Hillsong Church has selected Lab.gruppen’s PLM Series Powered Loudspeaker Management System for its Baulkham Hills campus in Sydney, Australia.
The PLMs power the church’s new speaker system and make full use of the Lab’s integrated Lake processing and monitoring features.
Steve LeRoux – who, alongside Jad Gilles, heads the Hillsong audio team – commented: “We purchased our first Lab.gruppen amplifiers a few years ago and they have been rock-solid. We’ve also been using Lake processors for many years, so the combination of Lake processing built into a Lab amp made choosing the PLMs an easy decision.”
A total of 24 PLM systems were supplied, comprising 20 x PLM10000Q (4 x 2300w) and 4 x PLM20000Q (4 x 5000w). Two FP10000Qs (4 x 2100w) were also purchased to drive the stage monitor speakers.
Among the many PLM features that Hillsong is making use of is LoadSmart. A verification function in the software activates a 3-second complete system test, alerting the operator to any driver failures or cable problems. Fingerprint Data (load characteristics) for each speaker model, plus cable data, is loaded into the PLM file and compared with test results during the verification process. The “one-click” test can be performed before and after an event to give operators the peace of mind that all drivers are within spec. In addition, the software provides real-time performance monitoring which will alert the operator to any load problems whilst the system is in use.
The PLMs at Hillsong are used with a Lake processor as a front end system controller. The Lake device receives AES audio from the mixing console and converts it to Dante, which is distributed to the PLM racks over fibre. The PLMs are set with Dante as the priority input, followed by AES as the secondary, and analogue audio as the third level of input redundancy.
Supplied and installed by Brad Law and his team from Cuepoint, four racks of PLMs are located on the catwalk with full control and monitoring available via a laptop anywhere in the venue.
“The Lake/PLM software makes controlling this complex system quite simple,” said Law. “Of particular note is the grouping feature that allows us to have all key information on the one screen. Having extensive DSP available in every amplifier enabled us to easily cater for the different modes of operation in the church. On a project such as this you want to know that the signal distribution and amplification network are both solid and sonically true. This project has gone very smoothly and the results are indeed what we all had hoped for. We look forward to using PLMs again on future projects.”
