Situated in Sydney’s Castle Hill, St Paul’s Church is a modern House of Worship home to a comprehensive AV ecosystem. Part of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, St Paul’s runs a variety of community services, events and concerts in addition to 3 regular Sunday services- two of which are streamed live each week. As part of an ongoing investment in its production capabilities, CityAlight, the church’s music ministry, recently helped introduce the church to a new suite of DiGiCo digital mixing solutions.
In consultation with music and pro audio retailer Turramurra Music, CityAlight chose two Quantum 225 consoles, along with a 4REA4 system, integrating an optical loop and DiGiCo stage racks.
“DiGiCo Quantum is an ideal platform for larger churches and other venues where audio quality, ease of operation and long-term flexibility are all critical,” says Mat Stevens, General Manager of Turramurra Music. “Quantum delivers the sound quality and intuitive workflow you’d expect from DiGiCo, while giving venues the scalability to expand and adapt their systems as their requirements evolve.”
Augmenting an already-existing SD12 console workflow, St Paul’s elected to standardise on DiGiCo, simplifying training and weekly operations for its large volunteer production team, as Jared, Audio Engineer at CityAlight, explains:
“With the new Quantum consoles, we’re finding that our system sound, our presets, and the overall ecosystem that we’ve built is becoming a much more consistent experience for our team. The consoles all being DiGiCo gives us one platform to train on, one platform to operate. The benefit of this DiGiCo system is that across each of our Quantum consoles, we’re able to deploy a show file that makes sense for the Front of House, the monitors, and the broadcast console while also being consistent in its deliverables and its appearance. And so each week our operators are getting straight into mixing- straight into what they love rather than setting up a system each time.”
“One of the big things about the DiGiCo Quantum 225 is the intuitive nature of the layout and the user interface,” says Rich Vassallo, Chief Operating Officer for CityAlight. “Another of our primary focuses was to create a system that had redundancy and future expandability.”
“Here at St. Paul’s, we’re using a 4REA4 system to link our Front of House, our monitors and broadcast system,” adds Jared. “The 4REA4 becomes a bridge for MADI, Dante, and our optical network.”
Designed for installed audio applications, DiGiCo’s 4REA4 is a centralized DSP engine combining high-performance processing, routing, and control. It supports up to 128 input channels, flexible network connectivity, and seamless integration with DiGiCo consoles and third-party audio protocols- making it ideal for multi-space venues like Houses of Worship. 4REA4’s host of capabilities help simplify the deployment and day-to-day management of sophisticated networked audio systems.
“The 4REA4 has been integrated for distribution of audio to the many areas around the venue that require it and to be able to rely on snapshots and automation to make things easier for their volunteer team to achieve a great professional result on Sundays,” notes Mat.
Providing a modern, scalable mixing platform, the DiGiCo Quantum 225 consoles not only support seamless networking capabilities- but also enable the church to deliver exceptional audio quality for both in-person and streamed services, as Rich summarises:
“Since we upgraded to the Quantum 225s and the 4REA4, we have had a significant increase in quality, in both our speech and music delivery. It was a huge relief on the first day that we launched it, when we got a lot of amazing feedback from the congregation about how pleased they were; the music was just even and full.”
Read more about the Quantum 225 and 4REA4 on the official DiGiCo website.
