Open Door Church Completes Major System Upgrade with Allen & Heath

Herndon, Virginia’s Open Door Presbyterian Church has continued to steadily grow their congregation and upgrade their AV capabilities over the last 30 years. As expanded audio requirements had been increasingly difficult to fill with their aging 2005-era digital console, they knew it was time for a change. Turning to the local audio experts at Genesis Technology for guidance as to the best choice to modernize the system, the answer was unanimous—Allen & Heath dLive.

“The Open Door project was a great example of the power of having a connected audio ecosystem,” notes Genesis Technology Senior Systems engineer Michael Yoo. “Obviously we aim for stellar audio quality for the congregation and ease of operation for the church AV technicians, that’s always a key goal. In this case it was also important to bump up the overall worship experience for the praise band. We have FOH quite a distance from the musicians, high ceilings and stage volume concerns that brought forth to the need for a top notch personal monitor solution as well.”

“That’s one of many areas where Allen & Heath has things really figured out,” adds SK Macdonald (SKMac) sales support associate Jack D’Angelo. “Jumping up to dLive and adding in the ME Personal Monitoring System was the answer to all of those needs. It was also helpful to know that with so many network and interconnect options for dLive, the swap over wasn’t going to require stripping out all of the existing infrastructure. Dante, no problem. AES, sure. Not only was it largely ‘plug and play’ for the install of the new desk and peripherals, but the church can rest easy knowing that future expansion is also a breeze if they should need it.”

The upgrade includes a Dante-enabled Allen & Heath dLive S7000 at FOH, paired with a DM48 MixRack and AES output card. A 96kHz DX168 AudioRack provides additional I/O flexibility and scalability. The dLive feeds five ME-1 40-source personal mixers distributed across the stage, powered and managed by a ME-U 10-port PoE Monitor Hub.

“The previous audio console was designed in a pre-iPhone world and just wasn’t cutting it as far as usability and workflow,” notes Yoo. “dLive is unique in its ability to offer up over 200 assignable fader strips and dozens of SoftKeys while not completely overwhelming the engineer or requiring operators to bend their usual way of looking at workflow to conform to the desk. It really is as easy as dragging and dropping inputs and outputs around to configure the desk like you would popping around on an iPad. The musicians love the sound quality and customized mixes on their ME units and the entire system took a sonic leap.”