Pretoria has become home to one of South Africa’s largest churches in the recently completed 6,500-seat extension to the international CRC Christian Church. The church reckons to have set a new benchmark in the region’s worship houses.
Pastor AT Boshoff’s brief to the audio contractors was to provide the church with the best on offer. When it came to console choice, the church turned to the trusted advice of US engineer Armando Fullwood of Waves. His recommendation was DiGiCo.
Local distributor Tadco installed a DiGiCo SD Ten at front of house, an SD8 for monitors and a further SD8 for the broadcast studio, which broadcasts live to the many other CRC Churches around the world. ‘DiGiCo’s intuitive layout made training students and volunteers a breeze,’ says Tadco’s Perry Elias.
‘The versatility of these consoles is a real benefit to me,’ says Henry Underhay, the church’s head of audio. ‘I come from a live rock music background, where things need to happen creatively on the fly and being able to set up the mixer in the most comfortable layout for an engineer has brought me tremendous joy. Everything you feel that you may require can literally be at your fingertips once you have done the initial set-up.
‘The console itself is also very logical and easy to get around,’ he continues. ‘Often things can change at the last second and there’s no time to do another sound check. The fact that you can access settings for, let’s say, a vocal channel from a previous show into your current show has also been a real blessing.
‘The sound of these consoles is sonically very transparent with very little – if any – unwanted colouration. This allows for a beautiful and responsive mix. In other words when you make a change to anything, the results are what you expect them to be.
‘Like most live sound engineers, I tend to be quite paranoid even in the safest situations. The guys at DiGiCo seem to know this and all the failsafes, like redundant power supplies or separate reset capabilities of the processing and audio units, has really put me at ease. I have not yet had to use any of these measures – it’s just nice to know they’re there.’
More: www.tadco.co.za
More: www.digico.org
