First Assembly's Allen & Heath dLive S Class Is a Three-in-One Solution

	Technical director Luke Flowers at the dLive S5000 Surface

First Assembly Community Ministries of Lafayette, Indiana celebrates its 90th anniversary in 2017 with a new audio system including an Allen & Heath dLive S Class Mixing System. The dLive, which consists of an S5000 Surface and DM64 MixRack, serves as a front-of-house mixer, broadcast mixer, and monitor mixer making it a three-in-one solution for First Assembly. Technical director Luke Flowers says the church's previous digital mixer had high latency, poor-sounding effects, and maintenance issues so the right mixer was an important choice for the new audio system.

Flowers also works as an independent front-of-house engineer so he discussed the decision with his touring contacts and he considered several digital mixers before requesting an Allen & Heath demo. "I was blown away by the dLive," he says. "The feature set is phenomenal for a digital mixer at this price and its open architecture and work flow make it very user friendly. I had our whole service set up within four hours after the demo."

The dLive S Class scenes and layers allow Flowers to "put anything anywhere" keeping his mics and other sources in logical groups and automatically selecting the right effects and EQ for each song. This makes things easy for the interns who help with system operation. Its multiple input capability and flexible work flow allow Flowers to manage the front-of-house mix, the band's in-ear monitor mix, and a stereo mix for the church's streaming broadcast all from the S5000 Surface. Flowers also records each service and uses the "virtual sound check" to set up his mix before the musicians arrive, reducing rehearsal times.

Although he is a fan of Waves plug-ins, Flowers says the dLive S Class has an "incredible effects library" and its compressors, reverbs, and EQ introduce no perceptible latency in his mix. He also says its preamps are very transparent with a rich clear sound quality allowing him to use the dLive's effects as "salt and pepper" for his microphones and other sources.

Designed and installed by CCI Solutions, First Assembly's new audio system, with its dLive S Class, complements the church's contemporary worship style and its focus on "Sunday excellence" meeting the church's goals for sound quality and coverage and bringing the same great experience to everyone in the 1,100-seat sanctuary. "We had no idea what we were missing," said Flowers. "The clarity of our new system is unbelievable and, in my opinion, Allen & Heath knocked it out of the ball park with the dLive."