Church Production Magazine: In church production, small pieces of infrastructure often do the most invisible—and most critical—work. Distributed audio systems rarely get the spotlight, yet they shape first impressions before a single worship note is played. From parking lots and outdoor walkways to lobbies, cafés, and restrooms, these systems are responsible for creating a welcoming environment that feels intentional, polished, and consistent.
3 comments:
Dante as an AV over IP solution is widely used and it is apparent why it is so useful for theatre and other live event situations. In the case of the BG-AMP it is a new Dante enabled amp that is supposed to take out hardware and connection points in your system. I think this is a great thing. Of course, for any system you are trying to cut down on the amount of jumps that you have to make from one form to the next or from cable to cable. By having Dante flow directly into the amp, it cuts out a significant amount of signal conversion that has to happen and allows for better consistency. What I noticed is that this amp can’t support many outputs for different audio signals. This product is built to deliver the same signal to lots of different speakers to create even sound. This is very applicable for churches and lobby installs that need even sound and a long term solution that handles a lot of functions within itself.
Distributed audio systems provide audio throughout a space in a way that lends to high audio quality and discrete installation. In my life, the way that I use Dante most frequently is for the set up for pits. It is so much easier to run Dante then it is to hardwire every single thing, and Dante provides great quality. With that being said, it can be scary to put all of your eggs in one basket. I remember for my freshman year musical, we had a 23 person pit for Mamma Mia running on Dante. Then, all of a sudden, the system crashed. We could not figure out what was wrong and had to consequently delay sitzprobe for two hours (when it already started at 8 PM); needless to say people were not pleased. That incident was most definitely more of a byproduct of myself and others not setting up the system properly, but even in professional settings sometimes things just happen that are out of our control.
You know, in retrospect I had a ton of respect for the creators of Dante. They seem to really have nailed a technology that in many regards has completely reshaped our industry. That was now 20 years ago, and frankly its stunning to me that no one has realized that the price of this technology is absurd for being 20 years old. AES67 which is an open audio over ip protocol can be had for 0 licensing fee and can even be found in dante controller. Making an audio interface that supports AES67 is almost half the cost of getting a dante dongle. Why? Because dante exists in the same. realm that everything else does in this industry. It's all manufactured prices because only one company plays the game. It really just is so frustrating that everything in the audio industry is filled with lies and deceit that keep people buying expensive things that they don't need. Dante is of course different because it gets shows running, but the fact that it's as expensive as it is for 32 channels, as much as a car, is absurd. Digital audio is expensive but its not that expensive.
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