Line 6 Dream Stage Delivers Powerful, Portable Sound for Calvary Chapel North Jersey

	Calvary Chapel North Jersey

Located in Passaic, Calvary Chapel North Jersey is a portable church, working in a shared worship space for a congregation of about 200. Sharing a space requires the team to show up early and set up the entire sound system prior to services each Sunday. With a volunteer staff, Calvary Chapel required simplicity without sacrificing sound quality. To solve all their needs, they recently purchased a Line 6 Dream Stage system, consisting of two StageSource L3t loudspeakers and the StageScape M20d digital mixer.

"Because set-up time is such a big consideration for us, we were really looking for a cost-effective way to upgrade our old analog system," says Tim Gentle, the church's pastor. "Our worship director, Russell Mack, saw a demo of the new Line 6 mixer and speakers and told me about it."

"As soon as I saw the Line 6 system demo, I knew it would be a perfect fit," says Mack, who oversees all audio-video needs for the church. "What stood out for me was how the M20d mixer combines technical depth with simplicity of use. There's really nothing else like it. For a church like ours, where volunteers to the sound ministry don't all have great technical prowess, it's ideal."

Mack especially liked the system's user interface. "Using a touchscreen instead of a lot of knobs and faders was very appealing," he notes. "The interface sets up an X/Y grid with four adjectives in the corners, and the engineer just drags their finger toward the sound they want -- for instance, 'bright' -- and can hear how it changes as they move. Under the surface, the mixer is changing multiple parameters to make that happen. It was incredibly appealing for us because it opens up a whole new world of accuracy and effectiveness in our sound ministry."

The music presentation at Calvary Chapel North Jersey is a full contemporary Christian band, with a worship leader and three backing vocalists. Instruments include Roland V-Drums, multiple guitars, bass, keyboards, saxophone and percussion. All are easily accommodated by the StageScape M20d mixer's 20 inputs.

The two StageSource L3t speakers have proven themselves similarly easy to work with. "The sound quality is great -- big, rich and full. Our sanctuary has high, cathedral-type ceilings, so we get plenty of bass, even without subwoofers. The mains do the job all by themselves, and we love having automatic feedback control. It's incredible, really. We just connect the speakers directly to the mixer with L6 LINK and we're good to go."

The ease of setup is critical to successful Sundays at Calvary Chapel. "Our service starts at 9:00am. We get there about an hour ahead and set everything up from scratch, then do a sound check," says Russell. "The Dream Stage has made us much more efficient. We love Quick Capture, which is a 20-second loop of internal memory, which lets the engineer fine-tune the mix without the band playing live. The whole system was obviously designed to save time."

"The things we can do now, like multi-track recording on an SD card, are just incredible, especially compared to our old analog system," says Gentle. "One of my favorite things is the iPad functionality. We had been mixing from the front, then walking back to hear the room sound. But now we've got our engineer sitting discreetly out in the congregation during the service, accessing the same interface with an iPad 3 connected to the mixer through a Linksys thumb modem. It works beautifully. Very cool."

After using the Line 6 Dream Stage for several months, Mack concludes, "Everything from the preamps to the speakers is a clear upgrade, not only in features, portability, functionality, and adaptability, but also in terms of sound quality. All this technology is meaningless if the quality doesn't stand out, and it most certainly does. We couldn't be happier."