venue. The 4REA4 system is completed by the A88 GPIO, a general-purpose I/O interface for integrated control of remote thirdparty hardware such as EVAC alarms and theatre automation systems, and the AStar interface, which extends the number of expander I/O units that can be connected across a local area running on a single cable, providing four 32x32 connections. www.digico.biz

July–August 2018 WORSHIP AVL 65

PRODUCTS

Vaddio’s new video ventures MediaMaster merges and blends

VADDIO’S LATEST A/V production switcher is said by the manufacturer to be the first in the industry to bring live event productions to unified communications applications.

The AV Bridge MatrixMix Multipurpose AV Switcher’s latest feature set offers combined switching, advanced camera control, streaming and graphics mixing capabilities. Users can also live stream it to a UCC application.

Customised solutions can be achieved when pairing the switcher to the PCC MatrixMix camera controller and TeleTouch 27 USB touchscreen multiviewer, plus Vaddio cameras, audio devices or trigger sensors. It is also an 8x2 video mixer, while its 11x7 audio mixer supports analogue, HDMI, USB and IP audio channels. The AV Bridge MatrixMix has embedded RTSP IP and USB 3.0 output streaming as well as two graphic keying layers per output channel.

In other news, Vaddio has also introduced RoboTrak, which is the company’s latest automated presenter tracking system. Based on an IR tracking algorithm, the

VERSION 5.2 of ArKaos’ MediaMaster real-time video control software brings an array of new features, including DMX Merge and Pixel Blending functionality.

fixture, defining the colour output.

The new Pixel Blending capability makes use of MediaMaster’s existing Blending functionality to blend the colour output of a lighting

DMX Merge facilitates the combination of parameters such as pan and tilt from a lighting console and video sources from MediaMaster. For example, a light with LED rings can be panned or tilted into specific positions simultaneously to pre-defined, pixel-mapping effects. The function also allows a lighting console to generate an Art-Net stream to control the pan/tilt functionality, which MediaMaster then receives to work on the LED colour values, and replace them as the lighting designer decides how he wishes the blending to occur, utilising the new Pixel Blending. The merged result is finally sent to the lighting

console. The functionality is also associated with the new Art-Net merging capacity to enable effects to be triggered via MediaMaster.

A pair of DMX channels define the operation, the colours are mixed by the console and then rendered by MediaMaster. Other new features of MediaMaster 5.2 include KlingNet Draft Devices, which allows for remote show preparation, disconnected from the physical devices, Extended Fixture Creation for supporting complete DMX Devices such as moving heads with pan/tilt and 64-bit support for all applications.

The RoboTrak user simply wears a lanyard and the RoboTrak tracks him/her. It can be paired with any RoboShot camera.

Operational distance ranges from 3.5m to 15m and within a height range of 2m to 4.5m. Optimised for large venues, it can pair with any RoboShot camera while the RoboTrak lanyard is said to last up to 40 hours on a single battery charge. www.vaddio.com

www.arkaospro.com

The AV Bridge MatrixMix

Calibration and visualisation take centre stage THE r15 software release from disguise has camera-based calibration and a new visualisation renderer as its key features.

OmniCal is the camera-based projector calibration engine. Using

a network of either iPod Touch or wired Ethernet machine vision cameras, the engine captures a point cloud of the stage, calibrates projectors to what the manufacturer describes as ‘sub-pixel accuracy’

and conforms pre-existing surface meshes to match reality.

The visualisation renderer, has been named Lux. The manufacturer states that this ‘offers a more accurate simulation of light levels,

camera exposure and occlusion than ever before’. VR support for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift platforms is also included as part of Lux. www.disguise.one

Kramer’s next-generation extension KRAMER’S SECOND-GENERATION extension technology, DGKat 2.0, is featured in the PT-871/872 transmitter and receiver pair and has been developed with installation simplicity in mind. They support 4K HDR, HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 signals and 2-way powering over twisted pair. This latest solution delivers video signals up to 40m over copper cables at up to 4K@60Hz (4:4:4) 24bpp video resolution.

VP-428H2 Requiring only a single cable for both the signal and the power, the PT871/872 also has Kramer Intelligent EDID Processing.

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Meanwhile, Kramer has also been busy with additions to its scaling technology in the shape of VP-428H2.

