Sunrise Church in Rialto, California, recently purchased three Allen & Heath dLive
digital mixing systems from Pacific Coast Entertainment of Huntington Beach, CA as
part of an upgrade to the church’s FOH, monitor and broadcast audio systems.
Founded in 1956, the church now has six Southern California locations and holds
weekend and mid-week worship services, holiday services at Easter and Christmas
and special events such as a Women’s Night of Worship, which is soon to feature
singer songwriter, Moriah Peters.
Sunrise has an active worship arts ministry with video production, and a praise
band and choir, managing 40 plus microphones and other audio sources for some
events. To mix these events and the worship services at its Rialto location, Sunrise
chose the Allen & Heath dLive and has two S7000s and an S3000 control surface,
with a DM64 and two DM32 MixRacks plus two DX32 expander racks. The DM64 and
two DX32 racks plus one of the S7000 surfaces are utilized for Front of House, with
the second S7000 and the DM32 installed at stage right for Monitors, whilst an
additional S3000 and DM32 is located in an isolated booth to mix live internet
broadcasts.
Craig King, Tech Director at Sunrise, says the Rialto church previously had a large
analogue mixer for both FOH and broadcast, with two engineers at the mix position
for
some events. The church also had a rack of separate compressors and effects
processors adding to operational complexity for its mostly volunteer operators.
After discussing their needs with Kent Flemming, Account Executive at Pacific Coast
Entertainment, and considering several digital mixers, Sunrise Church selected the
dLive to replace its FOH analogue mixer.
“We wanted a volunteer-friendly mixer that was easy to understand,’ King said.
“The dLive’s bubble menu help screens are awesome. And, the built-in compression
and effects eliminated our outboard processing.’
With the previous setup, the church’s broadcast mix came from its analogue FOH
mixer but King noted, “Broadcast is its own separate world, now.’
Sunrise features its choir every fourth Sunday, whilst other services have a praise
band, and services like weddings and funerals have simple audio setups. King uses
dLive scenes to save the settings for each of these service types and for the more
complex special events. Each scene saves the dLive layers and fader banks for
microphone groups such as the drum kit or choir and also includes all of the EQ,
compression, reverb, gating and other effects used for individual microphones.
Kent Flemming said, “The dLive was a perfect fit for Sunrise. The usability is
incredible and the church has Allen & Heath GLD and Qu Series mixers in other
locations so their volunteers were able to learn the dLive quickly. And a pastor told
me that the sound quality in the church was 100% better!’
