Pictured is Kevin Watkins in the Real Life Church Ministries broadcast mix studio. Photo by Hannah Andrews.
“We do slamming music here at Real Life Church,” explains Kevin Watkins, Director of Broadcast and Technical Operations. “We are a church for the unchurched, so our worship music is not your typical church sound. It’s not choir, it’s not orchestra, and it’s not four or five singers standing up there with music accompanying them. We have a real rockin’ band, with great singers and world class musicians.”
Real Life Church Ministries, led by lead pastor Rusty George, has churches in LA’s nearby Canyon Country, Simi Valley, and Valencia, with a large online community. The church campus’ offer biblical context in casual environments, engaging community events, and varied ministries for all stages of an individual’s life. Real Life Church is working to connect with its guests with progressive technology, operating on a daily basis through social media, mobile devices, and traditional television.
Just as the corona virus was taking hold, Watkins was putting the final touches on the church’s new broadcast mix room, featuring Ocean Way Audio monitors, at the church headquarters near Los Angeles.
“That’s when we realized that for the time being, our presence was solely outside of our church buildings,” he continues. “Basically, the heavy lifting will be our audio mix that goes out to our guests. During performances and services, we have an isolated feed into that mix room, with an engineer mixing for our online presence, for our broadcast presence, and for what’s recorded for anything in the future. We were looking to be able to mix quality audio and gauge that mix on a great set of monitors, which took us down the path to the Ocean Way Audio Pro2A’s.
Ocean Way Audio’s Pro2A monitors provide an efficient distortion-free dynamic range in a distinctive trapezoidal profile. The cabinet features a sleek design with attention to time alignment, reduced baffle reflections and materials designed to minimize low frequency resonance. Its port is optimized to increase the woofer’s low frequency extension and sound pressure level capacity.
“Our Pro2A’s are unbelievable,” Watkins comments. “Our room itself is relatively small and we were looking for a set of monitors that weren’t 10 feet tall. We wanted monitors that could push a lot of air, that sounded good at the top, sounded good at the bottom, and everything in between. The Pro2A’s do that. Our mixes sound great in the room, and they do what they are supposed to do — translate well and sound great outside of that room.”
Pro2A’s HF driver is a high definition silk fabric dome design with excellent mechanical linearity. The LF driver is a geometrically reinforced aluminum cone with a vented cast aluminum chassis yielding optimum strength and low compression. Combined with the cabinet, the system offers minimal reflection, high resolution and low listening fatigue over the entire audio spectrum.
Watkins explains, “Technology reflects what we value as a culture and because we also value engagement, technology can facilitate that. It is possible to foster deep and lasting relationships from our online presence and we encourage our guests to do so through our web presence and various social media activities.”
The Pro2A’s two-way, self-powered design delivers powerful performance allowing for flexibility of placement in the room with a uniform frequency response of 35Hz to 25kHz, and 110 dB maximum SPL between channels. The precision room response controls allow for adjustments to varying acoustic environments. The speaker allows the listener to hear a natural, open and accurate image.
Watkins, emphasizes the power of music at Real Life Church Ministries, “One of our regular players just got off the road with the Jonas Brothers. We’ve got professional players who make a their living playing outside of our church environment. We value our culture, and good music is a big part of that. It’s loud, it’s slamming, and we put the Pro2A through its paces. They don’t even break a sweat. The Pro2A’s are absolutely far exceeding any of our expectations. And honestly, it’s been a joy dealing with the company, and dealing personally with Allen Sides, as well. He’s got a great team.”
Learn more about Real Life Church: https://www.reallifechurch.org/
ABOUT OCEAN WAY AUDIO
Multi-Grammy award-winning engineer/producer and studio owner Allen Sides is the designer of Ocean Way Audio monitor systems. Sides has almost 40 years of experience designing systems for his many studios as well for a wide variety of commercial installations, including George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch scoring stage, as well as private installations for musical artists such as Gwen Stefani, Dave Grohl, Meghan Trainor, Steve Aoki, Lady Gaga and Beck. Today, Ocean Way Audio products are in use in many of the world’s most respected recording studios, sound stages, and personal audiophile listening environments.
https://oceanwayaudio.com/
