Among the most widely-known Anglican churches in the UK, Holy Trinity Brompton consists of four sites in Kensington, west London. Ten services – attracting in the region of 4500 worshippers – take place across these locations each Sunday, with numerous other events and meetings scheduled during the week.
A extensive recent overhaul of the audio systems in all four locations (Brompton Road, Onslow Square, Queen’s Gate and Courtfield Gardens) saw a variety of Allen & Heath dLive and SQ mixing systems, supplied by SSE Audio Group, to deliver what HTB’s production technical manager Joe Sunley-Smith describes as “customisable solutions across the four sites that are extremely flexible but easy to use, even for non-professional volunteer engineers.”
A move towards somewhat standardised systems was also important, allowing for familiarity between the HTB locations. As such both Brompton Road and Onslow Square feature identical dLive systems, based around DM64 MixRacks with Waves 3, AES3 and M-Dante (handling ULX-D wireless) cards and compact C3500 dLive surfaces. The multi-use nature of the spaces involved – and the need for clean, uncluttered stages – also sees DX1608 Expanders employed for “in the round” set-ups and dLive Director software running on iMacs for monitoring. Musicians in both locations use iPads with Allen & Heath’s One Mix app to deliver their individual monitor mixes.
HTB’s Queensgate and Courtfield Gardens sites feature SQ digital mixers – an SQ5 and SQ6 respectively – with performers and speakers using the SQ4You app for wireless control of their monitor mix.
“There are lots of reasons – both in terms of audio performance and usability – that we invested in the new Allen & Heath systems,” explains Joe Sunley-Smith. “The speech intelligibility and clarity from the dLive and SQ mixers is fantastic, and a huge improvement on previous systems. The level of flexibility and ability to customise set-ups is also something that’s very important, both for the changing line-ups and types of service we deal with each week. The easy integration with Waves and our Dante-enabled wireless systems is a real benefit.
“And although they’re incredibly powerful, dLive and SQ are very user-friendly, which is crucial when we’re training our volunteers to operate the systems. The similar workflow also means skills learned in the smaller SQ-equipped venues can be translated easily onto the dLive set-ups. It’s been a great move for HTB.”