The VP-428H2 is an HDBaseT 4K

transmitter/scaler with HDMI, DP and VGA inputs and supports HDBaseT tunnelling of Ethernet, bidirectional RS-232 and IR signals. It receives the selected A/V signal, upscales, downscales or bypasses the video, according to the settings selected by the user, and converts it for sending via HDBaseT, together with the tunnelled data and PoE. www.kramerav.com

PRODUCTS

Roland combines video switching and PTZ control

THE XS-62S has been designed

by Roland to save space in smaller facilities and to serve as a portable solution for outside events. It is an integrated 6-channel video switcher and audio mixer combined with PTZ camera control capabilities and built for recording, broadcast and streaming video. The 1U device can be operated by a single user via its front panel controls or remotely from a PC, Mac or programmable interface.

Six channels can be switched between four SDI inputs that feature a de-interlacer along with scaled HDMI and RGB inputs as well as two still images stored in internal memory. A pair of SDI and two HDMI outputs can be assigned as programme, preview or auxiliary busses, while the multiview output

displays all six video input sources, two still images and programme and preview outputs with audio meters.

from the six video inputs. It also includes the manufacturer’s 8-channel discrete analogue audio embedding capability, allowing the selection of which audio source to embed separately to SDI outputs one and two.

An RS-422 port provides PTZ control along with an RS-232 connector for remote control from a touch panel or other programmable interface device. A USB port is included for still image uploads and

bus; it is aimed at use for when the operator is in the space as the main unit.

Finally, Matrix mode is the mode

Rear view of the XS-62S A trio of switching modes are available on the XS-62S. PGM/ PST mode operates as a traditional video switcher, facilitating the grouping of multiple images with independent assignment to the aux bus to support additional displays.

Dissolve mode offers video switching and composition with cross-dissolve to the programme bus and provides an additional aux

Roland recommends for switching simultaneously with audio mixing and controlling PTZ cameras.

It enables the assignment of individual video input signals to different destinations on three busses with fade-to-black switching.

The audio mixer aspect of the XS62S features 18 channels, four TRS jacks and an RCA stereo pair, as well as audio de-embed functionality

for saving programme files. PTZ camera control functionality includes 1-touch recall of preset camera positions and angles and, combined with the audio auto-mixer, allows the operator to focus on switching video. Crosspoint buttons are backlit with brightness control for use in varying light. proav.roland.com

6+7 NOV 2018 !AUDACIOUS

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BOOK YOUR SPACE NOW: LYNDSEY@MARKEDEVENTS.CO.UK July–August 2018 WORSHIP AVL 67

PRODUCTS

Hitachi smooths the transition HITACHI KOKUSAI is making the move to UHD with the CUHD1300F-S1, an HDTV camera control unit with 4K, 12G-SDI output that transforms 1080p to Ultra HD with support for High Dynamic Range (HDR). Building on the feature set of the original CU-HD1300F, the CU-HD1300F-S1 combines SMPTE fibre transport and multi-format HDTV support with intercom, teleprompter return and additional signal connectivity in a 2U unit. The CUHD1300F-S1 can output natively acquired 1080p video as 4K/UHD over single-link 12Gbps SDI or quadlink 3G-SDI connectivity.

The 4K output functionality of the CU-HD1300F-S1 is compatible with all fibre-equipped, 1080p Hitachi Z-series and SK-series cameras, and supports HDR when used with HDRenabled camera models including the Z-HD5500 and the SK-HD1300.

The new CCU can also be used with interlaced Hitachi camera models for HDTV output.

The CU-HD1300FT-S1 offers all of the capabilities of its fibre-only

HIitachi’s SK-UHD4000 sibling, plus Hitachi Kokusai’s fourthgeneration digital triax system for long-distance triax transport of HDTV signals. The dual-cable model offers similar 4K output capabilities when used with fibre-connected cameras.

Hitachi is aiding the transition to HDR with an optional firmware upgrade for its SK-UHD4000 4K

www.hitachi-kokusai.co.jp

Captioning the stream TELESTREAM HAS responded to the need for live closed captions within multiscreen applications by adding integrated live caption encoding to its Lightspeed Live Stream, creating a ‘one-box-solution’ for captioning to multiple streams.

The solution encodes the live captions within the original stream as opposed to a cloud-based

Ultra HD camera system. The new firmware option allows separate video shading adjustments for HDR and SDR outputs, enabling users to select from multiple HDR profiles alongside SDR simultaneously with the same camera. New optional 12Gbps SDI output capabilities for the accompanying CU-HD4000 CCU have also been added to its existing quadlink SDI interface.

approach which would see content moved to the cloud, captioned, then re-encoded and re-streamed for delivery. Telestream believes that taking this approach will reduce the opportunity for human and mechanical error. Housed in a 1U enclosure, Lightspeed Live Stream uses standard captioning protocols to receive caption data.

