Dream City Church Rings in New Year With Allen & Heath

The Dream City Church New Year’s Eve Celebration broadcast mix comes together on a networked Allen & Heath Avantis

With an in-person venue seating capacity of more than 4,500, a simulcast stream going out to remote church members, and a complex stage plot exceeding 50 inputs, Dream City Church went all-in with Allen & Heath consoles and personal monitors for their New Year’s Eve Celebration. With their hands on faders spanning a range of control surfaces from the diminutive 19” wide dLive C1500 all of the way up to the flagship S7000, Dream City’s skilled technical team brought the event audio to the congregation in the seats and across the web.

As one of the early adopters of dLive in house of worship, Dream City built upon their existing audio network and leveraged the ability to easily expand and interconnect Allen & Heath consoles—even across different product ranges. The dLive S7000 control surface at front of house functioned as an audio ‘home base’ as it paired with their DM64 MixRack and provided audio networking interconnects for 128×128 channel Dante, Waves and Allen & Heath fibreACE and gigaACE across the venue.

Audio was split and routed as needed to a C1500 (with a DM32 MixRack) and an Avantis to cover monitor and broadcast duties. Rounding out the system was a ME-U touring grade monitoring hub which distributed audio to five ME-1 personal monitors and an array of Alclair, Jerry Harvey Audio, Shure, and Ultimate Ears (UE) in-ear monitor headphones. Shure Axient Digital wireless (with KSM8 capsules) were in wide use and a Meyer PA filled the hall.

“You just don’t get better than Allen & Heath desks,” notes Jordan T. Hurt, Senior Technical Director and FOH Engineer. “Integrating additional desks of various models is so easy and the user interface is consistent and easy to learn across every console. They’re the most flexible consoles you can own. Transitioning all of our organization over to Allen & Heath is a no-brainer.”

Dream City Church Glendale Campus Technical Director and Monitor Engineer Michael Lemus adds, “The flexibility of the C1500 made mixing a 56-input show feel effortless.” While small on size and weight, the C1500 is no slouch when it comes to horsepower and flexibility, offering full access to dLive’s XCVI 160×64 FPGA core via 12 faders in a fully assignable layout, 19 assignable SoftKeys, and a 12” capacitive touchscreen.

“Yeah, Allen & Heath is my go-to brand for mixing consoles,” notes Broadcast Engineer Robert Salazar. “They’re easy to navigate, simple to set up, and beautifully built. Avantis is no exception.” The TEC Award-winning Avantis provides two additional I/O ports which allow connection to the full range of current dLive option cards, expanding the scope for system integration, FOH / monitor splits and multitrack recording.

The gigACE connection was particularly useful in this application, transporting Audio and Control over Ethernet, using standard CAT cables for very low latency and cable redundancy without any audio dropout. As a truly plug ’n play protocol, no computer was required for the setup of the New Year’s show gigaACE connections. System Engineer Sherman Jarrell simply plugged the Ethercon cable between the dLive/Avantis system pair and set the patch and clock settings directly on the mixer.

“It is wonderful to hear about projects like the Dream City Church and their New Year’s Eve Celebration,” comments Allen & Heath USA Marketing Director Jeff Hawley. “Folks like Jordan and Michael are stepping up to new challenges and continuing to strive to meet their lofty goals for church growth and engagement all while ensuring the overall production quality on their end grows alongside church membership. It really means a lot to us to be able to provide a range of products and support out in the field to help them along the way.”