A good shepherd carefully tends the flock wherever it roams, and in the case of Charlotte, North Carolina’s Good Shepherd Church, that flock has become quite widespread over the past 35 years. Started in 1991, the church now holds four Sunday worship gatherings—three in English and one in Spanish—as well as for people all over the world through its online services. But Good Shepherd is as tech-savvy as it is devout, and its technology choices, including the addition of a DiGiCo Quantum225 FOH console paired with the new KLANG:vokal+ as part of its IEM mixing world, reflect that.
“Our previous console was about 16 years old and definitely showing its age,” says Good Shepherd Worship Arts Pastor Chris Macedo. “It was an early-generation digital console, quite large and cumbersome, and limited in both input count and functionality. It also lacked some of the capabilities we wanted, such as virtual soundcheck, automation features, and easy integration with external processing, so it was ultimately time for an upgrade.”
When evaluating replacement options, the church initially didn’t look at DiGiCo solutions, figuring that the brand’s products would be out of its price range, but the Quantum225 “changed everything,” Macedo says. “Our technical director saw it, and it immediately stood out as a unique opportunity. It landed just above the price range we had been considering, but it made entering the Quantum ecosystem possible in a way that simply hadn’t been possible before. Without the Q225, we would not have been able to make that move.”
The church purchased the console from Charlotte-based dealer/integrator World-Class Acoustical Visual Elements (WAVE), which upgraded the room’s acoustics and retuned the sanctuary’s existing PA at the same time, collectively revitalizing the space. Good Shepherd’s technical team personally handled the installation of the console, and although they had not mixed on a DiGiCo desk prior to putting in the Quantum225, the crew’s impressions were very positive.
“There was a noticeable increase in overall fidelity and clarity,” says Macedo. “The mix now feels more detailed and articulate, and the way frequencies sit in the room feels more balanced and controlled. The workflow improvements were also significant; moving between layers, organizing inputs, and navigating the console are far more efficient than what we had before.”
The Quantum225 controls Good Shepherd’s FOH mix—with 48 inputs typically feeding into the desk—while the KLANG system handles all monitor mixing. A significant portion of the church’s audio infrastructure is Dante-based, accommodated via a DMI-DANTE64@96 card primarily used to receive audio from the DSP and route out to a DiGiCo DQ-Rack that services the drums and feeds wireless in-ear monitor system. A smaller DiGiCo Dante A168D STAGE rack is also deployed on the opposite side of the stage. “We send a lot of individual instrument channels using Dante Virtual Soundcard as well as from our Shure ULXD microphones,” Macedo adds.
Prior to installing the console, the church considered building a separate production suite with a dedicated broadcast mixer, but that plan wasn’t deemed viable. “Instead, we worked with WAVE to improve the acoustics in the room, with the hope that if we paired that with the right console, we could deliver a mix that translates well both in the room and online. Now, when someone watches on YouTube or our website, they are essentially hearing the same mix that is coming through front of house. We simply send that mix out through another group and apply some very basic tone shaping and leveling with a limiter to prepare it for the online platforms. In other words, it’s more or less the same mix—just slightly optimized for streaming—and it works very well.”
Building upon the KLANG:vokal platform that the church first implemented in 2021, the church also recently enhanced its original KLANG:vokal processor with the :vokal+ upgrade, which boosted it to 64 mono channels on each of the 12 immersive in-ear mixes, and KLANG parametric Root/Intensity EQs for all 64 mono inputs and all 12 mixes.
Between the KLANG:vokal+ and DiGiCo Quantum225, the church has what Macedo says is an ultimately streamlined workflow. It’s one that requires fewer hands on deck for Sunday services but that still delivers impactful modern worship music to attendees and a completely customizable experience for musicians onstage.
“The KLANG:vokal+ upgrade brought us from 24 channels to 64, a huge step up,” he says, “and gave certain musicians, such as our drummers, tons more flexibility in terms of setting up the percussion space for everyone. They can put exactly what they need on their KLANG:kontroller or their iPad, set it, and forget it.”
Macedo says the immersive 3D capability of the KLANG:vokal+ has given everyone onstage a fantastic space in which to perform. “All of our vocalists use it, all of our drummers use it,” he says. “A lot of our inputs are in stereo, so having that immersive space really helps them to dial in the width and the placement of everything inside of the mix. And they love it!”
“Pre-KLANG, we didn’t really use a lot of stereo inputs inside of our monitoring setup, so when we moved to this, having stereo available to us just because of the increased channel count allowed for everything to open up even further. Specifically, our guitar players were just ecstatic because they had been running in mono only, so to be able to hear their instrument coming through the way they always imagined it would sound, with delay and reverb effects, really made a huge difference. It let them translate what they imagined into a reality in their ears.”
The church’s KLANG:vokal+ is integrated as an outboard unit, connected to the console via MADI. Macedo says they use about 10 of the 12 possible mixes each Sunday, with every user able to balance their own monitor mix directly from either a KLANG:kontroller or from an iPad. “I’ve looked into the idea of fully integrating KLANG with the console, which can be done,” he says. “But we just haven’t found a use case that makes a lot of sense for us yet since our setup is pretty static. But it’s nice to know that capability can easily be done.”
Keeping musicians happy onstage goes a long way to making performances really stand out and engaging the audience. Macedo says the ability to create individual mixes achieves that for the church’s musicians, and it shows. “Our drummer, for instance, has the ability to literally curate the drums, to be exactly where he wants each of them,” he explains. “We can also send in our drum bus that has been mixed from front of house directly to everybody else, so they don’t have to worry about mixing the drums down to a really granular level—they can just have a nice stereo drum bus coming from the board. So everybody can really tailor every mix to exactly what they need.”
In addition to the musicians, the house engineers are equally pleased—with so much of the monitoring in the hands of those who benefit from it the most they can focus on what the audience is experiencing. “The user experience is far superior and it really allows us not to be limited by what’s available on the console, because the :vokal+ is really doing all the work,” he says. “So it allows our front of house to really focus on front of house, and we don’t have to have someone who is constantly watching monitors. I mean, week to week, we sometimes never even touch the mixes. It just works rock solid every time, and it makes Sunday very, very easy and enjoyable.”
