Spire AVL of Carslile, PA has replaced an older digital mixer at the West Shore
Church in Mechanicsburg with an Allen & Heath dLive S7000 Surface. Spire AVL’s
Seth Shoemaker explained the upgrade. “The church’s previous mixer had
experienced technical difficulties and added nearly 25msec of latency in its
processing,’ he said. “We recommended the dLive because we knew it was a
reliable mixer with very low latency and the drag-and-drop touch screens would
simplify setups. We also provided fourteen ME-1 Personal Monitor Mixers to give
the church’s musicians the ability to do their own in-ear monitor mix and we knew
the dLive would integrate all of this very nicely.’
West Shore is an Evangelical Free Church with a 1500 seat worship centre. The
church’s stage includes 112 audio inputs allowing the band or choir to be placed
almost anywhere on the stage while maintaining short cable lengths. Additional
inputs are located in a catwalk area for overhead mic’ing and ambient pickup. An
Allen & Heath DM64 MixRack and three DX32 Expanders bring all of these inputs to
the dLive S7000 surface making it easy to patch the system digitally for worship
services and other events. A Dante card in the DM64 feeds a digital multi-track
recording system in another room.
Spire AVL set up dLive scenes that allow non-technical volunteers to mix simple
services like weddings and funerals. The church’s technical director sets up weekly
worship services and special events with dLive scenes and layers and adds the
dLive’s DSP features such as its multi-band compressor.
Shoemaker says the church’s reaction to the Allen & Heath upgrade was
overwhelmingly positive. “Even people who would normally tell you, “I can’t hear
any difference,’ came up and said it was “way better!’’ Spire’s Chris Gregory added,
“Two years ago, we installed a new loudspeaker system at West Shore. They had
been running these brand new boxes ever since but never truly saw them shine the
way that they did with the dLive!’
