BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — In late June, Audio Logic Systems of Bloomfield, Minn. provided full production for the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) National Youth Conference held at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah. Known as the 'Challenge Conference,' the five–day event was attended by over 5,400 high school students who were brought together to grow in their ministry maturity level, model outreach and to share ministry training. During the course of the event, the students prepared 250,000 meals for 'Kids Against Hunger' and set a Guinness Book of World Records for the Largest Kazoo Band. The event planners made fine arts a priority in all of the sessions, highlighting poetry, dance, drama, and music. National recording artist "Starfield" served as the house worship band for the week.

Early in the production planning stages the conference staff decided to host this event in the round, allowing the audience to be closer to the stage. This proved to be a challenge considering the beams in the exhibition hall are only 30 feet high. Bringing the audio, video, and lighting together for both functionality and aesthetics, required extensive technical pre-planning. The entire show plot was designed in advance and completely laid out in Vectorworks, beginning over one year prior to the event. The design was drawn and carried out by Ed Coutu, Production Manager and Michael Klaers, Lighting Designer at Audio Logic Systems.

Two Yamaha consoles were used at the event: a Yamaha DM2000 digital at console at front of house and a Yamaha M7CL digital console for monitors. "The Yamaha DM2000 is still one of the most versatile consoles on the market, and is still my overall favorite as a FOH console when you're not sure what you're going to run into," states Ed Coutu. "I use a Waves plug-in card with an L1–Ultramaximizer on a regular basis for live audio recordings and feeds to video recording. The ability to configure my aux sends and matrix sends in a way that is most functional on the fly, combined with the DM2000 preamps makes this an outstanding console."

This particular console was purchased when the DM2000 was first released, and it's one of the first 100 production models notes Coutu. "I think that says a lot for the longevity of Yamaha consoles. The case was custom made to contain a 4–space rack which houses a PC computer and keyboard drawer. Above the lower rack is a work surface, which is always needed at FOH. Above the work surface there is a 5-space rack which holds additional preamps and recording hardware."

Audio Logic Systems also chose the Yamaha M7CL–48, Coutu adds, for its interface speed as a monitor console. "It's the fastest digital console available; the speed of operating the console was key because things happened quickly at this event, and there was a lot going on with various dramas, dancers, and speakers. The console enabled Nic Hentges who was running monitors, the ability to mix the band on in-ears and then seamlessly switch to wedges for the drama actors, dancers, and speakers–paramount to keeping everyone comfortable on stage. I have to say that both Nic and the M7CL-48 did a wonderful job!"

The event utilized a d&b Audiotechnik speaker rig consisting of 36 Q1's, 8 Q7s for downfills, 4 B2s, 8 Q-Subs, Q10's for frontfills, 8 M4s for monitors, and 40 D12 amplifiers. All amplifiers were controlled from front of house using R1 software. Four Shure UHF–R handhelds were used on the stage with KSM 9s for the vocalists. The musicians in "Starfield" used Shure UHF-R beltpacks for guitars and bass, allowing them to move freely around the stage and interact with the audience in every direction.

Lighting for the event was controlled by a full–size GrandMA at front of house in command of 60 1k pars, 60 ETC Source4 Pars, 48 ETC Source4"s, and 12 Vari-Lite VL3500 Spots. Video for the event was seen on 4 16'x9' screens. A Broadcast Pix 1000 video switcher (SDI/HD–SDI) controlled the images going to 4 Barco R12+ projectors via HD-SDI. There were 6 cameras in total: 4 on studio tripods with 2 Fuji 70x lenses and 2 Canon 32x lenses, as well as 2 portable cameras. 27" 16:9 LCD's were used to provide additional video outputs for the front rows of the audience as well as confidence monitors on stage. Rigging support for all lighting, audio, and video was on one complete truss grid. The grid was made using 285' of 20.5' truss from Tomcat and Total Structures, 130' of 12' truss from Tomcat, and was hung using 14 1 ton CM Lodestars, and 7 ½ ton CM Lodestars.

For more information on Audio Logic Systems, contact Ed Coutu at Audio Logic Systems, e-mail ed@audiologicsystems.com.

For more information on the Yamaha DM2000 and M7CL digital consoles, e-mail casales@yamaha.com; or visit www.yamahaca.com.