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Midas Verona Provides Sound Solution for Contemporary Worship

North Carolina-based Carey Sound, Inc., has recently installed the flexible and affordable 8-buss Verona? mixing console into two houses of worship in the area; The Cathedral of His Glory and Westover Church, both in Greensboro, NC. These recent Verona sales typify a national US trend towards installing touring-quality consoles in houses of worship.

Carey Sound’s Nicole Franklin (VP of Sales) described why the Verona makes sense for a contemporary house of worship: “People professionally involved in the increasingly high-tech world of house of worship A/V production have come to recognize the Midas badge as much as those who work in live sound. Houses of worship are hiring highly trained personnel to design and run their systems, and the specified components need to perform at a similarly high level, as both regular services and seasonal productions become more and more sophisticated from an A/V perspective. Verona offers clients like these the perfect solution – more features and inputs than a Venice, including brand new mic preamps that are their quietest yet, but without the added expense of features like VCAs. Quite simply, Verona is an addition to the Midas family that makes a lot of sense for a remarkably wide range of applications.”

Franklin continued: “In August we delivered a Verona to the Cathedral of His Glory, as part of the initial phase of their sound system upgrade. Earlier last summer, technical director Kenny Brutcher and his assistant Mike Sveda tried out a Verona 560 and a competitor’s console at the same time. However, as soon as we reclaimed our demo Verona to go and wow the crowds at Inspiration and Infocomm, Kenny and Mike made up their minds in about ten seconds flat! They found the sound of the Midas to be so superior that they went back to using their original console rather than continue using the other demo board. As soon the trade shows were over, I brought the Verona back to the Cathedral for good – much to their relief!”

Sound technician Mike Sveda agreed wholeheartedly: “During our demo comparisons between the Verona and the competitor’s console, the first reaction was ‘Wow! I’m hearing things so clearly and distinctly.’ We could pick out individual instruments and voices in the mix far better than before. The Verona’s EQ was much easier to dial in, even without the individual ‘Q’ adjustment feature on the other demo console. We were immediately struck by the Verona’s musicality and ease of use. Even though the competitor’s product had 12 auxes compared to the Verona’s 8, the Verona's aux sends were quieter and seemed to have more output. With both our old console and the other demo console there was an audible hissing from the monitor wedges. The Verona was much, much quieter - there was no perceptible hiss from the wedges at all. Other professional touches like ample room for label tape and two built-in switching power supplies also put the Verona head and shoulders above the competition."

Nicole Carey described Carey Sound’s latest Verona installation: “We just put a 480 frame into Westover Church at the end of September. Westover has a growing congregation of around 3,500 and is currently undertaking 28 million dollars’ worth of additions to meet this growth. They had been using a console from another manufacturer, and, again, we simply invited them to demo a Verona. They were already very happy with the Venice 320 we sold them earlier this year, and as soon as they heard the Verona they fell in love with it and signed up straight away."

Danny Slaughter, director of WAV (Westover Audio Visual) Technologies, Westover Church, explained his decision: “First of all, Midas consoles of all sizes have big board sound. Our little Venice far surpassed our previous large format consoles in terms of sonic quality and responsiveness. We wanted that same performance in a large-frame console at FOH. In this regard, the Verona came into the picture at an opportune moment. This is a large church, and we do a lot of dynamic vocal and musical worship. I had to run our previous large console pretty hard to reproduce those dynamics, which ran the SPL through the roof. Another consideration was that we wanted to relocate the Venice to our digital audio workstation, where it could really shine on the record mixes we do for the national artists that regularly perform here.”

"When we brought in the Verona we got more dynamic range at a lower SPL than I’d ever heard," continued Slaughter. Furthermore, it’s completely changed the quality of the signal flow from the input at the console to the output at the speakers, just as the Venice has completely changed the quality of our multimedia audio mixes. When you transplant the heart of a PA system EQs and preamps of this quality, the benefits resonate throughout the entire A/V system. With other manufacturers' consoles you need to work harder at the basics – more boosts, more cuts – which leaves less time for the mixing nuances that can really enhance the worship experience. The Verona’s dual-purpose (FOH/Monitors) feature set has some standout time savers too – being able to switch from post- to pre-EQ on the ample amount of auxes is fantastic; on the old board, everything was post-EQ, which often messed up the mix onstage. Add the mute groups, the multi-function channels and the four matrices to the list of features and you’ve got a genuine multi-function board. Best of all, it sounds fabulous. It’s great to be able to tell the difference between different models of microphones without even touching a dial! The quality of the Verona speaks for itself.”

Kenny Brutcher also arrived at the Verona through the working with the Venice, and is similarly enthusiastic about how it has upped the A/V ante at the Cathedral of His Glory: “The Verona came to the market right when we started shopping around for a new larger frame console. We were happy with the Venice sound, and were excited to hear it had a big brother we could realistically consider for FOH duties from a financial perspective. Sure enough, when it came to demo’ing the Verona, it was pretty wonderful - we didn’t have to work hard to get it to sound good. We were already sold on the legendary dependability of the Midas name; the fact it had everything we needed at a price point that was right for us made it the obvious choice.

Brutcher added: “The pricing brings big Midas sound within reach to a large section of the market that might not be able to justify, for example, a Heritage console. You can easily overlook not having VCA’s on the Verona when you hear the quality of the EQs, and sure, other boards in this price range might have a few more auxes, but they simply don’t sound as good right out of the box, which I think is far more important. We have a nice FOH rig here, and bringing in the Verona in has breathed new life into it. The Verona is extremely quiet; it's got gain for days, and I can control everything on stage from FOH position. Time is of the essence when it comes to organizing praise teams comprised of 20-plus people. We have so many other programs going on, we often have less than an hour to set up. It’s pretty much a festival-style production here every week, and the Verona helps us keep a lid on things. We know those preamps and EQs are ready to go with optimum sound built in – as opposed to time spent dialing it in. For example, I had a digital keyboard that was having some output issues. The Verona was dialed in at 4 o’clock with the pad off, and it was still as quiet as a mouse. The keyboard came through the system loud and clear for one reason and one reason alone - we were using a Midas console.”

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Midas Verona Provides Sound Solution for Contemporary Worship

1st November 2004

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