LAKELAND,
Florida — The First Baptist Church at the Mall has a rich history of serving its
parishioners ever since it was founded as the First Baptist Church of Lakeland
in Florida in 1885. From its beginnings with 12 charter members worshipping in
a 32-foot by 50-foot wooden frame structure, the Church has been steadily
expanding to where it now stands on the site of a former mall (hence its name)
and can accommodate almost 2,500 congregants. With growth came the need for a
more capable live sound console: a HARMAN Studer Vista 5 M2, which the church
uses for both front-of-house and monitor mixing.
“We simply outgrew our old console,”
said Daniel Livingston, Program Technology Supervisor at the Church at the
Mall. “We now have three services on Sundays alone, which along with our pastor
can include a full choir, a praise band, recorded music and more. We reached a
point where we needed to upgrade our audio facilities, and we wanted to make
sure we acquired a console that was not only up to the task but could handle
our future needs.”
“Input count was a major factor in
choosing the Studer Vista 5 M2,” noted Livingston. “We need to accommodate more
than 100 FOH and monitor inputs for a Sunday service—not only the pastor, choir
and band but also pre-recorded music sources and effects sends and returns. The
Vista 5 M2 was one of the few digital consoles we looked at that we could
configure with the required number of inputs, and we went with 104 channels.
Another important consideration was that we can upgrade the console in the
future with even more inputs, DSP and other functionality if we need to—having
a future-proof console is a big deal for a church like ours.”
Reliability and redundancy are also
paramount, Livingston noted. “The console simply has to work. In addition to
our own busy schedule of services and events, we regularly bring in national
Christian artists like Christy Nockels, Tenth Avenue North and Avalon, so we
need the console to be fully functional, 100 percent of the time,” he said.
“The Vista 5 M2 has backup power supplies and redundancy and if there’s ever an
issue, the console will identify the problem and you can correct it
immediately. However, we haven’t had any problems. The Vista 5 M2 has been
solid as a rock.”
In addition, the Vista 5 M2 is easy
to use. “The Vistonics™ interface and the console’s meter bridge provide lots
of information,” Livingston added. “Everything just seems to be right there
when you need it, or else you can get to it quickly. Every knob has a label and
with the console’s color coding there’s no guessing about what anything does.”
“The Vista 5 M2 sounds absolutely
amazing,” Livingston said. “The preamps are incredible. The Vista 5 M2 sounds
better than any analog or digital desk I’ve ever mixed on.”
“I have to point out that nowhere on this planet, with any company I’ve
ever worked with, have I ever gotten better tech support than I have with the
Studer people,” Livingston concluded. “I can call at 10 o’clock at night and
someone will be there for me.”
For more information
on Church at the Mall, please visit www.churchatthemall.com
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