Having been served by a pair of DiGiCo D5 Live FOH and monitor desks, the 5,000-seat in-the-round sanctuary at the Second Baptist Church’s West Campus in Houston has recently upgraded to two DiGiCo SD5 consoles. The mixing desks were installed by local HOW systems integrator Covenant Communications, and will handle broadcast sound for the church’s services.

‘The SD5s were chosen based on what our team thought were the best overall live audio consoles on the market,’ says Second Baptist Global Tech Director, Mark Sepulveda. ‘They continue to give us superior audio with the DiGiCo brand, continue ease of hands-on functionality, easy firmware updates that will continue to add new features in coming years, and the ability of the SD software to integrate with Waves SoundGrid for a seamless plug-in experience.’

Covenant Communications has largely handled Second Baptist’s audio/video/lighting needs for the past four years, and the upgrade choice came after considering various options: ‘Our role is to be objective,’ says Covenant Sales Manager, Joe Smart. ‘It’s not an emotional decision, but one to find the best solutions.’

The SD5’s flexibility was suited for the church’s need for a quick ‘flip around to different worship styles’, from traditional to high-energy contemporary sound, and recording audio for future TV broadcast. ‘The new spec required close to 160 inputs, no doubt in part to accommodate the fairly large band, including 12 to 15 rhythm players and 20 to 30 string players,’ Smart notes. ‘That doesn’t include the enormous choir of up to 180 singers, 24 of those members being wirelessly close-miked and processed for a massive choir sound.’

‘The broadcast engineer takes direct feeds via tracking of the overall mix as well as 12-16 of the individual “money” and room mic channels for the broadcast mix that is edited and mixed at the Main Campus’ (Woodway) broadcast studio,’ Sepulveda explains.

According to Second Baptist West Campus Director of Audio, Nathan Wells, there wasn’t much of a learning curve moving from the D5 Live to SD5 because ‘the basic operation and layout of the SD5 was very familiar to both myself at FOH and our monitor mix engineer, Matt Howard, from working with the D5 consoles. We were able to get into our mixes pretty quickly with little trouble. In other areas, such as the software menu options, the amazing in-depth snapshot detail, audio I/O setup via the software, session structure set-up and, of course, the second function button, the ‘learning curve’ was more sizable but a very welcomed change from the D5 with the expanded features of the SD series software and hardware.

‘At FOH, the addition of Waves integration is huge, of course, and also being able to set up the console screens in previously unimaginable ways – such as combining input and output channels on one bank of faders and using multiple channels and set spills to condense the channel layout – has been very useful in making things even easier to get to at any critical moment,’ he says.

The 56 mix bus count also represents a major upgrade for monitors and upgrading from the D5 to the SD5 ‘gave us the ability via the fibre network to access any I/O from any console and being able to arm the control of individual I/O cards in each rack for any one console on the network, all done with ease from the GUI on the consoles’.

‘The warm analogue sound from these SD5 consoles and racks is a really surprising improvement from the great sounding D5 desks,’ says Sepulveda. ‘With very little channel EQ and not much processing needed of any kind, the SD5 has been a wonderful upgrade right out of the box.’

Second Baptist employs as many as 30 full-time A/V staff, and 70 total when combining the volunteer force across all of its five campuses, which collectively comprise the US’ largest Baptist congregation and second largest house of worship overall.

In addition to the two new desks that went into Second Baptist’s West Campus, the Woodway Main Campus recently upgraded its monitor mix position with the church’s third DiGiCo SD5. ‘We have plans to bring the remaining campuses up to date within the DiGiCo family of consoles in a systematic, as-needed upgrade over the next few years,’ Sepulveda adds.