Aviom’s Pro64® digital snake is helping to simplify audio distribution for the front of house and recording setup at First Presbyterian Church of the Covenant in Erie, PA.
The church recently took on a major renovation of its sanctuary, including updates to its audio-video system, pipe organ and room acoustics. The system needed both to distribute audio signals from the front of house position in the sanctuary’s balcony and to accommodate the recording of worship services and concerts. Signal distribution posed a significant challenge because of the great distance the signal was going to need to travel. In addition, many of the walls at First Presbyterian Church of the Covenant are plaster-covered brick and stone, making the installation of any additional conduit very difficult and economically unfeasible. The Aviom system preserves signal integrity over long cable runs, and because the system uses Cat-5 cable, the need to install numerous runs of 2” diameter rigid and thin wall conduit from one end of the facility to the other was avoided.
“The previous systems the church had were too simple for what they wanted to accomplish and didn’t give them the flexibility to do anything outside of basic speech reinforcement. On a more fundamental level, the system didn’t allow for good intelligibility of the spoken word,” says David Hosbach, Lead Audio-Video Design Consultant at Scott R. Riedel & Associates of Milwaukee, WI, the acoustical and systems designer for First Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. “Aviom came into play because it gave us the ability to run Cat-5 network cable down from the balcony to the racks in the basement instead of a whole bunch of individual copper cable lines. This made the whole installation process easier and the result better because we did not have to install as much new conduit. In addition we were able to get into the digital domain sooner and stay there longer, and in the process could deliver the clear, natural and noise-free sound quality and system flexibility the church was looking for.”
Mic lines from the chancel area where the choir is seated are fed into an Aviom Pro64 6416m Mic Input Module, which provides the necessary phantom power, signal gain through the module’s head amp function, and compiles all of the signals down to a single Cat-5 routed to the balcony where the front of house is located. Front of house signals are routed into a Yamaha M7CL digital console equipped with two Aviom 6416Y2 A-Net® Interface Cards.
“Thanks to the Aviom Pro64 system, the operators at First Presbyterian Church of the Covenant have the ability to tweak individual input channels and head amp gain from the Balcony mix location so they can achieve a higher performance than with any previous sound system,” says John Malek president of Ann Arbor Audio, the systems integrator and co-designer for the project. “The church members of the construction team were just blown away with the new audio setup when it was first turned on. They just were raving about how good it sounded because they’d never had a system in there before that even came close, let alone reinforce sound at this level of speech intelligibility. In addition to the system’s performance was Aviom’s customer support. Working with the Aviom staff has made the process of implementing the revised design and optimizing the final sound quality much easier.”
Aviom pioneered personal mixing with its Pro16® Monitor Mixing System and continues to break new ground with the revolutionary Pro64® Series of audio networking products. With tens of thousands of products in the field today, Aviom has set the standard for high performance, scalable digital solutions. All Aviom systems harness the power of A-Net®, Aviom’s innovative digital audio technology that simplifies system design while enhancing flexibility and fidelity. All Aviom products are designed, tested, and manufactured in the USA.
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