I'm looking for a little, but highly specific, advice. Our congregation is in the middle of doing a major renovation (when was the last time you saw someone pick up a church, rotate it 180 degrees and move it 50 feet?) and a number of our members have been asking about whether we are going to fix our sound system. Since the stuff we currently use is more or less thrown together and is as much as 20 years old, there are times when it is very trying. Here's the background of what I need to produce. We are a congregation of about 350 members, of whom a good portion are seniors. Our services are strictly traditional, the minister preaches, the congregation sings and the organ accompanies. Currently, we are making audio tapes which we duplicate for 3-5 members (although I suspect that more would be interested). I also make a video on VHS, which gets passed among a number of individuals.
Currently, we use two mics: a wireless on the minster and an overhead to capture the congregation. Just the wireless goes to the PA and the Gentry transmitters a few members use, both go into the tape recorder and the VCR.
In addition, in the new building we will be using the foyer for over flow, so I will need to send the wireless (and perhaps the overhead) into their. I also want to send audio (and perhaps even video in to the nursaries).
Although we really only need two mics for most of the time, there are times, such as during baptisms and the like where it would be nice to have floor mics for the participants. Even if they only ever say "I DO" I feel its important that every be available to those who rely on our video or audio tapes to witness everything. I have also spoken to people who would like to have addtional capacity for weddings and some P&W evenings that may start up, if we can do it right.
Oh yeah, and our sound team (all three of us) are volunteers (one a farmer, the other a landscaper and I'm a computer geek). None of us have anything remotely like sound engineering skills, so it would be nice if the final system is as simple as possible to operate.
From where I sit, the most important piece of the whole system is the mixing. I've looked at two different systems, each at different ends of the spectrum.
The first thing I looked at was the Yamaha AW16G which is a digital mixing station with something like 16 inputs. Although this is overkill in many ways, it does a few things for me. First it records directly to harddrive and has a builtin CDR. Second it has lots of room for expansion. Third, although it is a complex prosumer grade mixing board (which none of us would be able to operate well, atleast initially), it is programmable so I can have a professional create a number of presets and all we have to do for our worship services is choose the relevant preset. It also has almost everything built in including mic preamp, compression, a bunch of effects (most of which I only partly understand). It seesm geared mostly for recording, not PA and may be overdone for what we want to achieve
On the other end of the spectrum, I looked at the Rolls RM68 Zone Wolf (http://www.rolls.com/new/rm68.html), this takes in 3 mic inputs and you can send them to two different output zones. The advantage here is that it is expandable (you can gang a number together), and its deadly simple to operate (sliders for input volume, dials for volume, base, treble on each output zone).
The problem I have is that if I go with the Rolls, I'm not sure what else I need to put with this to make everything work well. I know I need a good poweramp to accomodate all the new space. I think I need a few distribution amps to feed into the various recorders. I know I want to put almost everthing into racks. I know I need a few wireless mics.
Perhaps what I need is a shopping list of items I need to get, a description of what they do and suggestions for choices that will suite our congregation's requirements.
Thanks for all your Help!!!
Adam
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