Minnesota’s Eagle Brook Church is a thriving, dynamic house of worship, growing from 300 people to over 11,000 parishioners in its 60-year history. The church has grown in physical size as well, expanding from one to four locations, with a fifth slotted for the near future. Because of that growth, the technical infrastructure required a retooling. Last year, Eagle Brook’s primary main campus console, which was handling FOH, monitors and video broadcast production, was replaced with three independent DiGiCo SD8 consoles. Jason Kartak of Audio Logic Systems was the Senior Designer on the project—working in tandem with Eagle Brook’s  Director of Technical Arts, Bill Berger.

“As a client, Eagle Brook came to us when they needed to upgrade and get better functionality out of the system for their main campus,” explained Kartak. “This improvement was in conjunction with two other building projects they were doing, and to better improve the video audio which is broadcasted live to their other 2 campuses. I had had previous experience working on an SD8—our production department owns one—and I fell in love with mixing on it. The availability to have dynamic EQ and multiband compression will help them define their mixes and take them to another level. Along with the SD8’s impressive sound FX onboard, its sonic quality and feature set for the cost was outstanding.”

“After doing some research on what our options were, we decided to demo the DiGiCo SD8,” Berger recalled. “Having seen the console in action, I decided that the SD8 would take Eagle Brook into the future. The SD8 has a much warmer sound than our previous console, but perhaps the best feature I appreciate is the ability to link all three consoles together. We used to have a lot of issues with the A-to-D and D-to-A conversion, whether that was for our recording process or in our broadcast suite. Now with a frame (surface) dropped into our master control room, having the ability to access both frames and grab inputs from either makes for a very powerful tool.”

The ability to record via the SD8’s RME PCI Express and MADI Bridge converter has been a great success, as well. “We have done two different types of recordings in the past, a Live Concert and Weekend worship, which I’m sure we will be doing more of and the possibility of a Live DVD, all thanks to the ease of this setup.”

The pairing of the SD8s with d&b audiotechnik’s Q-Series loudspeakers has been noticeable to staff and parishioners alike. “The client is very happy with the desk,” said Kartak. “The overall improvement from FOH, monitors and broadcast was heard, not only at their main campus but also at the satellites, which streams the live sound.”

“Everyone loves it,” Berger added, “and the sound is incredible.”

Once the additional campus location is built with the addition of another SD8, Kartak says that having similar consoles will help keep consistency between the locations, and allow the technicians to bounce between the two largest campuses with ease.