Sunrise Church Mixes Live Sound, Broadcast and Monitors with Allen & Heath dLive

Sunrise Church in Rialto, California, recently purchased three Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing systems from Pacific Coast Entertainment of Huntington Beach, CA as part of an upgrade to the church’s FOH, monitor and broadcast audio systems.

Founded in 1956, the church now has six Southern California locations and holds weekend and mid-week worship services, holiday services at Easter and Christmas and special events such as a Women’s Night of Worship, which is soon to feature singer songwriter, Moriah Peters.

Sunrise has an active worship arts ministry with video production, and a praise band and choir, managing 40 plus microphones and other audio sources for some events. To mix these events and the worship services at its Rialto location, Sunrise chose the Allen & Heath dLive and has two S7000s and an S3000 control surface, with a DM64 and two DM32 MixRacks plus two DX32 expander racks. The DM64 and two DX32 racks plus one of the S7000 surfaces are utilized for Front of House, with the second S7000 and the DM32 installed at stage right for Monitors, whilst an additional S3000 and DM32 is located in an isolated booth to mix live internet broadcasts.

Craig King, Tech Director at Sunrise, says the Rialto church previously had a large analog mixer for both FOH and broadcast, with two engineers at the mix position for some events. The church also had a rack of separate compressors and effects processors adding to operational complexity for its mostly volunteer operators. After discussing their needs with Kent Flemming, Account Executive at Pacific Coast Entertainment, and considering several digital mixers, Sunrise Church selected the dLive to replace its FOH analog mixer.

“We wanted a volunteer-friendly mixer that was easy to understand,” King said. “The dLive’s bubble menu help screens are awesome. And, the built-in compression and effects eliminated our outboard processing.”

With the previous setup, the church’s broadcast mix came from its analog FOH mixer but King noted, “Broadcast is its own separate world, now.”

Sunrise features its choir every fourth Sunday, whilst other services have a praise band, and services like weddings and funerals have simple audio setups. King uses dLive scenes to save the settings for each of these service types and for the more complex special events. Each scene saves the dLive layers and fader banks for microphone groups such as the drum kit or choir and also includes all of the EQ, compression, reverb, gating and other effects used for individual microphones.

“We’re still getting used to the dLive,” King said. “But the drag-and-drop setup makes things easy and the visual meters tell me when I need compression or effects.” He says the dLive’s sound quality is “more crisp, clean and clear” than the old analog mixer and the dynamic range is much better. King added that he wants to upgrade to dLive mixers, “the same flagship,” in all of the Sunrise locations. “I feel a lot more secure in what I’m doing and where we’re going with the dLive,” he said.

Kent Flemming said, “The dLive was a perfect fit for Sunrise. The usability is incredible and the church has Allen & Heath GLD and Qu Series mixers in other locations so their volunteers were able to learn the dLive quickly. And a pastor told me that the sound quality in the church was 100% better!”