Vantage7 The manufacturer has also announced significant enhancements to its Avid integration in the 7.1 version of Vantage. Avid

Production Asset Monitor in Vantage supports MediaCentral directory monitoring allowing Vantage to trigger jobs from MediaCentral ‘virtual directories’. In related news, the 2.3 version of Lightspeed Live Capture streamlines ingest for Avid workflows by creating Avid OPAtom MXF media with associated AAF files and automatically checking assets into Interplay or MediaCentral. www.telestream.net

A new Apex

Switching in 4K at 60fps

THE APEX 0.9mm LED videowall is the latest addition to Christie’s Velvet Apex Series, facilitating resolution scaling in a smaller square-metre area while reducing the optimum and minimum viewing distances. This allows the intended audience to see content clearly at a closer distance.

The Apex 0.9mm model is configured to a 16:9 aspect ratio and possesses a remote and redundant power supply. It is front serviceable, allowing engineers to fix or maintain the videowall without having to take it down to access the rear. Christie also states that the system offers advanced monitoring capability via SNMP. In addition, Christie has launched the Velvet CorePlus LED range of videowalls as a ‘value-priced’ solution.

Available in pixel pitches from 1.2mm to 4.0mm, the single architecture scales to popular resolutions up to 4K and they are customisable with myriad remote and onboard options. Velvet CorePlus LED systems can also be installed and serviced from either the front or back.

NEWTEK’S TRICASTER TC1 and NewTek IP Series VMC1 are described by the manufacturer as ‘the only production switchers on the market capable of true IP, 4K, 60fps for 16- and 44-channel video switching, respectively’.

The TC1 facilitates switching, streaming and recording in HD, 3G, and 4K UHD 60p, as well as native software-driven processing, full camera coverage and multi-source video mixing with 16 external inputs and four M/Es. Integrated video

Christie Velvet CorePlus LED In other news, Christie’s Boxer 3DLP projector has become the first projector to deliver a direct interface with a SDVoE system over a 10G Ethernet. ‘Christie Boxer is the first projector that integrates directly to an Ethernet network to accept realtime, 4K/60 A/V content and control using SDVoE,’ said Curtis Lingard, senior product manager at Christie.

‘The input board supports onboard processing and eliminates the need to purchase an external SDVoE receiver, and install, wire and power it locally to the projector.’ www.christiedigital.com

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servers enable playback, replay and live editing without any additional hardware, while multichannel ISO recordings can be made to fullresolution QuickTime and H.264 files for VOD, postproduction and archive.

NewTek has also released new features for its Connect Spark converters and the NDI PTZ camera, made available through a free software update. . www.newtek.com

TriCaster TC1

PRODUCTS

Playing with UHD FOR THOSE upgrading to ultra HD content and planning to run video content for extended periods of time, AV Stumpfl has developed the UHD Player system, a solid-state solution that can play files with a 4K resolution of 4096x2160 at 60fps, using the H.265 codec.

UHD Player

The UHD Player system is designed for 24/7 use. Multiple units can be frame synchronised over IP networks via a dedicated synchronisation protocol. For HOWs with bilingual congregations, users can switch between different multi-language audio tracks while a video is running.

Meanwhile, designed to enable a faster set up time while lowering maintenance requirements and the total cost of ownership (TCO), AV Stumpfl has created a prototype projection accessory compatible with its Monoblox32 and MonoClip32 projection screen frames, making it suited for use with its entire 32mm

Wings Vioso RX 2.0 screen system catalogue. Christened the T-32 Shift, it is a projection screen leg that enables one person to adjust the mobile projection height alone, without having to disassemble it first. The T-32 Shift features a

height scale that negates the need for extra measuring to ensure that the frame is level.

The Austrian A/V technology manufacturer has also made the Wings Vioso RX 2.0 software available for download. A key feature of this release is a hot backup option that allows users to specify hot backup clients for multiple play-out clients. By acquiring all the information needed to replace the play-out client during playback, all necessary media files are also copied to the hot backup client. In the event that the play-out client fails, the hot backup client replaces the play-out client without the need to edit IP addresses. www.avstumpfl.com

Panasonic puts spotlight on 4K+ projectors THE PT-RZ120 and PT-RZ870 from Panasonic are the latest filter-less 1-chip DLP dual-drive laser phosphor projectors in the PT-RZ770 series.

