Bayside Church is a member of the C3 Church movement located in Cheltenham, Victoria. The church prides itself on being a vibrant and contemporary church that accommodates for all age groups including kids, youth, young adults and the elderly alike. Their main auditorium seats over 500 and the church congregation size is over 1000. Bayside Church reports that they are currently in a stage of growth.
Production Manager Tom Moore oversees the maintenance and purchase of equipment, training and team management. With the churches numbers growing fast, Tom has made it his goal to upgrade the A/V setup so that it can keep up and grow alongside the church. Amidst the first of these upgrades was the decision to invest in a DiGiCo SD9 as Tom notes.
“This was our first DiGiCo purchase however I had seen these consoles in action when dealing with Dominica Sound on the Gold Coast. I had always heard great things about the quality of DiGiCo.”
Aside from the exceptional sound quality that DiGiCo is renowned for, whether from the pristine preamps, the headroom from using an FPGA chipset or the exceptional ADDA converters; Tom also shared his thoughts on some of the other reasons behind going DiGiCo.
“We had pretty specific goals and requirements that I felt were important in choosing a console. The console had to obviously sound good but it was also very important that it was user friendly as the entire sound production team is made up of volunteers with a mixture of little to no audio experience outside of church. Size and footprint was also a consideration as we wanted something that had a small footprint but didn’t feel cramped when being used. The layout of the SD9 was also very similar to analog consoles that many of the volunteers had used before so much of their knowledge was easily transferable.”
Bayside Churches SD9 sees a wide range of performances and acts which the SD9 easily handles.
“The SD9 is being used in the FOH of the main auditorium. Its operational at Youth service on Friday night and two regular services over the weekend. There are often other events in the auditorium that it also gets used for including men’s and women’s events. We are running two D-Racks (one on stage and one at OPs) via Cat5e to control all inputs and outputs.”
With the SD9 being completely cross compatible with all of the DiGiCo SD Series, Tom saw the ability to add additional consoles as required. The combination of powerful console software and rack options are unparalleled, providing a huge amount of connectivity, power and flexibility.
A very happy Tom Moore with Bayside Churches DiGiCo SD9
“We didn’t want to be stuck with a console that we would have to upgrade in a few years because of the advances in technology. The software updates allow us to simply upgrade when we need to which will increase the life of the console.”
The SD9 in use has also impressed Tom, his team and guests which is further testament to DiGiCo’s ease of use.
“I was really surprised how easy it was for the volunteers to start using the console. After one training session I was able to let the other sound engineers mix by themselves without any problems at all! I honestly don’t think this would have been possible with any other console that I have used previously.”
Realising the outstanding power, flexibility and quality of DiGiCo, Tom could see how much value DiGiCo offers.
“I think the SD series are definitely the best value for money consoles you can buy. DiGiCo really combined a natural sounding console with great features and usability which is something that other companies haven’t been able to do. The flexibility of the SD series is something that made our decision clear when it came time to upgrade. The one console has so many different uses and capabilities and the ability to simply upgrade the software for more features is definitely a winner!”
Feedback at Bayside has been extremely positive all round also.
“We have had heaps of comments in the last few weeks about how much the sound has improved and cleaned up. Even congregation members that aren’t tech savvy or musical have noticed the different as it has taken away the harshness from a less than adequate P.A. The SD9 has really enabled us to get 110% out of our current setup.”
A special thanks goes out to Dominica and Group for their support also.
“A big thank you to Steve McCallum and Russell Baker from Dominica for their great service and advice over the years. Also thanks to Drew Menard from GT for the local support, advice and training.”
Ah to tweak, so much fun
