SSL Live L200 console at the heart of The Venue
SSL Live L200 console at the heart of The Venue
Southcrest Baptist Church in Lubbock, Texas, has remodelled a former worship centre on its campus and reopened it as The Venue, a multipurpose space outfitted with a new Solid State Logic Live L200 digital mixing console. The new L200 desk is being used to mix FOH, monitors and a livestream of The Venue’s Sunday morning service, which features a five-piece contemporary band.
The new L200 is the third SSL Live desk to be installed at the church. “We put in a new audio system in The Venue and wanted an SSL board to keep the continuity between the two main spaces,” said Rusty Trowbridge, the church’s technical director and FOH/monitor mixer in the Worship Center. “We have three Live boards now, and it’s awesome.”
The new SSL system, which is operated by FOH mixer Tyler Gutierrez, includes an ML 32.32 stagebox with SuperAnalogue mic/line inputs at the stage with an ML 32 at the FOH position, networked via an SSL Blacklight II.D MADI concentrator. The system is also integrated with Waves Tracks Live multitrack recorder software running on a Mac mini and an RME MADIface XT USB 3.0 interface, allowing services to be recorded for later editing and broadcast. An identical setup has been in operation in the Worship Center since it opened in 2017.
“We’re doing two separate livestreams from the same campus from two different services happening at the same time,” added Trowbridge. “We have our 9:30am service in The Venue with a five-piece band and our 9:30am service in the Worship Center, where there is a small orchestra. Our Worship Center team is usually comprised of a 40-piece orchestra and a 150-person choir in the Worship Center, when we’re not in Covid-19 times.”
Although the livestream audio from The Venue is the same as the FOH mix at present, Trowbridge is considering some alternatives for the future, leveraging the flexible routing of the SSL Live desk and its remote-control capabilities. “One thing that I’ve seen work at other churches is using a stereo post-fader aux send. What we like about that is being able to send more of just the pastor’s channel, or more of the lead vocal, just to that one output. Or we might make use of the matrixes. We’re also planning on putting a person with an iPad somewhere to do a separate audio-for-video mix, letting them control that one aux send.”