With seven locations across Chicagoland, The Chapel has given new direction to its worship services with dLive Digital Mixing Systems from Allen & Heath. Now outfitted with a dLive S7000 control surface at front of house and a C3500 for monitors, one of the church’s largest properties in Grayslake, Illinois forges connections with the aid of Allen & Heath’s proprietary gigaAce networking cards.
With a 128 x 128 channel, 48/96kHz Waves networking card offering access to Waves plug-in processing, audio distribution, and digital mic splitting, the system additionally relies upon Allen & Heath’s DX168 expanders, which are used for audio patching and video control of simulcasts between locations.
“Simulcasts regularly originate from one of our two biggest campuses each week,” said Caleb Loeppky, The Chapel’s production director. “While our streaming platform allows us to send multiple audio channels, it wasn’t until we made the DX168 expander part of the equation that we realized its full potential. Now, with just a single network line we’re able to easily manage additional I/O. This fact alone is amazing, and well worth the price of admission.”
Allen & Heath’s DX168 is a portable expander ideally suited for adding remote I/O to any SQ, dLive S Class or dLive C Class system. Offering 16 mic preamps with independent phantom power indicators plus eight XLR line-outs, the DX168 connects via a single Cat5e cable directly to a dLive control surface, MixRack XCVI Core, or another upstream DX168 via a secure EtherCon port. A second locking EtherCon port is also provided for redundant connections made to compatible hardware, or daisy-chaining downstream to another DX168 to add even more I/O.
Beyond the gains in sonic quality, networking capacity, and expanded channel counts The Chapel now takes advantage of, dLive has proven itself to be popular with the volunteer audio staff as well.
“Operating a dLive system is so straightforward and intuitive,” Loeppky added. “I can sit down with someone who has never mixed before and have them up-and-running in no time. Everyone can utilize layers, scenes, and soft keys to setup the desk however they want. No one is ever forced to do anything outside of their comfort zone. As time and budget allow, this technology is going to continue to migrate to all of our locations.”
