JAMESTOWN, NY, NOVEMBER 10, 2010 — Family Church of the Southern Tier, located in Jamestown, NY, recently moved from its original, small sanctuary to a new state-of-the-art worship hall. For the new facility, the church chose Turner Specialty Contractors to install an entirely new audio, video and lighting system featuring an Aviom Pro16® Digital Snake and A-16II Personal Mixers. The new gear has become a great asset for both the sound engineer and house musicians, as the digital snake provides the flexibility and reliability for which Aviom is well known, and the personal mixers provide custom monitor mixes for the performers. 
A presentation by the local Aviom sales rep from McFadden Sales sold Randall Turner, owner of Turner Specialty Contractors, on the Aviom Pro16 digital snake and A-16II Personal Mixers, which he purchased for Family Church of the Southern Tier and is considering for other projects. The speedy installation of the snake, ease of use of the personal mixers, and overall reliability of the entire system also made a positive impression on him.
"The Aviom Pro16 digital snake is a very trustworthy system," says Turner. "The best part is, the Aviom gear just works like it is supposed to; most of the time you don't even know it's there because it runs so well." An added bonus for Turner is that the Aviom modules are connected using Cat-5, which serves as the backbone for the church's entire AV system.
The church's Aviom system includes two Aviom AN-16/o Output Modules located in a rack at the front of house along with two AN-16/i Input Modules and an AN-16SBR System Bridge. One of the AN-16/i Input Modules sends 16 channels from the front of house console to amps via an AN-16/o Output Module located in the rack room on the side of the stage. Mic inputs on stage are connected to two AN-16/i-M Mic Input Modules housed in the rack room. These signals are converted back to analog by the front of house AN-16/o Output Modules, which feed a 40-channel Crest analog mixing console. The entire 32x16 digital snake is connected between stage and front of house through AN-16SBR System Bridges, which are located at each end. These units make it possible to combine all 48 channels on the one Cat-5 cable that connects the two locations.
The second AN-16/i Input Module at front of house feeds the personal mixing system. It is connected to an A-16D Pro Distributor in the rack room. This A-16D Pro distributes 16 channels and DC power to the seven A-16II Personal Mixers used by the church's musicians on stage. The worship musicians rely on the personal mixers to create custom monitor mixes tailored to their individual needs, including control over channel volume, grouping, pan, stereo spread, master volume and tone. According to Turner, the performers have fallen in love with the personal mixers, which provide the settings to save and recall as many as sixteen custom preset mixes each.
Turner and his team came to truly respect the Aviom system after a mishap involving an auto-isolation transformer —used to isolate grounds and eliminate the hum found in other systems. When the transformer was turned on for the first time, nearly 180 Volts of power surged through the circuits of the audio, video and lighting equipment, all of which had already been switched on by staff members. Since a typical voltage for this amount of gear usually runs at about 115-125 Volts, most of the AV system was burned out. The Aviom gear, however, was able to withstand the abuse.
"I had a surge protector connected to all the gear, which was a nice buffer, and the unit smoked," says Turner. "I started panicking, thinking I had thousands of dollars worth of gear that was probably all burned up in a moment's notice. So we started testing all the equipment and the Aviom still worked. We fried a lot of gear that day, but not our Aviom network."
Less than five years after its founding, Family Church of the Southern Tier has blossomed from a congregation of four people meeting at each other's homes to two full Sunday services with an average of 270 parishioners. The new sanctuary's grand opening hosted nearly 500 people. The church has plans to convert its previous building into a children's worship center.
Aviom pioneered personal mixing with its Pro16® Monitor Mixing System and continues to break new ground with the revolutionary Pro64® Series of audio networking products. With tens of thousands of products in the field today, Aviom has set the standard for high performance, scalable digital solutions. All Aviom systems harness the power of A-Net®, Aviom's innovative digital audio technology that simplifies system design while enhancing flexibility and fidelity. All Aviom products are designed, tested, and manufactured in the USA.