BUENA PARK, Calif. — Founded 30 years ago, the Church at Rocky Peak has occupied its current site on 115 acres in the rocky foothills of Chatsworth, California since 1986. Two years ago, with a shift in style from large vocal groups to guitar-based praise music, the sound system in the 1,100-seat sanctuary – installed in 1997 – began showing its age, and consequent inadequacy to handle the new musical program.

Sound no longer harsh for the congregation

"The church began seeking input from within the congregation," says systems designer Matt Hyde, of Sound Advice (Chatsworth, California), who maintained the original system, as well as added acoustical treatments to the sanctuary in 1997. "The negative comments from the congregation were that the sound system was too loud. I don't think they exactly meant that it was too loud, but more that it was harsh, mid-rangy, clipping and generally unpleasant sounding."

The change in music styles to a more contemporary, guitar-driven (in the manner of David Crowder or Chris Tomlin), and more participatory worship style caused very few problems for the congregation. But it did challenge the mixing skills of the church's audio volunteers. "To overcome the deficiencies of the room and the sound system," says one of the church's Worship Pastors, Dustin Kleinschmidt, "the mixes became louder." The sanctuary is more than twice as wide as it is deep, and coverage was by an LCR cluster system, not the ideal choice for the space. "The new musical programming required impact, passion and high-energy," says Kleinschmidt, "but not necessarily volume. That may sound contradictory, but it's not really."

The new musical focus also involved the church scaling back on special large productions that were time-consuming as well as expensive to produce, to concentrating their efforts and resources on producing consistently high-quality sound every weekend.

A long-time ProTools user, and very familiar with digital consoles in the studio environment, Hyde gradually became convinced that the digital format was viable in the live sound arena. "The interfaces are simplified enough to where you can move around quickly," he says. "But the ability to impart your mixing wisdom by saving settings to the computer is what really sold me on digital consoles as a solution in the worship environment, even for churches without a sophisticated sound department."

Integrator, Pastor and audio volunteers at M7CL in front of house position.

For Hyde, the Yamaha M7CL digital console hit the mark, making the technology easy enough to use for a non-professional, while retaining the sophisticated features that digital is capable of. "The ability to program all the EQ's and compression for worship service and not have it tweaked, to administer security levels, to program the console offline on a laptop and then just pop the settings into the console… all this was absolutely great," he says.

In fact, the system that Hyde specified and installed is entirely Yamaha, from the M7CL console, through the DME24 DSP unit (via the console's 16-channel In/Out AVY16 – ES card and CAT5 cabling), to amps, and the company's IF and IS Series of Installation Speakers. "Yamaha's whole approach to the live sound package – from console to amps to speaker systems – makes system integration much easier," says Hyde.

Their sanctuary of the Church at Rocky Peak is approximately 150 feet by 63 feet wide from the lip of the platform (76 feet wide x 30 feet deep) to the mix position very near the rear wall. The room is 25 feet high at its highest point. The FOH speaker system consists of three Yamaha three-way installation speakers (1F3115/64's), and six two-way speakers (three IF2215/64's and three IF2208's as fills) in an exploded cluster mono configuration. They are supported by four low frequency (33 Hz - 95Hz) cabinets, two per side. All the Yamaha three-way and two-way speaker models have rotatable horns (60° x 40° or 90° x 50°). The Rocky Peak system is configured in a 60° x 40° vertical array.

"We did a rough A / B demo with the Yamaha speakers against the existing system" says Hyde. "But it was so night and day that it was a no-brainer, especially the Yamaha three-way speaker. I find the Yamaha speakers to be extremely articulate and responsive even at moderate levels. I admire the warmth of these speakers, which is not so common in speakers, but really necessary in achieving the sound I think is important in a good worship presentation."

"When we talked to Yamaha about the console," says Kleinschmidt, "we had two criteria: we wanted the highest quality of sound, and technology that could be managed by a volunteer staff." Though they once considered hiring a professional audio engineer, part-time, to handle services, the church decided that it really wanted to empower its own. "The volunteers have learned a ton about live engineering that they never would have experienced otherwise."

With four different bands playing at weekend services, each with its own style and sound, there's plenty of opportunity for volunteers to practice and test their mixing skills, while not being taxed with building a mix from scratch. "We capture and store a base mix for each band and each band member as a start-point," says church Technical Director, Andy Thomas. "We set EQ and compression, for example, for the particular style of a band's drummer. From week to week that drummer's sound may vary a bit, and a mixer can adjust for that if he chooses. But the base start-point is always there, saved to the console."

Thomas adds that the console's flexibility can be used to accommodate mixers at a variety of skill levels – both for weekend services, where a certain level of quality is expected, as well as for peripheral events, where an apprentice mixer might be given more leeway in establishing a good mix. And because the Yamaha loudspeaker system is so revealing, it's easier now to get a good mix, says Thomas. Even minimal adjustments – EQ'ing a frequency 2dB, for instance – are clearly audible. "But with all the processing power we have available," he says, "we adhere to the basic principle of, 'get it right at the source.' If something doesn't sound as good as it could, it may be the arrangement, or the particular sound from the tuning of the drums, or a mic adjustment, or an EQ adjustment on a guitar amp. You can't rely on the board being the doctor that fixes everything. You have to go back to the source."

Given the volunteer structure, a certain variability of the mixes is to be expected. But in general, the digital console levels the playing field, says Kleinschmidt. "The console minimizes the potential for errors," he notes, "and it provides a kind of digital safety net for learning. If our guys feel that we've got their backs, they love the idea of jumping right into a whole new environment with both feet."

For more information, contact Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems, Inc., 6600 Orangethorpe Avenue, Buena Park, CA 90620, call 714-522-9000, e-mail casales@yamaha.com, or visit www.yamahaca.com.