New York, NY (March 13, 2024)—When you think of houses of worship that offer services with modern music, a traditional chapel built in 1886 probably isn’t the style that comes to mind. It is, however, exactly what the Chapel of the General Theological Seminary in Manhattan, NY is, and the worship facility recently upgraded its audio with the help of Philadelphia-based Legend Sound Systems, which put together an audio system based around an Allen & Heath AHM-64 system.
The chapel offers simple daily services that need only basic audio that can be handled by volunteer engineers, but holds modern services with a full band on weekends, requiring a trained audio pro. Looking to accommodate both experience levels, Bill Lyle, President of Legend Sound ultimately spec’d the AHM platform for its combination of advanced audio processing, multi-zone routing and, importantly, variety of simplified control options.
“Using an AHM-64 processor with a Dante module to feed directly to the amps, we had our traditional services covered,” said Lyle. For the modern weekend services, Lyle’s team added a fully-featured 48-channel SQ-5 mixing console – which connected to the same Dante network using its own Dante module. An Allen & Heath AR2412 stagebox feeds inputs to both the AHM and SQ.
Lyle used Allen & Heath’s Custom Control editor to create a custom mobile application to control the various microphones during daily services. “The app interface only shows seven faders,” explained Lyle. “We also set it up so that each fader is limited to prevent the mics from being set too loud and creating feedback problems. It really worked out well.”
The AHM is set so that each Zone output feeds a different speaker, which allows for precise tuning in a difficult acoustic environment. “The walls are stone and the ceilings are 40 feet high,” explained Lyle. “There was a lot of careful tailoring required to get the sound right.”
The staff at the Seminary are delighted with the installation and its interface. “We’ve been thrilled by the setup,” said Michael DeLashmutt, Senior Vice President of the Seminary. “We don’t have a professional AV team or even a single person who we can rely on for AV support from one semester to the next. The setup that [Legend Sound] provided for us, with the simplified tablet interface, gives us the sound quality that we needed, but without the complexity that would make running it unfeasible for our students, staff, or volunteers.”
