The Quantum quartet at Prestonwood Baptist Church

USA:

Under the understanding that it needed up upgrade its audio mixing, routing and management capacity, Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas recently started to work closely with systems integrator Paragon 360. The ministry is one of the largest churches in America, boasting a membership of over 45,000 and a weekly attendance of around 17,000 congregants. As part of its latest upgrades, three DiGiCo Quantum7 consoles have been specified for the 7,000-seat auditorium at its main campus in Plano for front of house, monitors and broadcast audio requirements, and an additional Q7 at its newer 1,500-seat Prosper campus.

The Plano campus is also now fitted with a substantial complement of I/O stations, including two SD-Racks backstage, along with an Orange Box loaded with DMI-DANTE 64@96 and DMI-OPTO Optocore cards for wireless microphone inputs. On stage are two more SD-Racks, plus an SD-Nano Rack for tracks, with yet another SD-Rack found in the church’s broadcast studio. SD-MiNi Racks are located at both FOH and monitors, with another SD-MiNi Rack in the amp room, and an SD-Nano Rack positioned up in the catwalk. The Prosper campus’ new Q7 is supported with two SD-Racks onstage and one more in the broadcast studio, plus an Orange Box for its wireless mics.

Smith noted the configurability and high I/O counts the Q7s afforded the church: “We have a big service, a full choir and orchestra, so we needed a big input count. With auxes and submixes we’re pushing 48 outputs,” he said. “The monitor desk runs over 50 outputs and we’re running close to 200 inputs. We’ve multed all 15 vocal channels and split them into two channels, which allow us to have separate mixes.”

The installation was able to utilise much of the existing fibre infrastructure for the Optocore network, with a few additional strands installed by Paragon 360 to accommodate the new bandwidth requirements. “They are very tech savvy, more so than many churches, and they have some very sophisticated requirements,” Mark Coble, lead audio designer at Paragon 360 explained. “As important as functionality like processing and flexible routing are, the need for seamless backup in the event of a failure was just as important, and the Quantum7 fulfills all of those requirements. It’s one of the few dual-engine consoles on the market – if one engine were ever to fail, the other takes over immediately and seamlessly.”

While the AV in both church locations is fully independent, staffers and volunteers can be called upon to work at either location. Having the Q7 ecosystem everywhere has been a big advantage. “There are some differences between the locations, but if you walk up to either broadcast or front-of-house console, you're going to know right where the drums are and be able to make your way around on the desk pretty quickly,” concluded Smith. “There’s just so much to work with there and we’re just scratching the surface.”