Redeemer’s new sound mixer is here!
This is the Behringer Wing mixer. It is not the phaser firing station of the starship Enterprise.
Our sound is now digital in the sanctuary with the addition of the Wing Mixer
Replacement of the 15-year old Yamaha sound mixer with a new generation digital sound mixer by Behringer (The “Wing”) is complete. The old mixer was getting “creaky” and prone to lapses where turning on a microphone gave no response.
Now that many people are “attending” worship services over the internet, it is critical that reliable audio and video are used for worship. The old mixer used conventional analog mixing and all signals were transported on separate cables from each source (microphones, musical instruments, CD players, etc) to the mixer and then to each output (house speakers, DVD recorders, internet streaming, etc).
Twenty six audio cables ran through a conduit buried under the floor of the church from sources at the chancel and front of the nave to the mixer at the back and then back again to the speakers at the front. All those cables under the floor have been replaced with a single digital cable that carries all the digitized sound inputs back to the mixer and then the digitized mixed sounds are carried back to the speakers.
Digitize the sounds, mix them, then convert back to sound
Besides the Wing mixer, the other key piece of equipment is called a “stage box”. It converts multiple sources of sound to digital signals and transmits them on a cable to the Wing. It also receives the mixed sound digital signals from the Wing, converts them back to analog signals and sends to speaker amplifiers, recording devices, and the internet interface.
Ted Toler leads Redeemer’s Technical Arts Team and the mixer upgrade project. Because of this upgrade the audio quality both within the church house and over the internet has noticeably improved.
Stage box (lower piece) connected to source inputs and speaker outputs.
Back of stage box showing cable to mixer.