Shadow Mountain Ministries (El Cajon Calif.) recently upgraded its2,500-seat main worship center with a new InnovaSon Sy80 digital mixingconsole for front-of-house and monitor duties, which includesreinforcing a full band, 35-piece orchestra, 160-voice choir, praiseteam and numerous soloists, groups, speakers and guests.
The worship center is the primary of five audio-visually equippedbuildings with as many as 40 events a week on the campus requiring fulltechnical support. The technically forward-thinking ministry has aworldwide potential audience of millions, broadcasting services andsermons over a 1,000 television and several thousand radio stationsaround the globe.
According to Shadow Mountain Ministries technical director TimothyHunten (pictured), “Each Sunday, I’ll use between 60 and 80 inputs invarious combinations, all of them needing something different. Our Sy80is set up to go to the house, the five stage monitor sends, eightmonitor sends, eight record sends, backstage overflow, choir sends andother locations. I have everything set up to run simultaneously and youcan stack outputs underneath each other so if I adjust the main fader,there can be eight to 12 outputs under that fader. I can set up adifferent mix to send up to record, a different one to themix—anything I want to do. And most importantly, it has a veryshort learning curve, which is important with so many visitingengineers.”
Commenting on the addition of the board, “The Sy80 was even smallerthan its direct competitors, but you’re not losing anything with 80faders on the control surface, and the integrated video screen andinfinitely assignable faders also made the Sy80 better for us.”
With a potential plethora of microphones onstage requiring differentsettings, the church has also dramatically cut necessary microphoneinventory. As for the microphones and the rest of the system, the 90inputs coming from stage are a mix of Sennheiser, AKG and Shurewireless and DPA microphones. Outboard gear includes items from TCElectronics, Eventide and Yamaha, while JBL components make up theloudspeaker system.
For more information on the InnovaSon board, visit www.innovason.com.For more information on the church, visit www.shadowmountain.org.
