HOW A/V consultant firm Film Otter, Inc., helps Faith Lutheran Church upgrade both Oakville and Columbia facilities with Roland consoles.

For Immediate Release

Rebecca Genel
Global PR/Media Relations Manager
Roland Corporation
+1 (323) 890-3718
Rebecca.Genel@roland.com

Los Angeles, CA, September 29, 2015 — The St. Louis, MO-area Faith Lutheran Church, with campuses in the Oakville area and the nearby suburb of Columbia, IL, has been central to thousands of faithful believers over the last six decades. Like many modern churches, Faith Lutheran places an emphasis on music – both for the pastoral aspects and to get talented individuals involved in the service on a weekly basis. “At the Oakville campus, we usually have a drummer, one or two electric guitarists, an acoustic guitarists, keyboards and a handful of singers each week, plus the volunteers that control the audio, video and lighting,” notes Andy Weiss, Worship & Media Coordinator for Faith Lutheran Church. Recently the church moved its Columbia campus to a new facility and wanted to upgrade the A/V infrastructure in both facilities, and the easy solution was found in products from Roland. An existing Roland M-400 48-Channel Live Digital Mixing Console, which had been used for years at the Oakville campus, was moved to the new Columbia campus, which left room for something new and groundbreaking at Oakville: the Roland M-5000 OHRCA Live Mixing Console.

The exterior of Faith Lutheran Church in the Oakville area of St. Louis, MO, which recently acquired a Roland M-5000 OHRCA Live Mixing Console. Photo courtesy of Faith Lutheran Church. © 2015.

Weiss states, “Our audio needs have been growing here at Faith, especially with the move to a new facility for our Columbia location. We had been using the M-400 in our Oakville worship center, as well as in our student facility, and our volunteers were very familiar with the Roland format and how everything works. In expanding, the M-5000 was a natural upgrade for us to meet the needs of our ministries. This allowed us to increase our channel count at Oakville and move one of our existing M-400 consoles to the Columbia campus. The flexibility of the Roland M-5000's architecture allows us configure the channel count, AUX's, and monitor buses as needed, plus we can add more REAC system components as we continue to grow."

The front-of-house position at Faith Lutheran Church in the Oakville area of St. Louis, MO, featuring a Roland M-5000 OHRCA Live Mixing Console. Photo courtesy of Andy Weiss, Faith Lutheran Church. © 2015.

The Roland M-5000 Live Mixing Console is the first product based on the OHRCA platform, which opens a new generation of live sound solutions for audio professionals. “OHRCA” stands for “Open, High Resolution, Configurable Architecture,” and the M-5000 reflects this by delivering freely definable audio paths, supporting multiple audio format protocols and offering pristine 96 kHz sound quality throughout the system. The Roland M-5000’s internal mix architecture is not fixed and can be freely defined for mixing channels, AUXs, Matrices, subgroup buses, and MIX-MINUS buses within a range of up to 128 audio paths, allowing users to create a console structure to suit the needs of the application.

Weiss brought in Phil Mahder, who leads HOW A/V consultant firm Film Otter, Inc., to source and install the new M-5000 and peripherals. “I’ve had a long relationship with Faith Lutheran,” notes Mahder. “I was a consultant in 2007 or 2008 when we put a Roland M-400 in their youth center, and it’s served them extremely well. We wanted the M-5000 right away, and we got one of the first ones that shipped. It was a relatively seamless changeover. Much of our existing infrastructure, including the existing Roland digital snakes, worked great with the new console. The existing snakes provided a seamless install of the M-5000, plus allowed the church higher sound quality at 24-bit 96 kHz. The Roland way of doing things is consistent enough that it wasn’t a big learning curve for the church’s people to acclimate themselves to the 5000.”

The M-5000 has two built-in REAC ports, plus two expansion card slots with seven expansion card options including Dante™, MADI, Waves SoundGrid®, or more REAC ports, as well as audio embedded over video protocols. The back panel includes 16x16 analog I/O, 4x4 AES/EBU, a 16x16 USB audio interface, connection for control via an iPad connected or wireless, and control ports including footswitches, GP I/O, RS-232C and MIDI. All of this capability enables the console to see up to 300 inputs and 296 outputs, all at 96kHz and even more at 48kHz.

The sanctuary of Faith Lutheran Church in in the Oakville area of St. Louis, MO, which recently acquired a Roland M-5000 OHRCA Live Mixing Console. Photo courtesy of Faith Lutheran Church. © 2015.

“We’re using the M-5000 for everything, all of our services, in our main worship center at Oakville – full praise team, preaching, a live stream between campuses, and more,” Weiss adds. “We also occasionally send a feed to a facility down the road that we have some ties with. Response from the congregation, and our A/V volunteers, has been stellar. Everything sounds very clean to my ears, and the volunteers say the M-5000 is even more intuitive to operate than the M-400. Plus, when Phil made us aware, after signing off on our budget for the M-5000, that Roland had a loyalty rebate program in effect, the started to sound even sweeter!”

About Roland Professional A/V
Roland’s professional A/V division is dedicated to providing solutions in support of audio and video professionals demanding excellence in both performance and functionality. Through the development and support of video and audio products, we endeavor to improve workflow and maximize creative possibilities in a variety of markets including Broadcast, Corporate, Education, Legal, Live Production, Sports, Theater, Theme Park, Videography, Visual Performance, Worship. Roland is headquartered in Los Angeles, California.