First Baptist Church turns to Studer
Published: WORSHIP
WORLD: The First Baptist Church at the Mall in Florida has recently invested in a Studer Vista 5 M2 due to its expansion since founding in 1885. The Church can accommodate almost 2,500 congregants, and selected the Harman brand console for both front-of-house and monitor mixing duties.
‘We simply outgrew our old console,’ admitted Daniel Livingston, program technology supervisor at the Church at the Mall. ‘We now have three services on Sundays alone, which along with our pastor can include a full choir, a praise band, recorded music and more. We reached a point where we needed to upgrade our audio facilities, and we wanted to make sure we acquired a console that was not only up to the task but could handle our future needs.’
‘Input count was a major factor in choosing the Studer Vista 5 M2,’ noted Mr Livingston. ‘We need to accommodate more than 100 FOH and monitor inputs for a Sunday service – not only the pastor, choir and band but also pre-recorded music sources and effects sends and returns. The Vista 5 M2 was one of the few digital consoles we looked at that we could configure with the required number of inputs, and we went with 104 channels. Another important consideration was that we can upgrade the console in the future with even more inputs, DSP and other functionality if we need to – having a future-proof console is a big deal for a church like ours.’
Continuing, Mr Livingston said: ‘In addition to our own busy schedule of services and events, we regularly bring in national Christian artists like Christy Nockels, Tenth Avenue North and Avalon, so we need the console to be fully functional, 100 per cent of the time. The Vista 5 M2 has backup power supplies and redundancy and if there’s ever an issue, the console will identify the problem and you can correct it immediately. However, we haven’t had any problems. The Vista 5 M2 has been solid as a rock.’
Mr Livingston went on to say that the Vistonics interface and the console’s metre bridge ‘provide lots of information. Everything just seems to be right there when you need it, or else you can get to it quickly. Every knob has a label and with the console’s colour coding there’s no guessing about what anything does.
‘The Vista 5 M2 sounds absolutely amazing,’ he enthused. ‘The preamps are incredible. The Vista 5 M2 sounds better than any analogue or digital desk I’ve ever mixed on, and I have never received better tech support than I have with the Studer people. I can call at 10 o’clock at night and someone will be there for me.’