System integrator Diversified recently implemented a Waves Commercial Audio CA1000 DSP engine. This will enhance the worship audio experience for services, both onsite and streamed online at Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis.
Changes Required
Serving its community through online services has been vital to the ministry since the start of the pandemic, when in-person gatherings were suspended in Indiana. Church leadership realized that existing AV equipment needed to be improved to provide higher-quality streamed broadcasts to the organization’s 3,000-strong membership. As a resulte, they contracted New Jersey-based Diversified to provide a phased upgrade toward a more capable and robust broadcast system.
“Our primary goal for the initial phase was to solve the church’s most pressing issues,” says Tim Corder, Diversified’s Director of Strategic Accounts for Houses of Worship. “The church’s operators vary widely in skill levels, so we needed a straightforward, easily operated system that is also highly flexible and robust.”
The Installation Process
Diversified installed the Waves CA1000 DSP engine to process the audio stream for the church’s YouTube channel. Corder explains the choice: “To improve the quality of the weekly broadcast from the church’s audio consoles, we needed true brick-wall limiting and a solid mastering chain. The Waves Commercial Audio engine provided both, in a set-and-forget kind of way that anyone at the church could utilize. This combination of seriously improved sound quality and complete ease of use were critical to the success of our work.”
Corder’s team fine-tuned one of the factory-installed Waves CA presets with their own settings. “We used the Waves CA1000 processor to master the broadcast chain, inserted in line between the console and the encoder feeding their web broadcast,” he explains. “We started with one of the master streaming presets that came pre-installed in the CA1000 and adjusted the factory configuration a little bit to get it exactly how we wanted it. The Waves plugins in the customized preset chain are the Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain (the Live component), the L3-LL Multimaximizer, and the L2 Ultramaximizer.”
Added Bonuses
In addition to processing the broadcast stream, Diversified configured the Waves CA1000 to manage other audio tasks in the sanctuary. “To further improve audio for the church’s in-person services,” Corder says, “we created a couple of channel processing strips within the CA1000 that included the Waves X-FDBK feedback elimination plugin; these ring out two podium mics and get as much gain before feedback as possible. We also created a playback processing strip utilizing the Playlist Rider plugin, to streamline the church’s audio playback from a computer in the system; this way, the church’s audio operators will easily get even, comfortable audio levels from diverse audio sources.”
The installation was implemented using a Dante network architecture. The Diversified team was able to quickly set up the CA1000 within the Dante network. “Since the Waves CA1000 unit has Dante connectivity natively on board, it fit perfectly into the Yamaha Dante ecosystem we were creating on this project,” Corder concludes. “The product is super-simple to use and integrate. Upon initial power up, it came right online as you would expect and was on and functional within a few minutes of configuration.”
Go here for more specifics about Waves Commercial Audio products.
