Pearl Technology Deploys The United Methodist Church’s First Award-Winning AV Upgrade
United States – Peoria, Illinois is home to the rapidly growing First United Methodist Church (FUMC). The dynamic and forward-looking congregation turned to veteran IT technology and services company Pearl Technology in a recent system upgrade that covered its video production studio, recording studio, podcast and its sanctuaries, centered around the Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing system and ME personal mixing system.
Honored as the 2021 SCN (Systems Contractor News) Installation of the Year, the project kicked off when FUMC contacted Pearl Technology to discuss upgrading its ability to record and livestream its services, enabling new ways to create online content to spread the church’s message through podcasts and other engaging media. FUMC’s two main worship spaces include a traditional worship space with a full audio system, cameras, streaming, and simple video presentation. A second worship center is a more contemporary space with all the same features and an increased emphasis on worship group and video. The upgrade process spawned the idea of consolidating separate production and streaming systems into a shared space for more advanced audio and video capability.
Jeremy Caldera, CTS-D, CTS-I, Pearl Technology’s senior vice president, audio-visual technology, notes, “The camera and presentation systems for both spaces have been routed to the newly constructed production and broadcast room. This was done via HD-SDI over fiber and video IP transport. Audio used upgraded shrine mixers and a larger console in the production and broadcast space. For this element, we performed a demo with the church’s technical team and ultimately selected dLive Allen & Heath mixing systems.
The two main sanctuary spaces use the dLive C3500 and transmit signals via Dante to the production and broadcast room housing a dLive S7000. dLive is Allen & Heath’s flagship mixing system, powered by a 160×64 96kHz XCVI FPGA core that provides 128 fully processed input channels and 64 fully processed mix outputs per system. The Worship Center and Praise Band, in conjunction with the C3500, draws from the Allen & Heath ME Personal Mixing System.
Caldera continues, “The new system design is so flexible. The adjacent recording and podcast studio also routes all video and audio into the production room and allows for real-time transport throughout the building with a live mixing engineer for video and audio. All of these systems create a worship experience for tens of thousands of people each week who cannot attend in-person services. »
Jeff Hawley, Marketing Director of Allen & Heath USA, adds, “Jeremy and the team at Pearl Technology have come up with an amazing system design that demonstrates the malleability of the dLive line and our personal monitoring solutions. As FUMC continues to grow and push the boundaries of technology, it will be fun to see how they put dLive and ME systems to good use. Thank you for choosing Allen & Heath and congratulations on winning; well-deserved!”
