Willowbrook Baptist Church’s main campus in Huntsville, Alabama recently implemented its first step of a multi-phased initiative to update its worship center, and a key part of that process was the implementation of a KLANG:fabrik immersive in-ear monitor mixing system.
Installed by Byhalia, Mississippi-based integrator Redwire Audio Visual in October, the new KLANG system offers up to 16 musicians their own unique IEM mixes over RF transmitters, or headphone amps via XLR. At the same time, the KLANG:fabrik is a fully flexible audio network router of up to 64 MADI, 64 Dante and 32 ADAT-compatible inputs and outputs.
“The new KLANG system was part of the first phase of the church’s update, and it has proven to be a critical component of it,” said Redwire AV President, Founder and General Manager Tim Johnson. “Their worship orchestra had been frustrated by the lack of flexibility with their old IEM system, so we brought the KLANG:fabrik in for a demo, and they experienced a huge difference immediately.”
Tim said the KLANG:fabrik’s ability to operate at 96kHz offers a much higher level of sonic fidelity to the musicians. Furthermore, the ability to move mixes around in a fully immersive space has changed how they hear themselves and the music.
The KLANG:fabrik takes feeds—via Dante and three DiGiCo A168 STAGE I/O Expanders—from a new DiGiCo S21 console that has also been installed. “The S21 has made a huge difference in the church’s sound,” Tim said. “It’s even made the existing sound system perform better, with excellent clocking that dealt with digital ‘smearing’ issues they had with the previous console that muddied the sound. And the operation is very volunteer-friendly. They have a full-time media director on staff who does a lot of the front-of-house mixing, but they rotate mixing duties for the three or more Sunday services every week, and they have all taken to it immediately.”
