Newhope Church in Durham, NC utilizes a Waves eMotion LV1 live mixer and plugins as key components in streaming its worship services, which is under the supervision of Dave Bookhout, director of creative arts and worship for the church.
“We’ve been broadcasting our services from our six campuses (Durham, Garner, Hillsborough, Wake Forest, Sanford, Kenya, and iCampus) for a while now; but since COVID, it’s become the most important thing we do on a weekly basis, Bookout says. “Sometimes we broadcast live using the eMotion LV1, and at other times we pre-record and then mix and master the broadcast using Logic, with all the same Waves plugins that we use on the LV1. Week in and week out, we use the Waves eMotion LV1 live mixer in our broadcast suite.”
The church is running four Dell TouchScreen monitors, with a DiGiGrid MGO optical MADI interface transporting 128 channels between two MADI cards in a Midas Neutron and Waves SoundGrid network. There’s also a Waves SoundGrid Extreme Server to handle plugin processing.
“We have almost every Waves plugin in our arsenal, and we are using many of them at any given time, so a powerful server is crucial,” he notes. “We also have a DiGiGrid IOC audio interface in our broadcast suite functioning as the LV1’s local I/O to transport audio to our studio monitors. We run 48 channels of the Waves SuperRack at front of house, using a Midas Pro X console, all I/Os being shared with the broadcast suite. So, we have 128 channels going on/off the Waves SoundGrid network, and the broadcast suite uses 72 channels while FOH has access to 48.
“We also utilize the SoundGrid Driver with a DAW for virtual sound check at both FOH and for broadcast, to get everything dialed in between our rehearsals and Sunday morning. That’s invaluable for us.”
On choosing the LV1 for streaming, Bookhout explains that the church was already running SoundGrid through a Midas console at FOH, so adding LV1 for broadcast proved to be a relatively simple matter.
“Also, the ability to run Waves plugins on every channel as well as on the master gives us every tool needed to create an incredible mix,” he adds. “When broadcasting to Facebook and YouTube, mastering is ultra-important, and we’re able to achieve great results that we were only able to hear previously when mastering in a DAW.
“The LV1 is so easy to use. Training our volunteers and getting them up to speed on the LV1 was a breeze. The sound quality is superb, and having access to all the Waves plugins almost feels like cheating! We have many different singers, so we love being able to quickly save and recall channel strips for each vocalist, allowing us to pick up on their channel right where we left off.”