there somewhere …
UPDATES , UPGRADES , AND DOWNLOADABLE EFFECTS : I ’ ve had a few DAW ’ s over the years and it ’ s fun to see what downloadable sounds and effects come with the software . Well , the dLive comes with Allen & Heath ’ s DEEP processing which is full of controls and effects that are updated and added to regularly . Those updates are available when upgrading firmware . If you choose the Avantis or SQ boards , the dLive effects are available to purchase so you can have those same dLive effects and audio controls installed directly on your board . Then there will be no outboard connections that can cause latency problems and other issues .
GETTING ALL ON THE SAME PAGE : I gathered all volunteers who work with audio in the church for a training event . My longtime friend , Dennie Edwards , who is now the Louisiana representative of Allen & Heath , drove over from the land of boudin and sugar cane ( Lafayette , LA ) to instruct our team . We had over 15 people stay after church for a few hours to learn some techniques that they can utilize the next time they stand at the sound desk … whether they are using the SQ6 in the Student Venue , the Avantis in the Production Room , the SQ6 in the children ’ s area , the dLive in the North Venue , or the dLive in the Central Venue .
The beauty of it is that before I chose to get our team all on one page , the designing team of the Allen & Heath Ecosystem all got on the same page which is what I have repeated several times in this article already , but it ’ s worth repeating again … all these boards are so similar , it ’ s easy to forget which one you ’ re working on . As an example , each of the boards have touchscreen monitors with similar layouts and options . One of my favorite functions is the ability to drag and drop channels to my surface layers . Like if I am having a special service like a funeral or a wedding where I ’ m only using two handhelds , four instruments , and computer audio … I could drag all seven channels that usually live on different layers ( 1 .
Vocals 2 . Guitars 3 . Keys 4 . Media ) and drop them all on a spare layer so that everything is at my fingertips without swapping back and forth for that service .
Moving from one soundboard to the next is also easy . As we train students in the Student Venue , they may not realize , they are also learning and training for the other rooms ! Each board has the same signal chain and can run the same effects so the process of moving from one to the next is very natural .
Just like a quality high school football program includes training the junior high coaches and players , we need to be training up new tech workers whether it ’ s for audio , video , or lighting . I love that I will soon be able to move my students who are running sound on Wednesday nights for their service on an SQ6 over to the broadcast room to mix on the Avantis and eventually to the dLive in the Central Venue .
Soon I will be adding two more systems , each with an SQ5 , to our Fellowship Hall and another