At Sugar Creek Baptist Church we just opened a new Family Center. In this new building we have about four rooms with media support and the two larger rooms have Yamaha digital consoles. I was very excited about have features such as offline editing, on board effects, and networking. I have been very surprised at how much I like the the M7CL-32. In our worship center we have a Digico CS-D5 which has been great. I was very pleased at how easy it was for me to pick up the M7CL and how some of the features were similar to the Digico. Now I have only mixed on the LS9-32 once, but as of yet I’m not a big fan of the console. I seem to have to keep my head in the board too much while mixing. The touch screen really helps with the quick changes.

I have one large disappointment with both of the consoles. This last Thursday, I finally got some network wire pulled to both of the consoles and tried to place them on the network. All was going well until I went to adjust the subnet mask. Come to find out, the firmware only supports class C subnets (255.255.255.0). So let me tell you what that means. With that mask you can only have 254 devices attached to the network. Well that is fine for many groups that might be using the console, but for use in larger churches or conference facilities it is just too small. The part that I really don’t get is the interface is built to change the subnet options, it is just disabled. Very frustrating. So now I’m going to have to build a dedicated network to access these consoles. Yamaha please fix this issue!!!!

Sugar Creek has received some press about our shift to the Digico CS-D5 audio console. Here are some links:

Technologies for Worship Magazine
Church Production Magazine

Just though that some might be interested.

Tonight I’m at a choir concert at Lamar Consolidated High School
Auditorium. Much to my suprise when I looked up, they have a line
arrary system. Two lines with seven cabinets hanging under a single
sub setup in a stereo configuration. Just seems like this is the only
speaker configuration that people what these days. I guess that I
will find out in a few if this was installed because of its function
or to be trendy.

UPDATE:  The choir concert was acoustic, didn’t even used the sound system so I guess I won’t know about the line array.

This week we are installing a couple of new DSP units in the worship center. BSS London Blue 80s are the new brains for our audio system. In the process of testing everything last night we found the the protection circuits are bad in three of our EAW MH-662iA speakers. This has been limiting some of the high frequencies from the main center cluster. Now we have to figure out how to fix them. So again I will be excited to hear what the system is going to sound like after we get this fixed and our system tuner James Young is done with the DSP upgrade and room tuning. Going to be a fun Sunday.

PERSONAL: Just a quick personal note, it was awesome to see Brittney (my daughter) worshiping on stage Sunday in the Edge service. It brought me great joy.

Surprisingly this was the second hardest week I have had in this job and I really can’t tell you why. But God is good and services today were busy but encouraging. It is so easy in this job to get wrapped up in the technology and the issues and loose focus on what it is really about. I did a lot of work on technology this week, but none of that was very interesting or fulfilling. The trials of this week really help to bring focus to what I really enjoy: investing in people and being creative with in the limits that are in place.

We did make some technology changes this week:

Audio:

• Added a dual 18″ sub. Our 15″ drivers are still being re-coned. I was surprised on how hard this sub could kick. It was not enough for the big room, but it was better than nothing.
• We upgraded from revision one Avioms to the newer version two systems. Wow what an improvement in sound quality.

Lighting:

• Refocused all of the stage lighting for the minor stage reset that we did.
• Finally got the lamp for the OS 600 light.

Last night at rehearsal I was behind the console mixing for the Edge band and heard a bad sound. I spent some time working on the the drums after Mario setup his kit, replacing the church’s set.  I just could not get the kick to sound right at all and then I remembered that John said that a sub might be blown.  I took a walk to the stage left side of the building to hear a subwoofer barking out what sounded like a kick mallet hitting a broken drum head.  The cone on the left side of the cabinet was shredded.  I grab some tools and pulled the driver.  Planned on calling the repair shop in the morning.  When I got the speaker back to the booth I noticed that this speaker had been re-coned in 2000.  I guess that it was just time.

I had a great plan when I got home last night and thought that it might be good to check all of the other sub speakers.  Sometimes it is just better to not know.  At the end of the day we found that six or our eight sub drivers were blown.  This is just some of the fun when you are maintaining a 14 year old sound system.  I have mixed feelings about this issue.  On the one hand, it is frustrating to fix blown speakers and not work on making improvements to the services.  On the other hand I have never been happy with with our subs and I have a little encouragement knowing that I have never heard all of the drivers kicking at once.  Some of the drivers appear to have been down for sometime.  So, there could be some light at the end of the weak sub tunnel.

Nya is taking the six speakers in for repair.  We will not have them for this week and will have to rent some subs, but they will return for the following Sunday.  I have to install and tune the rented 18 inch subs tomorrow.

This is a big Sunday for the tech ministry at Sugar Creek. We are going digital. The Digico is installed and this will be the first Sunday running it for the services.  All is tested and ready to go and John is charged with making sure all works correctly. Over the next few weeks we will train the volunteers on the job. I think that they will be back running the shows soon as they become comfortable.  We have had two rehearsal with the digital system and both were successful and the musician said they can hear a difference in the monitors.  We have not even installed the version 2 Avioms yet. More to come on that next week.

We have a new (at least new since I have been producing) CG operator for the Edge service…welcome Janet.  The Digico took up a lot of time this week, but I did get to add some curtian slashes behind the drums.  I’m really looking forward to hearing the difference in sound quality over the next few weeks as well as how the A1 take to the new system.

Today was the day that we removed the older of the two Soundcraft Vienna consoles and replaced it with the Digico CS-D5.  Over all, the change over went very smoothly.  Last night John and Vincent pulled the Madi cables for the connection from the stage racks.  They ended up needing to be pulled in the iron. The console is in it’s final home and the stage racks are wired up and communicating. Tomorrow, Bryan is going to bring in the snake and we will get them all connected between the stage boxes and the stage racks. After that it is just finishing up the final patching and rehearsals start Tuesday afternoon.  So far we are right on schedule.  Pictures of todays work are on my flickr account.

Yes the Digico is here and I have the photos to prove it.  John is foaming at the mouth and has half of the configuration done.  Started pulling the madi cables, but found the conduit full of water.  After checking with Digico, we decided to run the cables over head.  Vincent is going to come in Sunday afternoon and walk the iron.  Bryan will be in Monday  with the patch cables to connect to the stage racks.  All should be ready for a launch next Sunday… please pray for us.  Here are the photos…

AND THE WINNER IS: I just sent the purchase order into Digico for the CS-D5.  After much research, number crunching, calling references, and most of all prayer, I executed the purchase order for the Digico today.  Studer has a great product and at some point I want to get my hands on the console.  Digico just has the best combination of features and price.  Keep an eye out here for information on delivery and un-boxing photos.