Crossway Church Enhances Worship Services via d&b audiotechnik Soundscape with En-Scene

	"Soundscape is truly extraordinary, I can hear everything. There's more separation of instruments and there's greater definition, it's a beautiful system," says Knapp.

Crossway Church, a growing church community with three locations in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area, has enhanced the worship experience of its Germantown campus with a new d&b audiotechnik Soundscape audio system. The solution, implemented by Majic Productions, features the En-Scene module creating a more immersive and engaging environment for the congregation.

Crossway Church has rapidly grown to a weekly attendance of 1,400 people in person and 600 online worshipers, but their audio system had not kept up with the expansion. As the first phase of a massive project to enhance the overall worship experience at all three locations, the church chose to upgrade the audio system at their Germantown campus, citing the previous system's lack of full frequency response, uneven coverage, and poor vocal intelligibility. M

Upon hearing a d&b audiotechnik Soundscape demonstration in Chicago, Crossway's technical director, Tyler Bethard was convinced that Soundscape would be the solution to the Church's audio needs, "When I heard Soundscape, it rocked my world. I knew that this is what the church needed and it would serve Crossway for the next 20 years and beyond. We immediately reached out to Majic Production to see how we could make this work."

"d&b audiotechnik is our go to when clients are looking for high quality natural sound and want music performances to shine through and have impact." says Curtis McKusick, Majic Productions' integration project manager. "We were already in discussions with Crossway about a stereo d&b system, so I included a Soundscape option in our bid. Crossway was pleased to learn that the Soundscape system was cost comparable to the initial stereo system design because Soundscape distributes its workload across much smaller, more affordable speakers."

Once church leadership was convinced of the significant benefits provided by the modest additional expense, McKusick initiated the design process, which relied heavily on d&b audiotechnik's ArrayCalc simulation software.

"I've always found that doing the work on the front end with ArrayCalc, makes my job easier on the back end when we commission the system," explains McKusick. "ArrayCalc, with its predictive abilities and direct integration with the DS100 and R1 control software greatly simplifies the planning and the commissioning process by transferring the design data directly into the audio processor. Soundscape takes all the speaker location data and automatically does time alignment making set up and modifications, if necessary, incredibly simple."

The benefits of Soundscape with En-Scene extended beyond the Crossway Church walls. "We've integrated Soundscape and the DS100 into Crossway's streaming mix," adds McKusick. "We're feeding En-Scene's spatialization processing as a stereo mix into the broadcast console. We also use the DS100's matrixing functions so that the online mix better reflects the in-room experience. That all translates into an even better listening experience for their online congregants."

With multiple services under their belts, Crossway's Bethard was enthusiastic when describing the system's ease of use by tech team volunteers. "Soundscape is simply easier for them to wrap their heads around than a traditional console thanks to En-Scene's visual mixing paradigm, states Bethard. "Whoever is mixing the service, they simply place the source in the mix and the sounds emanate from there. Levels and separation take care of themselves and they can control it with a touch screen. It's such a unique and intuitive way for people to mix."

Bethard and Crossway's worship director, Travis Knapp are unanimous in their praise of d&b audiotechnik. "Soundscape has opened new dimensions for creating emotion in how we tell a story and teach the gospel, which we try to do through every piece of music," says Berthard.

"Soundscape is truly extraordinary, I can hear everything. There's more separation of instruments and there's greater definition, it's a beautiful system," concludes Knapp. "The improved audio quality inspires me and the entire worship band to become better musicians. Soundscape makes my life easier, pushing me to grow creatively and excel at what I do."

McKusick describes the complete system installed by Majic Productions: "The primary speakers are seven d&b audiotechnik Y-Series Y10P point source loudspeakers in a horizontal array. There are three flown V-SUB and 2 x Bi6 subwoofers, ground deployed in sub bunkers and running in infra mode. We have two xS-Series 10S point source speakers as fill boxes for the extreme front corners of the room and eight 5S point source for front fills mounted on the front lip of the stage. The system is powered by 40D, 10D, and 5D amplifiers. Networking and processing are supplied by a DS10 Audio Network Bridge and the DS100 Signal Engine running Soundscape with En-Scene."

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