Church Unlimited embraces new technologies

With a goal to reach wider communities through its energetic style of worship and modernity, Church Unlimited has always been open to new technologies. Pre-recorded content for its online channels is integral for reach, but the church’s team found boom mics to be problematic, and opted for Point Source Audio’s EMBRACE on-ear lavalier mics for a concealable wireless mic option.

“It is a hybrid model that we’ve gone to now,” explained Mike Peña, audio engineer at Church Unlimited. “We pre-record two hosts talking about what’s going on, and at the proper time, we sync up and everything goes live to the pastor on stage at our broadcast campus with the message, and we stream it out.”

Church Unlimited expanded its streamed content during the pandemic to ensure that praise could continue safely. By the time restrictions were lifted, its online presence has grown to such an extent that it was a campus in itself, and the church, motivated by its impact, kept the ball rolling. “We started to get really creative with the pre-recorded stuff,” recalls Peña. “We thought ‘let’s get some different shots, let’s use the stage, let’s use the jib cameras to mix it up a little bit’, and the old way of doing things with booms and mics on stands to go around and capture all the talking head stuff was getting in the way. Every shot we did, you could see the boom or something else."

Peña researched the EMBRACE microphones and became convinced that the on-ear lavalier – engineered for concealing but featuring a mounting system that keeps the mic placement consistent to the mouth – was the right choice for the church.

“I was really impressed with the sound quality, you don’t see it and it sounds great the whole time,” reflected Peña. “There are so many things that it fixed for us and so many things that it opened up for us, they’ve been amazing. The post-production work doesn’t take half as long for me to clean up, fix up and send back out to the video team. They have made my workflow faster.”

The patented mounting has also enabled the church’s videographers to be more creative in the shots and angles that they choose to capture, particularly with Church Unlimited’s popular ‘At the Movies’ series. “Some of the camera angles, you don’t even know the mic is there,” said Peña. “The mics have opened up a world of possibilities because we don’t have stands or a guy holding a boom. It gives the Pastor more freedom to move around during video shoots. They’ve changed everything on the audio for video side of things.”

The ‘At the Movies’ series was the first time that Bil Cornelius, Church Unlimited’s lead Pastor, experienced the EMBRACE mic. “He was ecstatic about the fit, the comfort and the possibilities,” said Peña. “There was a real level of excitement from him when he first tried it out.”

The worship leaders at Church Unlimited are now keen to explore what the microphones can do in a live setting. “All of the pastors have seen them in video shoots and want to use them live on stage now, so it looks like we’ll be adding a few more to the mic locker,” concluded Peña.