St James Church, Buckinghamshire, UK, serves multiple purposes for its some 800 adult and child members, with up to 11 worship events held each Sunday. A comprehensive renovation project at the venue incorporated a full audio, video and lighting solution – which features a Roland M-480 Digital M-480 Digital Mixing Console.
Upwards of 750 people take part in the Church services and activities, in which music plays an integral role in the most worshipping. The new audio solution needed to cope with a variety of set up configurations from spoken word, to a traditional choir and organ, eight piece contemporary bands and solo singer as well as songwriters performing in any one day. The entire system would also be designed with a bi-directional link-up to the Church centre some 300m away.
SFL Group was charged with the substantial audio visual technical project. The team, which saw SFL’s Tim Horton installed as project manager, had to take into account the 150-year old structure when designing the new solution.
Designed by Horton, the audio solution needed to be compact, simple to operate, and flexible to cater for the different uses. The Roland M-480 Digital Mixing Console provides 48 channels and is combined with the Digital Snakes (S-4000S 32 in, eight out Modular Stage Unit, S-0816 FOH Unit and S-4000D Distribution Unit) – reducting in footprint, cabling and boxes. The digital audio transmission is via Cat5e used in conjunction with the Digital Snakes with the M-480 and Roland S-OPT optical converters enabled the audio to be distributed to the main church and 300m away to the centre without any delay or loss in quality. M-Six M-48 Live Personal Mixers eliminated the need for on stage monitors allowing musicians the ability to control their own in-ear mixes.