Identical in resolution (WUXGA, 1920x1200) and contrast ratio (10,000:1), the only difference is the 12,000 lumens of the PT-RZ120 compared to the 8,500 lumens of the PT-RZ870.

The projectors’ sync function can enable control of dynamic contrast and shutter functions across a network of projectors, synchronising from a master projector. Both projectors support 4K video signal input via a single cable using Digital Link or an HDMI terminal, and are further geared towards pro installations with 3G-SDI joining HDMI, DVI-D, 5BNC, D-Sub and RS232C connections.

PT-RZ120 Expanding on Panasonic’s Solid Shine Laser series, the PT-MZ770 lens-interchangeable laser phosphor projectors (PT-MZ770/L and PTMW730/L) provide 7,500 lumens and feature an airtight dust-resistant optical unit, portability, 1-way airflow and a reusable eco-filter. Other features include a 27dB quiet mode and quick start/quick off. The inclusion of Panasonic’s LinkRay

Vitec in vital expansion and upgrade VITEC HAS expanded and upgraded its range in hardwarebased HEVC encoders, video distribution systems as well as IPTV and digital signage solutions.

Developed to manage and drive complex videowall setups, the EZ TV IPTV and digital signage platform has been given a functionality upgrade for the videowall and DRM system. The new platform is now interoperable with the latest content protection and DRM standards required for IPTV.

With regards to the IPTV capabilities, the new release includes time-shifted TV, a new mobile app for iOS and Android devices that allows users to stream content from on location during special events back to the house of worship in addition to playing IPTV content, real-time enhancement of HEVC streams delivered over lossy networks, and TAA-compliant end-points.

Meanwhile, the MGW Ace Encoder firmware v2.0 provides HEVC video quality of up to 4:2:2

transmission technology allows the possibility for digital signage.

Also coming onto the scene in the Solid Shine Laser series is PTRQ22K, which provides brightness levels of 21,000 lumens and 4K+ (5120x3200) resolution.

Complementing the PT-RQ32K and PT-RQ13K, the PT-RQ22K also offers BT.2020 emulation, supports premium HDR video content playback

10-bit HEVC encoding and is said by the company to surpass its closest competitor by 20% when

The MGW Diamond Encoder meeting quality requirements for broadcast applications.

Along with delivering video streams and low latency (down to 160ms

and has a dual light engine, and can switch to a backup video signal instantaneously if a primary source goes down.

The PT-VW360 3LCD projector is capable of 4,000 lumens of brightness at WXGA. The highcontrast imaging screens up to 300 inches, while boosting contrast to 20,000:1 is capable courtesy of its iris mechanism. The manufacturer says its 3.3kg weight has been specifically designed for people needing to carry projectors from room to room. Features include a flexible 1.6x zoom lens, curved screen, quiet operation (28dB), focus, screen-fitting, wall-colour compensation and corner keystone correction. pro-av.panasonic.net

glass-to-glass when paired with the MGW Ace Decoder), the latest version features a new interface that allows users to enhance video streams with several pre-configured profiles to match their application.

Elsewhere, Vitec’s MGW Diamond Encoder and Playout Server are the latest point-to-point HEVC distribution solutions. The MGW Diamond Encoder adds quadchannel HEVC encoding in a compact and portable form factor to the HEVC series, while the Playout Server provides a platform to manage, capture, preview and distribute IPTV streams. www.vitecgroup.com

July–August 2018 WORSHIP AVL 69

THE TECH VIEW

St Andrew’s Church, Paddock Wood This Anglican and Methodist church isn’t afraid to try something different to engage with its congregation Carlton Andrews and John Dean at St Andrew’s Church

THOSE VISITING ST ANDREW’S Church in the small Kentish town of Paddock Wood for a special occasion, a Baptism perhaps, have their attention drawn immediately to the motorised projection screen hanging from the wall down one side of the church. A video plays from the rear NEC projector asking that the congregation switch their phones off, warning that if your phone goes off during the sermon, you go to hell. A man, whose phone has gone off in the video, explodes in his pew.

‘That video is from YouTube, playing from a laptop, next to the sound desk at the back of the church,’ explains Carlton Andrews, the church’s volunteer A/V manager.

‘We only play that one during special services that attract extra visitors, but it gets their attention even if it is tongue-in-cheek.’ Appealing to the congregation’s sense of humour is just one way in which the church uses technology to engage with those who visit.

