Glow Church is a contemporary church founded by Pastors Joel and Ellen Cave on the Gold Coast, Australia. Glow has grown steadily, increasing to multiple presences in Australia, United Kingdom, South Korea and the USA.
Clear messaging, communication and an engaging worship experience have always been important elements within the context of a church service experience at Glow. This translates to a practical requirement of utilising technology and equipment which helps deliver these elements with consistency, uncompromising quality and high value.
Having worked with Forefront for several years now, Glow recently activated another step in its production master plan to upgrade the FOH speaker system and main LED screen at the Gold Coast campus.
Glow began its journey with Forefront by utilising an Adamson speaker system, an iS7 line array system able to wheel in and out of its Melbourne campus – a bump in and out situation every Sunday. The choice of Adamson for the campus serves a long-term purpose in being able to scale well once Glow’s Melbourne campus moves to a larger location.
Having experienced the particular sonic quality in a small Adamson iS7 system for the Melbourne campus, it made the contrast in quality to that of the existing main Gold Coast campus more obvious. A decision was made to, over time, convert existing campuses including the Gold Coast to Adamson as the need and opportunities arose.
“When we heard the Adamson system side by side with the existing system at our Gold Coast campus it was day and night for the room itself and it became an easy decision,” said Pastor Joel Cave.
“The quality difference was extremely noticeable, in the bottom end and particularly the warmth and vocal quality cutting through with clarity & precision. Compared to the previously muddy aspects and little separation between musicians and vocalists – which felt like they were always competing with one another.
“Now with the Adamson system, each vocalist and musician is sitting right where you want them to be in the mix and easily distinguishable from one another. The lead vocals can always cut through with ease like a hot knife through butter.”
With the flexibility and scalability of the Adamson iS7 system, it means that from Glow’s smaller to larger campuses, the same audio system can be deployed, providing absolute consistency to the experience at any location.
CMI Audio who are the Australian distributor of Adamson partnered Forefront with design and technical support for the project. Brian Vayler who is CMI’s house of worship solutions manager worked closely with Forefront’s Matt Wever to deliver the final system design for the space.
CMI Audio assisted Forefront with additional Adamson inventory to put in place a full-scale demonstration system and temporary loan equipment until the ordered system arrived in stock.
“The worldwide challenges of equipment supply in our industry is ongoing and a daily challenge,” said Nick Burns of Forefront. “You can’t always obtain the products desired for a job in a reasonable timeframe. Fortunately, CMI Audio has great foresight in anticipating our needs, and supply of Adamson equipment has been the most accessible of any product we deal with in this challenging season. Brian and the team at CMI understand our customers’ unique needs and timeframes, and always assist quickly and comprehensively.”
The implementation of the Adamson iS7 system at the Gold Coast campus consists of:
Two main left/right arrays each of 8x iS7 per side, two out fill arrays per side of 6x iS7 elements, being a total of 28x iS7 line array elements providing exceptional coverage and consistency through the room.
“The system was designed specifically to eliminate any need for stage lip front fill – even with the usual higher level of acoustic energy spilling from the stage for the first rows of seating, which is always tricky to combat in a church setting,” said Nick Burns.
Rounding out the bottom end of the system is the Adamson iS119 sub-element, six of which have been deployed in an array under the front of the stage.
“The iS119 is a very powerful sub with very musical sonic characteristics. In this case, the number of sub-elements more so deployed to provide controlled coverage and consistency throughout the space than bone-rattling bottom end,” said Matt Wever, Forefront’s audio system designer.
Driving the system is Lab Gruppen D:Series installation amplifiers with integrated Lake Processing on board.
“One of the unique and cost-efficient characteristics of the Adamson iS7 series, in particular, is that the number of speaker elements you can power with a single amp is very impressive – up to 12 boxes,” said Matt. “This means that for a growing church or a change to a bigger venue, it’s very cost-effective to just add more speaker elements without having to purchase more amps”
Forefront has been prominent in the house of worship landscape for many years now with its unique 360-degree ethos of design, planning, implementation, training, and support.
“When we made a decision to work exclusively with Forefront across all our campuses, we had some goals that were good in theory,” said Ps Joel Cav. “Our experience has been that they weren’t just good in theory, but it’s now been better than we could have imagined.
“Some highlights have been the great support and relationships between our production and tech staff at Glow and the Forefront team.
“A great flow of consistency between all our locations in audio, lighting, visuals – including cameras & screens. Having a one-stop shop for all the things every creative church pastor needs brings real ease instead of dealing with up to 4 or 5 different companies.
“You think you are saving money trying to get the best prices across all the different elements, but we have found when you work with one company who already understands the vision you are wanting to achieve, you actually end up saving time and money as one provider’s value is far better than it being spread across multiple facilitators.
“One phone call is needed from our production manager to Forefront for any of our locations and the solution is always given in quick time. Most companies are very one dimensional, but Forefront thinks about the worship experience from start to finish and often are far better at executing our vision.
“Forefront facilitates the vision a pastor has in their heart – so get out of the way and let them do what they do best, and you will find it’s better than what you can imagine.
“We have found that by choosing to partner with Forefront, we aren’t just getting the best experience, but it feels like the guys are part of our team and also want to see the vision come to life just as much as we do.
“The technical and training support after a fit-out for your team is invaluable as you need experts to help your volunteers use the equipment with excellence and know-how.
“Forefront provides all those solutions from fit-out to back-end support with ease, speed and excellence.”
Whilst representing a multitude of the usual brands in the sales and installation space, Forefront also have a considerable rental inventory at hand, and further expanding that inventory, have recently invested in one of Australia’s largest inventories of Adamson Systems, ordering Adamson CS10, CS7 and CS119 elements.
Forefront is now offering nationwide in-situ Adamson Systems demonstrations by means of their new dedicated “Road-Show” service.
“There’s nothing quite like being able to see and hear the difference new technology can make in your own actual space, so we’re hitting the road with a full range of different Adamson Systems products, digital audio consoles, lighting products and LED screen – whatever a client needs to hear, see and try in their own space,” said Nick Burns. “We encourage people to get in touch to book an obligation free demonstration”
