Eagle Brook Church welcomes DiGiCo’s new Quantum2²⁵ console

USA:

Eagle Brook Church has 10 locations around its Lino Lakes, Minnesota main campus in the Minneapolis–St Paul area, and collectively hosts over 25,000 worshippers a week. As part of a renovation that saw the installation of a new videowall system and L-Acoustics A10-based PA system, the Ham Lake church – Eagle Brook’s newest location – has reportedly become one of the first houses of worship to implement DiGiCo’s new Quantum2²⁵ console, where it is paired with the Dante-specific DiGiCo DQ-Rack.

“They wanted to push the envelope with this installation, and we had been talking to them about the Quantum2²⁵ ever since we had heard about it,” said Cameron Fries, project manager for systems integrator Summit Integrated Systems. “The Q2²⁵ is the console they wanted to use to make the leap into the next generation of technology. It’s a perfect fit for them. It’s compact but it has all of the features and functionality of the larger Quantum3³⁸, flexible routing and function assignment, and a great user interface and intuitive operation.”

Eagle Brook, which typically deploys an Optocore-based cabling infrastructure at its campuses, this time chose to use a Dante network for Ham Lake’s audio, a good match for DiGiCo’s Dante-specific DQ-Rack, which provides all of the power of the larger SD-Racks but in a more compact unit, along with the flexibility of Audinate’s Dante protocol. “This new campus is heavily Dante, so it was also smart to move to the DiGiCo DQ-Rack, which keeps it an all-Dante signal infrastructure,” added Matt Beckstrom, Eagle Brook Church’s audio systems engineer. “For instance, we’re going over Dante right from the DQ-Rack to the in-ear monitors onstage.”

In addition, connection to the Q2²⁵ via the console’s DMI-DANTE64@96 card means that all inputs and outputs on the racks can be accessed at both 48kHz and 96kHz. The DQ-Rack is also equipped with dual redundant power supplies as standard.

While much about the Q2²⁵ was immediately familiar for Beckstrom, “the added power of Quantum processing was very welcome and there’s a lot of headroom for the church’s mix staff to grow into. For now, they’re continuing to use the Waves processing integrated into the Q2²⁵, but are looking forward to getting into Mustard and Spice Rack processing in the very near future.”

He said that familiarity with DiGiCo systems made installing the new Q2²⁵ themselves, with relatively minimal assistance from Summit, a simple and straightforward process. “That kind of simplicity is especially important for churches, who are always budget-conscious, no matter how big they are,” he added.