Speaking to II, Ray Legnini, Aviom’s product R&D manager, explained: “Many houses of worship today are considering replacing their analogue snake with a digital system. Installing a digital snake or audio network has several advantages: increased flexibility over analogue systems, as well as simplified installation and the ability to adapt to the changing needs of the church.
“Eagle Brook Church is an excellent example of how a church can design a digital system to meet its unique needs,” he added. “This church uses a Pro16 digital snake to connect stage and front of house, but they also use our Pro64 technology to connect two Yamaha consoles for broadcast needs. We are seeing a trend where churches that have long relied on an Aviom monitor mixing system are now turning to Aviom’s connectivity solutions as their technology needs change.”
One of the critical benefits to Eagle Brook is cost efficiency, explained Audio Logic’s Jason Kartak: “A large sound system is a must for large churches and this can become a budgetary issue for them. With the Aviom system, we were able to eliminate a major cost by doing away with the wedges and all the analogue wiring that goes along with them. Now the church has its own personal mixers, so everyone is able to control their own mix and they saved roughly half the money they would have spent on a traditional system.”
The digital snake includes four AN-16/i-M Mic Input Modules on stage, each connected to an AN-16/o Output Module at front of house. These output modules connect to Aviom PB28 Patch Bay modules to allow flexible routing of the signals from the stage into the Yamaha FOH console for mixing. Using two Aviom 16/o-Y1 A-Net Interface Cards, the engineer sends 16 channels of monitoring content to performers and an additional 16 outputs to the stage.
“As we changed the style of music, one of our concerns was the stage volume that poured out into the front of the room,” said Bill Berger, director of technical arts, Eagle Brook Church. “Having clean and clear audio is all part of the experience at the church.”
