My grand scheme for WPBC's technology and media spaces

I've been volunteering at Windsor Park Baptist Church for 10 years now. A whole decade. I've also been experimenting and learning about technology, computers, and networking for nearly 15 years.

I think I know a thing or two by now. I've got some thoughts and ideas about how we can care for what we have, how we can improve what we have, and how we can add to what we have.

Kowhai Room

I'll start with the simplest and easiest one. This works. It's a TV with an HDMI cable. No improvements necessary. Perfection. Maybe at some point we could mount a little soundbar to help amplify the sound.

Rimu Room

This one is pretty darn good, too. TV on the wall with an HDMI cable, speakers at the back. The only improvement would be to wire the TV sound output up to the speaker system. I think a S/PDIF to balanced audio adapter should work just fine, and be rather cost-effective.

Youth Shack

I'm not too sure about this one, as I don't see it in operation very much. I think it basically... works?

Kauri Room

There's some wear and tear, and definitely room for improvement here. First up, the audio mixing console is highly abused and ill-maintained. It should be replaced with a suitably-reliable and locked-down small-footprint digital console of 8 ~ 16 channels. Secondly, and just as importantly, a proper foam storage needs to be implemented for the wireless equipment, which is currently strewn inside the wall-mount rack chassis.

Café

This is an interesting multi-use space. So far, it seems to work alright, as long as the camp gear keeps going for Lean In. The cupboard should be replaced with a professional, ventilated rack (which we do have spare, currently taking up unnecessary space in the studio). A proper set of amplifiers for each speaker zone would also go a long way towards reliable operation. I would also recommend either a proper multi-zone mixer/speaker processor (e.g. YAMAHA MTX3) or a locked-down rackmount digital console of at least 8 channels (e.g. Allen & Heath SQ-RACK).

Foyer

Just like for the Rimu Room, there's not much to improve here. The TV on the wall should be amended with an Ethernet network connection for remote control, and it could also be improved with a wall-mounted soundbar for better standalone operation (the ceiling-mounted speakers already work well for feeding from elsewhere).

Camp gear

Surprise! A diversion to a non-dedicated space. Whilst we have enormous capacity with a 24x8 snake and a 32-channel analogue mixing console, it's really all too big and heavy for rapid setup by a small team. Each part requires at least two people, which is difficult to coordinate in a small team of ad-hoc volunteers during setup and packdown.

Rather, this is the perfect situation for small, lightweight, compact digital mixing consoles with their (now-plentiful) digital snakes and digital stageboxes. Whilst I have a longstanding bias for YAMAHA consoles due to their build quality and utter reliability, their current offerings are very poor, from many aspects. I can't honestly recommend Behringer due to their business practices that are borderline unethical, and their utter pursuit of the bottom-dollar offering (though the WING series is quite nice).

Thus, that leaves only Allen & Heath, who have fortunately just refreshed their SQ series. When I first tried it out in 2019 I already found it a good fit for a camp setup, and I remain more sure of that now, compared to their competitors.

For the best space-saving (and given my past experience), an SQ-5 or SQ-5+ would be perfectly suitable with a DX168 (or AB168).

Auditorium

Now to the finale. This is by far the most complicated and comprehensive setup. As such, it has many different aspects, each of which are interlinked to become a wholistic comprehensive solution. Whilst I will be discussing them by category, they can't really be segregated like this in practice, as each impacts the other, and must be undertaking in concert.

Power

The rack of equipment in the music room is critical infrastructure (that is also very expensive and somewhat difficult to replace), and should be protected by an online double-conversion UPS with all post-haste. A suitable set of rackmount PDUs and multiplugs and whatnot can feed into everything, as it's all rather low wattage (with two exceptions). The mixer at the back is already protected, and when the wireless gear is moved, it can also continue to be protected as it currently is.

This leaves the remaining foldback amplifier, subwoofers, and speakers unprotected and (unnecessarily) permanently powered. Some simple smart plugs (controllable from various Stream Decks) would be a cost-effective solution to remotely switch their power on and off.

