Anchorage Baptist Temple Goes Digital with DiGiCo

	The Digico SD7 in action at the Anchorage Baptist Temple.

Today, many houses of worship are moving toward rich multimedia presentations that are streamed, uploaded, and broadcast worldwide. For the 2,300-seat Anchorage Baptist Temple (ABT) in Alaska, this was the impetus to undertake a revamp of its overall audio set-up.

The original audio system had undergone a number of expansions and upgrades throughout the past two decades, all specified by California-based house of worship integrators Michael Garrison Associates (MGA). The company specified DiGiCo for the latest upgrade: an SD7 surface with expander for front of house, an additional SD7 for its broadcast mix location, and an SD10 for monitor mix location. The install is a fully fiber-optic system with a cohesive loop that all systems can access, with five fully loaded DiGiCo SDRacks, and a monitor desk that can be removed from the main system and used as a standalone portable system. Planning started in the fall of 2012, with the final phase of the installation and crew training completed in May 2013.

"The consoles that were replaced had been in service faithfully since 1994 but were exhibiting signs that end of life was near," says Bryan Dunfee, technical director and front-of-house engineer for ABT. "Also, the desire to further implement multimedia into the worship services was restricted by the amount of copper we had running between the auditorium and broadcast. The original design and implementation utilized a system of distributed floor pockets to accommodate signal routing to analog three-way splitters via patch bays located in the amp room adjacent to the auditorium. This system was expanded from the original 32-channel console and splitter to 56 channels when we upgraded from the original Soundcraft desk to a Midas in 1994. This system collected all the inputs at a central location and pushed these signals to front-of-house, monitors, and broadcast. This worked well for its time but did not have the flexibility or ease of expansion and adaptation desired now. These desires are largely driven by the need to incorporate multimedia generated from within our broadcast facility to the auditorium as integral components of each service."

The Digico SD7 at front-of-house was outfitted with the Waves SoundGrid bundle, and the SDRack was loaded with analog and digital I/O to support local record and playback devices and wireless receivers located at front-of-house. Onstage, the additional SD rack supports the worship band and includes an Aviom card to accommodate monitor control for talent, as ABT's regular services do not require a monitor desk or engineer. For the more demanding services, they have an SD10 for mixing monitors. The auditorium amp room has two SD racks loaded with analog and digital I/O. In the broadcast room, they replaced another Midas XL200 with a Digico SD7, Waves SoundGrid, and an SDRack loaded with analog and digital I/O to support local record and playback devices as well as the HD-SDI card for merging audio and video into a final product for capture and distribution.

Dunfee chose the Digico solution after review and conceptualization with Steve Shewlakow and Daniel Durst at MGA. "At the system level," he says, "Digico provided the most flexibility and expandability, allowing us to not only meet today's needs but adapt in the future to new technology as those needs arise. The ability to easily distribute I/O and route signals to various locations over the fiber optic Optocore network had great appeal. Our 500' cable pathway, from the auditorium to broadcast, travels through four different phases of structural expansion that span over 20 years of changing design and construction practices. The original portion of the structure was completed in 1973, when network and cable pathways were not given the forethought and design priority that they are today -- hence portions of our pathway are greatly restricted and do not easily accommodate changes. This being the case, flexibility and adaptability weigh greatly in any cabling changes we make. In the auditorium, the ability to include the SD10 monitor desk, revert to the Aviom system, or mix monitors from front-of-house easily as needed, allows our ability to scale the system to meet the particular needs of each event. At the console level, the pre-amps, 24-bit converters, and up to 40-bit floating point processing sound absolutely gorgeous. Dynamic EQ and multi-band compression have been incredible assets to us both in broadcast and front-of-house. The Waves package has been incredible as well. After all, who doesn't want a closet full of UA1176s?"

The Digico system interfaces with ABT's auditorium PA, a six-way LCR system with an exploded center cluster using custom Tannoy cabs. Signals from front-of-house are processed via BSS Soundweb and distributed to QSC products for amplification. For broadcast, the mix is assigned to various busses that enable them to process each of the end products individually as required by the different forms of media distribution ABT employs. For TV broadcast, ABT captures live-to-tape and distributes the program to two statewide networks via fiber optic and BETA SX. They also capture audio only for statewide distribution via two radio networks. They're now distributing via the internet, too; the program is captured by a Tri-caster and distributed to their website via Livestream.

"From a user standpoint, the interface is very straight-forward and intuitive," Dunfee says. "The transition for our volunteer crew from analog to digital has been surprisingly easy. We have a number of musicians that rotate through different worship teams -- being able to store channel presets for each of the musicians has given us an incredible amount of flexibility and consistency that we did not have with the analog equipment."

As for recording, Dunfee says they capture the front-of-house mix with a CD recorder as well as multi-track into ProTools using Digico's UB MADI interface. The multi-track is routed back to the console via alternate inputs to allow for virtual sound check, which has been a great asset for training and also implementation of features and plug-ins. In broadcast, they capture to BETA SX, DVD, CD, and multi-track to a Tascam X-48 workstation.

The new consoles have proven to be a blessing to Anchorage Baptist Temple, from the overall clarity of sound to ease of use. "The improvements in the clarity and week-to-week consistency of our monitor mixes has given our teams a greater confidence," says ABT's worship pastor Bill Leight.