The church where I attend (and play the drums in the worship band) recently remodeled our sanctuary. This included new lights, paint, carpet, and expanding the size of our stage. As part of this project, we also installed an all new sound system. Like many churches of our size, we’ve undergone a fairly recent transition from more traditional piano and organ-based music to a live band with guitars, bass, keyboard, and drums, so the old sound system was woefully inadequate for our current needs. For the new mixing console, we ultimately chose the Behringer X32. And boy, am I glad that we did. It’s been a real answer to our prayers (pun intended)–solving many of the problems and overcoming the limitations of our old analog system. For those of you who might be facing similar issues with the sound system in your church, I’d like to highlight some of the stellar features of the X32 which we have found to be a real God-send (again, pun intended). (more…)

A few months ago, my trusty old analog mixer that I had used since 2008 developed an intermittent short in one of the aux sends. Unfortunately, this was one of only two pre-fader aux sends on this mixer, so I was using it for one of two monitor sends for band rehearsals and live gigs. This board had a total of 4 aux sends, but two of them are post-fader, and are therefore unsuitable for use as a monitor send. (more…)

If you’re confused by the multitude of common digital audio connections available today on many recording interfaces, such as ADAT, S/PDIF, AES/EBU, S/MUX, Word Clock, etc., you owe it to yourself to read this excellent article from Presonus:

Digital Audio Connections and Synchronization