James River Assembly (JRA) is among the first venues in the United States to take delivery and install one of DiGiCo's new SD5 consoles. Taking advantage of a limited-time 'Trade Up' offer from US distributor Group One Limited - and working through Special Event Services (SES)-the 12,000-member House of Worship in Springfield, Missouri, traded up their outdated large-format digital console with credit toward the purchase of two SD5s, plus an SD10 to accommodate its growing congregation.
JRA's audio director Stephen Maddox selected the SD5 for the main campus FOH after seeing its debut at the 2012 InfoComm show, adding an SD10 for monitors. An additional SD5 was purchased for FOH at the West Campus with technical engineer Brian Roggow overseeing the installation there. JRA pulled the old consoles-which freed up loads of space-after a Sunday morning service and had the DiGiCo units up and operational for rehearsals the following Tuesday.
"With the audio system revamp, we waited because we knew it would be a larger undertaking," explains Maddox, "and one that would entail putting in an entirely new speaker system but also modifying the architecture of the room, and updating the microphones, soundboard, etc. We moved forward with the vision of our Lead Pastor John Lindell in mind. It was a team effort from the whole staff here. When the previous system was designed, the church was doing a classic contemporary musical style, which included a choir and orchestra. Since that time the church has transitioned musically to a rock/contemporary style of worship, but the old sound system wasn't able to keep up with the output.
"The speakers were the main culprit and got the conversation started for the revamp. Once we decided on the PA - an Outline GTO with Powersoft K8 amplifiers and XTA DSP - we moved on to looking for consoles. Once we saw the SD5, we knew it was perfect. I loved the layout; it had the functionality of the SD7 but half the inputs and therefore cost less money.