‘All of the content for our services is managed on the laptop using Creation Software’s SongPro,’ notes

Creation Software’s SongPro manages content during services John Dean, who provides IT support and volunteers his time at the church.

‘It’s designed to import songs and hymns, Bible passages, liturgical text, PowerPoint presentations and videos, allowing our team of volunteers to put together a complete service.’

‘It’s really easy to use, which was important to us,’ adds Mr Andrews.

‘If one of the team is away, it allows another member of the congregation to step in and run the service without overwhelming them. It also means that we can plan our services well in advance so that when we get to 10am on a Sunday morning, we are ready to go. We always remind our ministry team and any guest speakers that we want content in advance so that there’s no rushing around 15 minutes before the

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congregation files in. If there is a lastminute change, or a speaker comes to us with some additional content, then we have a VGA connection point for them to plug their own laptop in beside the lectern.’

St Andrew’s has been at the heart of its local community since 1851.

‘The building as it stands now was built in the 1950s, after the original church was destroyed during the Second World War,’ says Mr Dean. ‘We had a complete overhaul of the A/V equipment about five or six years ago and upgraded a lot of our setup then.’

‘That included the Yamaha FOH console and the installation of four Wharfedale Pro loudspeakers,’ Mr Andrews recalls. ‘We retained our existing compact JBL speakers.

What really helped us to achieve intelligibility throughout the church though was the dbx DriveRack PA loudspeaker control system. The installer set that up and we never touch it as he got it just so.’

The ministry team and speakers are often very animated during services.

Although the switch to wireless mics allowed speakers to roam while talking to the congregation, there was still an ongoing concern. ‘Our original wireless microphones were TOA transmitters and lapel mics that the speaker clipped onto their

clothing,’ says Mr Andrews. ‘However, when delivering a presentation, they would keep turning their necks to look towards the screen, facing away from the mic. To allow them the freedom to turn their heads without losing their voice, we switched to headset microphones, initially opting for a discreet, white model. But those were fragile and kept breaking, so we invested in more robust TOA headsets with a windshield, which are much sturdier. It means everyone can see that the speaker is wearing a microphone but, in this day and age, everyone knows the purpose the technology serves and it doesn’t jar with anyone. It’s the same as when we installed the projector screen; when not in use, it can be swung back against the side wall, out of view, but we tend to just leave it now, as the congregation has grown used to the sight of it.’

An Ampetronic induction loop assistive listening system was installed several years ago and serves its purpose of beaming words and music to the hearing aids of the hard of hearing. ‘We also record the audio from our services to a handful of rewritable CDs that we deliver each week to those who are too ill to attend,’ notes Mr Andrews. ‘We haven’t looked at streaming services online yet as it’s not been asked for.’

‘We also have a screen in the lobby that displays content from SongPro during services, as well as announcements,’ concludes Mr Dean. ‘We don’t have a camera installed at present as we don’t currently need one, but we’ve had the connections installed on the balcony of the organ loft at the rear of the church as a future-proofing measure.’

The technical setup at St Andrew’s is ever evolving as the needs of its congregants change. www.standrewspw.org.uk

Mosque sound made simple Pray with faith

“IACAD is pleased with results in development of sound system MX-6224D for Mosques from TOA, This partnership yielded a significant development of distinctive sound system for the mosques. This was achieved by dedication of engineers on both sides to add improvements which is the result of experience accumulated over 30 years.”

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MX-6224D Digital Mixer Amplifier Introducing the MX-6224D, the latest digital mixer amplifier designed specifically for mosques.

The MX-6224D incorporates DSP function and a two channel class-D amplifier. An optional remote controller is also available, making it simple and easy to use. The MX-6224D is the perfect choice for your mosque.

We supply sound, not equipment. www.toa.com.sg I TOAasiapacific www.toa.eu I TOAeurope www.toa.jp (TOA Global)

Calvary Church - Napierville, IL

ENGAGE YOUR CONGREGATION SOUND SOLUTION FOR HOUSES OF WORSHIP

L-Acoustics systems are renowned for their uniform, full-range, natural sound. Our flexible, lightweight systems project crystal clear sound to your congregation, avoiding reverberant architecture. From the front row to the very back, your worshippers will never miss the message. Generous power ensures each congregant has the feeling of being in the heart of your music. Let our sound systems help you achieve maximum engagement for your house of worship. www.l-acoustics.com