Roland Systems Group reports a substantial percentage increase in sales of its RSS portfolio of digital audio products to the house-of-worship market.  Churches of all denominations are designing the compact V-Mixing System with its Cat5e multicore solution into new and refurbished congregation spaces.

Reading-based audio systems integrator SFL, a specialist in the house of worship sector, has passed a significant milestone since becoming one of the first UK dealers for the RSS range.  Mark Payne and his team have now sold 20 of the compact M-400 V-Mixing Systems, following the installation of two consoles into the newly-built Finchampstead Baptist Church in Berkshire, and a complete M-400 with 8-way M-48 Personal Monitor System to the Dominion Centre in London.

The FBC is an impressive house of worship, offering a rich variety of facilities to the local Baptist community which raised a substantial sum in grants and donations to build it.  The modern design houses a sports hall, library, café and youth centre, all spaces which work flexibly to accommodate everything from the weekly church services to a creche.

Audio infrastructure is at the heart of the FBC’s versatility. SFL’s chief system designer Tim Horton arrived on the project early enough to install a Cat5e cable network throughout the building, with two REAC lines connecting the main live performance spaces, the Gym and the Youth Loft. 

The Gym, which is a multi-purpose hall that houses the Sunday worship services and doubles as creche, badminton court, drama workshop and meeting venue, has been equipped with a mobile 48-channel M-400 mixing console that can be wheeled out and plugged into the wall-mounted 40-channel S-4000 stageboxes as required.

Upstairs, the compact 100-capacity Youth Loft also has built-in stageboxes offering 32 channels and 8 returns on its small stage.  The FBC’s new M-380 digital console makes the most of its portable size; it can be wheeled out and plugged in for concerts and events, or used as a secondary mixer for the main Gym downstairs.    SFL has completed the project with the installation of Tannoy V Series loudspeakers and subs, and cleverly, the addition of a small plug-and-play solution which allows users to play iPod output or use a single mic without having to access the main systems.

In north London, the Dominion Centre is a 1800-capacity former bingo hall, replete with original Art Deco architectural features, refurbished at no small cost by the Universal Prayer Group Ministries.

Drawing on SFL expertise, this very large church has paired an L-Acoustics Kudo/Kiva front-of-house system with RSS stage-sound control.  A M-400 V-Mixer sits side of stage for monitor mixing, while each member of the large band has access to a M-48 Personal Monitor Mixer.

Church sound engineer Eben Awuah reports that the use of the M-48 system to create a quiet stage is making “a massive difference.  It is 20 metres from the floor to top of the arch, so any energy released on stage flies around and, sooner or later, we get it at front-of-house.  The M-48s have minimised noise on stage and really improved the FOH mix.”

With volunteers at the monitor console, as well as in the band and choir, Awuah sees the tiny M-48 mixers as a bonus.  “The mix sounds as it did when I left it!  It gives us a good operational starting point because we’re taking away the variables.  They only have 2 mixes to worry about, so it lightens the monitoring load for inexperienced engineers and the Recall facility gives everybody a flying start.  The musicians say that the sound quality is extremely good – there is loads of headroom in the headphone outputs – and the feature set is on a different level to any competitive product.”

Roland Systems Group marketing manager Martin Thomas has himself played in many House of Worship bands over the years: “I know that a major requirement is often to play quietly to underscore presentations or more meditative times. This can be very demanding if you’re using traditional monitoring and backline. The M-48 personal monitor mixer system makes it easy to reduce FOH and stage volume to reflect the sensitivity of the moment.  When it comes to communicating key, event content and song changes ‘on the fly’, the unique ambient microphone built into the M-48 makes this much easier especially for those using in-ear monitors. Itis also easy to patch a mic channel into the monitors to feed individual cues, translations and information to the performers.”