Sandton, South Africa (February 23, 2022)—As one of South Africa’s more affluent areas, Sandton is generally thought of as the financial district of Johannesburg, packed with office developments and the like, but there’s more to the area than money. A prime example is Rivers Church; as one of the fastest-growing congregations in South Africa, the multi-campus house of worship has its main facility in Sandton, where it reaches thousands in person and online through streaming.
Connecting the campuses and parishioners together is a selection of audio-visual technologies. “We started working with Stage Audio Works (SAW) in 2011 at the most basic level, but they are now our principal supplier and integrator for audio and video,” said Andrew Illgner, head of audio at Rivers Church. “They have an extremely knowledgeable team; for example, it was Nathan [Ihlenfeldt, SAW Technical Director] who got us on the path of digital audio networking.” For the most recent project, SAW specified and supplied two flagship Yamaha RIVAGE PM7s to replace four existing CL-series mixing consoles at Rivers’ main campus in Sandton.
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The pair of Yamaha PM7s will now serve as the primary mixing consoles in the Sandton campus, covering the 3,000-capacity main auditorium, with one at Front of House (FOH) and the other tackling monitors. While they displaced the previous Yamaha CL5 and CL1 desks in those positions, those consoles have been moved into the second auditorium and youth venue, which can hold up to 1,500 attendees.
The new PM7s join the ranks of Rivers Church’s twenty-strong collection of Yamaha mixing consoles. Notably, all consoles in use by Rivers Church are produced by Yamaha, and this has been the case since their adoption of the brand in 2009.
Over the course of their relationship, SAW have specified and supplied a vast array of audio-visual equipment for Rivers Church. All campuses are equipped with d&b loudspeaker systems, Sennheiser microphones and IEM systems. On the visual side, SAW have provided numerous Pixel Plus screens, switching gear, as well as Black Magic cameras to enhance Rivers’ broadcasting capabilities.
