Even by Texas standards, First Baptist Church Pasadena is a large church. Some years ago, it expanded its campus with major master-planned facilities that included a 2,500-seat modern worship center, a traditional basilica-style chapel with laminated wood interior and gorgeous stained glass, a prominent western entry bell tower, and a dedicated 10,000-square-foot children’s wing.
More recently, it upgraded the audio system for its main worship space, adding two KLANG:vokal+ immersive IEM mixing systems, dedicated to mixing monitors for the church’s contemporary and blended services each Sunday. As with most new technologies, FBC Pasadena eased itself in, starting with one KLANG:vokal+ and several KLANG:kontrollers in September 2025. That was just after two new DiGiCo Quantum338 consoles were also acquired, all through Springfield, Missouri-based pro audio dealer Paragon 360 and Paragon Direct. Those consoles are now used for front-of-house and broadcast applications, while one of the church’s original DiGiCo SD10 consoles was moved to create its first dedicated monitor position, with a MADI connection between the desk and the KLANG systems.
For a while, says FBC Pasadena Director of Media Brent Shore, stage monitors were mixed via a combination of the initial KLANG system and directly through the console, one route for the band and orchestra and the other for the vocalists. “At that point we discovered we loved the KLANG so much and realized it would be so much simpler if we were just using one app and got everybody into the KLANG ecosystem,” he recalls. “It was working so well for us for the band, so we figured we’d move all of the vocalists over to it as well. Then we could hand out the KLANG:app to those people, and they could start mixing themselves. So in the early part of this year, we added a second KLANG:vokal+, and now we have 24 KLANG mixes, all on the same console.”
This configuration, he says, has added enormous efficiency to the church’s audio workflow while also vastly enhancing the musicians’ experience on stage. “With the former IEM system that we had, they had a little bit of volume control, but they couldn’t do a whole lot of panning or much of anything else,” recalls Shore. “With KLANG’s spatial audio platform, being able to move instruments around has cleaned the band’s mixes up so much. They all said, ‘This is so much clearer than what we were previously using!’ And the same also goes for our worship leaders, who now can make changes to their mixes without having to relay mix requests back to the monitor team mid-service, because both have KLANG:app on their phones. When something happens in the service and they need to make an adjustment, they can do it themselves. Really, we’re now just managing rather than mixing monitors—making sure levels are coming in correctly, getting the right EQ, and so on—but the musicians, vocalists, and worship leaders are doing all of the actual mixing. It puts them into the driver’s seat and puts the monitor engineers in more of a support role, which makes it easier on everyone.”
Shore says the logistical benefits of KLANG also extend to the tight changeover between the blended and contemporary services. “You run into a lot of challenges when you have two different service types, and KLANG’s ability to recall presets is a huge deal for us, because we only have about 15 to 20 minutes in between our two services,” he explains. “Every Sunday, we’re taking it from being a choir and orchestra with some band elements in the first service to a band-only contemporary setup in the second service. Seeing that lighting, video, and other elements all need to be changed over, there’s a lot going on in a very brief time period. With KLANG, we’re able to just load the session for each service, and it immediately recalls all those :kontrollers, in-ears, and everything back to their mixes. Unlike some of the other systems that are out there, where you have to go and find all of those settings, KLANG just talks to the console, seamlessly calling up settings and re-populating the channel names. That’s made it so much easier to prep our workflow for two very different services. In a very real way, it’s revolutionized the way our monitors work.”
For more information on First Baptist Church Pasadena, visit www.fbp.org. Paragon 360 can be found online at www.paragon360.com.
