Oakwood Baptist Church in New Braunfels, Texas, has taken delivery of a new Allen & Heath iLive digital mixing system.

From traditional services to concerts and community events, Oakwood is a multi-purpose worship venue with several spaces requiring flexible, reliable and clear audio signals.

Doug Windell, design manager of Ace Audio was the man tasked with finding an audio solution for the church.

To accompany the iLive-144 surface, Windell opted for an iDR10 modular mix engine with 64 inputs and 24 outputs, eight input and four output cards, as well as a Dante card for recording and streaming. An xDR-16 expander rack was also selected to provide extra inputs for multiple audio sources onstage.

“The move to a digital system gives the church the ability to set up different types of worship services from traditional to more contemporary experiences,” said Windell. “Plus, iLive dramatically improved the room audio and brought down the noise floor to zero.”

“When we started using iLive there was such a clarity of the speaker’s words that congregants began complimenting the sound. The individual limiters, compression and gates on each microphone input are a big advantage," added technical director Jeff Owen. "We weren’t built to be a concert hall but the ability to distinguish the different instruments and voicing is wonderful, I can really make the guitar pop, for example. The iLive mixing tools enable us to balance the total sum of the audio to create a beautiful worship experience."

Another challenge for the team is the overflow room next to the main worship sanctuary.

“We recently had the opportunity to mix our overflow room using a wireless access point connected to the iLive network. All we had to do was have one person in the room with an iPad mixing the audio signal with the Allen & Heath OneMix app,” Owen continued.

Oakwood has also opened a new children’s space in a building adjacent to the main worship centre. An iLive-T80 with iDR-48 MixRack was chosen not only to handle the A/V needs of the children’s activities, but as a training desk for the all-volunteer audio team as well.

“The kids space mainly does dramas and video presentations so there is more of an A/V slant to the technology needs. The T80 serves us perfectly for the children’s space but also to train the future audio techs for their duties in the main sanctuary,” stated Owen.

The church has now begun renovating its student centre, where more iLive systems are likely to be added.

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