Cornerstone Church Upgrades with Allen & Heath PRIME

Last year, Cornerstone Church in Ohio was looking to replace their main audio console with something more reliable – so they reached out to local installation experts Tech Arts for recommendations. “They were already using dLive at monitors,” recalled Tech Arts Operations Manager Christian Spurlock, “so the decision was made to change out their front of house console for a dLive S5000 since it was familiar to them.”

Their audio system now includes three total dLive consoles. At monitors, the church employs a compact DM0 Mixrack, which is mixed entirely by the performers on stage with Allen & Heath’s free OneMix iPad monitor control application. The front of house and broadcast systems each include their own dLive S5000 surface with a DM0 128-channel mix engine.

All three dLive systems are fed from a pair of DX32 modular stageboxes, which are equipped with several PRIME input and output modules. The PRIME input modules feature the best preamps Allen & Heath has to offer, with extremely low noise and high resolution 32-bit analog-to-digital converters. The audio is shared between the three systems using Allen & Heath’s proprietary gigaACE networked audio protocol.

“The PRIME preamps have been phenomenal,” noted the TechArts team. “It’s been a noticeable difference in quality, even for the majority of the congregation – many of whom are not necessarily ‘audio people.’ The users have also noted big improvements in functionality and workflow.”

With an ultra-flat frequency response from 1Hz all the way up to 40kHz, and an incredibly fast slew rate, PRIME modules deliver extremely detailed and articulate audio to the mix engine at the highest possible resolution with enhanced transient response and full range linearity. As a testament to the attention to detail within the PRIME design, before a PRIME Input module leaves the factory, each unit has its individual preamps trimmed by hand to meet exacting requirements for feedback path and common mode rejection.

Each of the three consoles are also equipped with their own Dante cards, which are used for simplified playback from computers and for receiving audio from wireless mics. The church also plans to add a 128-channel WAVES card in the future to make use of dLive’s Virtual Soundcheck function.

“Tech Arts has put together an amazing system for the folks at Cornerstone,” notes Allen & Heath USA Director of Marketing Jeff Hawley. “We’ve had a number of absolute top-tier placements of PRIME out on world tours in some of the largest venues around. It is cool to get the feedback from Christian and the team that the members in the congregation are noticing and really enjoying this sort of high end audio and enhancing their worship experience.” 

Spurlock noted that TechArts and their expert team have been choosing dLive for more and more of their installations. “It’s our go-to console. In terms of the functionality and the feature set, as well as the sonic quality… you can’t beat it at that price point.”