Supplied by Wigwam Acoustics and installed by Midlands-based AV company Centrepiece Productions (whose MD Gareth Davies is a member of Zion Christian Centre), the dLive system consists of a S7000 console and DM48 MixRack supplemented with eight Allen & Heath ME-1 personal monitoring mixers and a ME-U hub.
"Wigwam initially supplied us an Allen & Heath QU-32 digital mixer to get us up and running after the fire in August," explains Davies, "and I and the other sound team volunteers - none of whom are professional engineers - took to it very quickly.
"So when it came to investing in our permanent system it made sense to stick to the Allen & Heath brand and go for the dLive S7000, partly for its channel count, expandability and 'future proof' nature. The number of faders on the S7000 has been great for us - I've been able to programme the console in such a way that all of the channels the engineers need for normal Sunday meeting usage are on one layer. This is important for the volunteers, as they don't have to flip between layers and pages to get a mix up and running.
"When it comes to our bigger special events that I usually engineer, the new system has enabled us to increase the channel count considerably and really expand our thinking when it comes to producing the content of these events," continues Davies. "The onboard FX, compressors, multi-band comps and dynamic EQs are fantastic and really help us to maintain a consistently good sound. dLive has been a great choice for the church sound team, and the musicians love the ability to simply and quickly look after their own monitoring with the ME-1s - it's a brilliant system."
(Jim Evans)
