California’s Crossroads Church installs QSC system

Crossroads Church in Corona, California looked to QSC for its new sound reinforcement system.

The venue is now equipped with 24 PowerLight 3 Series PL380 amplifiers and two Q-Sys I/O Frames – all controlled by a Q-Sys Core 500i integrated core.

The Church opted to upgrade its audio set-up to support the congregations’ range of contemporary services that regularly attract weekend attendances of almost 8,000 worshipers.

“Our contemporary services are always passionate and loud; we have rock bands, four or five singers, lots of keyboards, drums and electric guitars. We have musical productions, complete with aerial acts and acrobats; we like to get creative because we believe that church should be fun,” said Joe Sidoti, technical director at Crossroads Church.

“We needed to have a system with more power and headroom, and I was looking for a processor that was powerful enough to meet those needs and fit within our budget. The Q-Sys Core 500i quickly became the only choice because of its power and its ability to grow with us. We added 24 PL380 amplifiers, and now I can go DataPort right to every amp. I can monitor heat and Ohms load by pairing the PL380’s – it still gives me the monitoring of the system status.”

Sidoti spent weeks analysing software downloaded from various manufacturers’ websites to determine the best option for Crossroads, and eventually went with a QSC solution after spending a great deal of time on qsctraining.com and the Q-Sys Designer software.

“We have services on Sunday and then again on Wednesday, so we only had two days in between to have any downtime,” Sidoti continued. “I designed the entire system on my laptop using Q-Sys Designer before I even had the gear. When we received the QSC amps, I was up and running in a matter of minutes and was able to start tuning the system.”

The new system went live on November 17th 2013 and was fully operational on November 20th, just in time for the Christmas show rehearsals on November 25th.

“One thing that is priceless is that I was able to program UCIs (User-Controlled Interfaces) right on my IPad – I was able to design meters and mute buttons and anything you can think of right on my device,” Sidoti added. “Now I can open up the Q-Sys app on my iPad and control the whole system right from there.”

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