Cedar Falls, IA-April 2018… Candeo Church had an enviable issue: The congregation was growing so quickly that within three years of moving in, its facility in Waterloo, Iowa, could no longer handle Sunday crowds of up to 800 worshippers. While seeking a larger facility, church leaders learned that Heartland Vineyard Church’s 13-year-old building in nearby Cedar Falls was too large for the latter’s needs. So the two churches swapped buildings, and Candeo Church began remodeling its newly acquired Cedar Falls building.

As part of this effort, Candeo Church contracted with systems integrators CCI Solutions of Tumwater, Washington, to design and build a major update to the AV systems, including a small video network based on Visionary Solutions encoders and decoders. “As they anticipated moving in, they brought us onboard to do the AV master plan retrofit,” begins CCI Solutions Project Lead and Director of Design and Engineering Todd Gathany. “We have a process we go through with churches called Accelerated Collaborative Design, ACD, which is a two-day session where we sit down with the client, go through their wish list, present budgeting options, and so on. We did a master design and figured out what they could afford to do with Phase 1, which is the part we’ve installed so far. Phase 1 ended up being a new PA, LED wall installation, and a little bit of video distribution in the building to get out to the lobby, using Visionary Solutions PacketAV™ E4100 and D4100 encoders and decoders.”

The system currently employs two Visionary Solutions E4100 encoders. “One encoder is for a camera in the sanctuary,” Gathany explains. “It serves as an on ramp so they can plug into the Visionary network anywhere in the sanctuary and get their video to their Roland XS-82H matrix switcher/scaler at front-of-house. We’re injecting audio from the video into the system through the switcher as well. The other E4100 encoder is the output feed for ProPresenter, or whatever’s going through the switcher, back into the network. One encoder provides an input to the switcher, and the other returns the output from the switcher to the network.”

Three Visionary Solutions D4100 decoders serve as video network off ramps. “In Phase 1, we have three displays,” recounts Gathany. “The first is the LED wall in the sanctuary, which consists of 66 Absen D3 panels and measures 18 feet by 9.84 feet. The Roland XS-82H switcher connects to a NovaStar MCTRL660 controller to provide signal to the LED wall. We use two D4100 decoders for two displays in the foyer. A fourth D4100 is a floater so they can use it wherever needed. The displays show the switcher output most of the time but they have the option to switch to the camera-only feed.”

The theater-like sanctuary is fan shaped, with stadium seating in the rear, and holds about 1,000 people. It’s a well designed room but the existing sound system wasn’t optimal for Candeo Church’s needs, so CCI installed a new PA system based on L-Acoustics ARC arrays and flown subwoofers. At this point, the system does not use Dante; its Symetrix Radius 12×8 EX DSP connects to the speakers in the analog domain. The church’s existing Midas M32 console was retained, with the addition of a DL32 stage box.

Candeo Church’s new system has been well received. “Comments from the church have been very positive so far,” confirms Gathany. “We had to do the whole installation in about a month because the two churches were swapping buildings, but it has worked fine, and we haven’t gotten any calls about problems. This was one of our first projects with Visionary Solutions products, and we’re very pleased. We’re already using Visionary Solutions in other projects.”