Network

Currently, everything is haphazardly smushed together. That's rather unacceptable, given that we have outdated modern equipment that fails to implement fundamental industry standards which are over 30 years old. Hence, we should segregate the networks somewhat. Currently, our LAN is based on the 192.168.0.0/24 network. The staff Wi-Fi and the Ethernet LAN should remain cojoined, but expanded to 192.168.0.0/23. The first /24 remains as DHCP for regular use, so that existing devices (printers, etc.) don't have to be reconfigured, with the upper /24 (from 192.168.1.0) will be free for self-assigned static addresses for critical equipment. The current 192.168.0.0/24 is unfortunately shared with the guest Wi-Fi network, which would absolutely fall over if every one of our 400+ Sunday morning congregation decided to join with one device each. Hence, it would be most apt for the guest Wi-Fi network to be segregated and allocated from the DHCP pool of 10.0.0.0/8, which would allow for well over 16 million individual devices to join. That should keep us going for a good while.

The basic structure is that .0 ~ .9 is for core networking and Wi-Fi APs, .10 ~ .19 is for audio, .20 ~ .29 is for lighting, .30 ~ .39 is for video, .40 ~ .49 is for projection, and .50 ~ .59 is for the foyer and ancilliary systems. The .200 ~ .250 range shall be used by the "Sounddesk" Wi-Fi AP for wireless DHCP clients.

Video

We used to have a one-button stream setup hooked into vMix. That has turned out to be too difficult to maintain, hence, the introduction of the Blackmagic Web Presenter HD that is currently used for internet live streaming. This should be paired with a suitably small Blackmagic HyperDeck Studio HD Mini for recording directly to an SD card. Each of these should be controllable by one button on the Stream Deck.

Sound

Whilst the location of the wireless rack equipment in the music room rack certain made sense at a previous time, it is most definitly not the most ideal location for it. That would be within sight (and better, arms-reach) of the sound engineer. Hence, it should be co-located in a small rack with a small dedicated UPS right next to the mixing console.

Separate to this move, an improvement to the IEM experience would involve the addition of two more IEM transmitter rack units, to allow a dedicated transmission frequency band for each IEM receiver pack. Accordingly, there would then be room for further improvement if we followed-through with a stereo mix for each wireless IEM.

If the relocation were to go ahead, it would unlock support for another wireless IEM experience upgrade: a circularly polarised antennae. This is said to effectively mitigate the effects of multipath interference, which is unfortunately common on IEM receivers as it is difficult to to space your IEM cable at least 50cm (preferably 1m) away from the IEM pack antennae to achieve a natural diversity.

The final stage of IEM upgrade is possible, regardless of wired or wireless, relocation or not, additional transmitters or not, and special antennae or not. It is the application of custom-moulded in-ears to each band member.

Control

All of this technology needs suitable management. It is widely dispersed across the auditorium and adjoining music room, and set to be even more widely dispersed, or even outright inaccessible in the case of the speaker power switches. How to manage this? With buttons!

We have already seen fantastic use of the current Stream Deck XL at the projectionist position, to control music, video, and lighting. It should be trivial to add further buttons to manage the internet live stream, the local recording, and the remote power switches. I've already added remote power switches for the projectors, which have built-in support for these kind of things.

As always, there is room for improvement: a Stream Deck Mini at the audio engineer position for power control over relevant equipment would be handy, and perhaps some shortcuts through to the background music. Another Stream Deck Mini at the main entrance doors for controlling the lights and confirming all power-switched equipment is off would be equally handy. And lastly, but very much not least, a Stream Deck Studio in the rack in the music room to do video switching, light and power control would round out a complete set of controls at each essential location where they should be within arms reach.

In conclusion

Hopefully this has provided some insight in the thoughts that beleaguere my mind, as well as demonstrating how all of this ends up being a whole big interconnected system that must be architectured accordingly.

I am always available for comments, concerns, or clarifications.