New Zealand’s Lampros Sound – specialists in sound, lighting, A/V and live streaming – recently added an Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing system to its hire stock in preparation for the Arise Conference, one of New Zealand’s largest Christian gatherings.

Based in Wellington, Lampros’ warehouse contains a number of other mixers from the Allen & Heath range, including a GLD-112 digital mixer, an iLive-T112 Surface with iDR-64 MixRack, a Qu-16 compact digital mixer, and an assortment of Zed compact analogue mixers. The new dLive system comprises the flagship S7000 Surface and DM64 MixRack.

The Arise Conference is staged over three days and hosts in excess of 6,000 attendees from 300 churches across New Zealand. It took place simultaneously at two of Wellington’s largest indoor venues – the TSB Bank Arena and the Michael Fowler Centre – together with another two venues for the accompanying Glow Kids’ Conference. To meet all of the conference requirements, two additional dLive systems were sub-hired to supplement Lampros’ stock.

‘The nature of the conference and its crew of volunteers meant there was a range of skill levels, and given the limited rehearsal time, it was important to use equipment that is reliable and easy to use,’ explains Lampros Sound in-house Sound & Production Engineer Heath Clapperton,, who worked alongside the Arise team to provide support throughout the conference.

In the primary venue, the TSB Arena, dLive consoles were supplied for FOH, monitors and recording, with an S7000, DM48 with DX32 at FOH, and two S7000s with DM64 MixRacks for monitors. All consoles were fed from a passive three way split. A Dante network ran out to an iLive-T112 and iDR-48 for the online streaming broadcast mix, and to a Macbook Pro running Logic for multitrack recording.

The Michael Fowler Centre housed an iLive-T112 with an iDR-48 at FOH and another T112 with iDR-64 for monitors with a passive split. A GLD-112 with an AR2412 and two AR84 remote I/O racks ran both FOH and monitors at the Glow Kids’ Conference. Plus, a young adults’ sessions ran a GLD-112 with AR2412 and AR84 running FOH and monitors, along with an assortment of Zed-6014FX mixers for the smaller breakout rooms.

‘We used A&H consoles for everything,’ says Tom Borkin, the Wide Production Lead for Arise Church. ‘The user interface on all the consoles is intuitive, clear and well laid out. For our Church, they are reliable consoles. We’ve been using them in bump in/out environments for almost ten years and they deliver every week. They allow us to be flexible in what we do. We can be in three-to-four different venues for various Church events in the same week, with completely different band configurations, and run everything from one console or with dedicated FOH and monitor consoles.’