River City Christian Church calls on Symetrix

Sacramento Production Services has partnered with Symetrix to create a hybrid classroom to enable students to interact both in-person and via Zoom at the River City Christian Church in Rancho Cordova, California. The church called on the technical support of Quinn Klarer, Symetrix’s field applications engineer, to help with the project.

“He came in and really helped us with his expertise. This involved adding a Shure MXA910, a Data-Video PTZ Camera, and a capture card to the existing computer system. I needed a way for the control of all systems to be easy for the end user and this required a lot of programming. I also purchased a 12-inch touchscreen for control,” said Brian Webber, install tech and programmer of Sacramento Production Services. “I wanted the ability to integrate the Data-Video PTZ camera into the system and connected it to the Symetrix Prism 12x12 that sent control data over the network. I was having trouble getting this working on the Windows computer with straight IP commands, and Quinn suggested I try the Bolen PTZ Intelligent Module that he had created. Even though it was written for a different brand of camera, we were able to adapt it and make it work!

“I find Symetrix products easy-to-use yet have the complexity to address all the needs at the same time. I absolutely love the ability to control every piece of gear on the network through the system,” Webber stated. “We recently started integrating Visionary Solutions products into our installations, and the number of things you can do integrating these two products together is staggering. Also, the 64 channels of Dante are wonderful. For me, I find the analogue I/O to just be bonus for me as I’m trying to use Dante as much as possible. The ability to patch everything in the Composer file is great.

“I found the sound quality to be outstanding! I’ve installed three Prism’s in this location alone as well as many others and I cannot say enough about how good they sound. I can always find exactly the audio module I need. I always use the feedback suppressor with LAV mics which works great. It’s difficult to find a feedback suppressor that doesn’t degrade the audio beyond intelligibility. As far as performance goes, I’d say it’s great. This was an upgrade of a system I installed around five years ago. The Prism was already there and ran 24/7/365 during that time.”

Webber concluded: “One of my goals here was to have the average, non-technical user be able to walk into this room and do complex things in a simple way. The Prism was the central hub for letting me achieve this. The feedback I’ve received from this customer reflects that. After the training session, I’ve had no phone calls for help figuring out how to do something, they always manage to figure it out and I count that as a win.”