Potter's House Church Upgrades to Solid State Logic Live Series Consoles

Potter's House Church Upgrades to Solid State Logic Live Series Consoles

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Brie Clayton March 5, 2021

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With a 30,000-strong congregation, church scales infrastructure to include three Live L550 consoles, leveraging SSL's Dante network capabilities and incredible' sound.

The production teams behind the sound, video, lighting and broadcast facilities at The Potter's House in Dallas have long sought out the best technologies with which to deliver the message of the church's founder, charismatic televangelist Bishop T.D. Jakes, to his 30,000-strong congregation. Most recently, the audio system has undergone a significant upgrade with the installation of three Dante-networked Solid State Logic Live L550 digital mixing consoles, positioned at front-of-house, monitors and in the church's broadcast center.

data-src=https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030208/SolidState3_1200-1024x768.jpg alt= class=lazyload wp-image-2405259 data-srcset=https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030208/SolidState3_1200-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030208/SolidState3_1200-300x225.jpg 300w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030208/SolidState3_1200-768x576.jpg 768w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030208/SolidState3_1200-624x468.jpg 624w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030208/SolidState3_1200.jpg 1200w data-sizes=(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px /> As our ministry has grown over the years and we've started to do a lot of stuff that's outside of the norm, we started to run into walls because we just couldn't do it with our previous consoles. We have 160 or 170 inputs at times, and we were starting to run into input challenges, says Production Manager and Front-of-House Engineer William B. Barnett. So as we've grown, and our technical prowess has grown, we decided we wanted a console that could do a little more, that sounds amazing and has more inputs.

The three SSL Live L550 desks offer a noticeable improvement both in operational capabilities and in the system's sound quality compared to the previous consoles, says Barnett. If you have to have a bunch of plug-ins to make your console sound decent then that's an issue. So we said, let's look at a console that sounds incredible, operates at 96 kHz, has mic preamps with great gain, and is a fairly easy platform to use but has expansive programing.

The 191,000-square-foot main sanctuary at the church's Dallas campus, built and opened in 2000, can accommodate as many as 8,000 worshippers and is equipped with a Sound Bridge Acoustic Labs Xyon line array system powered by Lab.gruppen and Powersoft amplification with Dolby LM26 processing. To cover the large expanse of tiered seating, the PA is configured with left and right out fills, front fills, under-balcony and upper balcony delay speakers in addition to the main left and right hangs. There are also feeds to the building's public areas, such as hallways and restrooms, plus a translation feed. With the previous FOH console, says Barnett, We were doing a combination of matrix outputs from the console and having to group some stuff because there weren't enough outputs. But with the SSL, everything is driven off of the Live console's matrix because we have so many outputs.

data-src=https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030316/SolidState4_1200-1024x881.jpg alt= class=lazyload wp-image-2405260 data-srcset=https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030316/SolidState4_1200-1024x881.jpg 1024w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030316/SolidState4_1200-300x258.jpg 300w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030316/SolidState4_1200-768x660.jpg 768w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030316/SolidState4_1200-624x537.jpg 624w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05030316/SolidState4_1200.jpg 1200w data-sizes=(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px />The audio production team did their due diligence before purchasing the three L550 consoles, consulting with SSL's George Horton, Vice President, Western Region, and Live Product Specialist Fernando Guzman and arranging several demonstrations of the desk over the course of many months. We were able to install the SSL in the main sanctuary and A/B it with our previous console. Out of the box, with no EQ, no insert, no anything, just running a CD through it, the difference was night and day! And when we put an SM58 microphone through it and voiced it, the transparency of the mic preamps was absolutely incredible, says Barnett.

As for monitors, he says, We're using the proprietary SSL system, TaCo. The SSL Live TaCo (Tablet Control) mix app provides wireless tablet control of SSL Live consoles from iPad and Android devices. Each musician has a tablet and mixes themselves with TaCo, says Barnett. We're doing multiple channels of ears and multiple channels of monitors.

Audio Supervisor and Broadcast Engineer Gerard Hairston operates the L550 console installed in the church's sophisticated TV broadcast center. Hairston, who has worked at The Potter's House for many years, was a member of the audio team that won a Grammy Award in 2003 in the Best Gospel Choir or Chorus Album category for A Wing and a Prayer by Bishop T.D. Jakes & The Potter's House Mass Choir. We currently just broadcast to the web, although we have streamed to other locations, he says.

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