Picking the right mics for your church's worship style can be tricky. But the nice thing about mic purchases is they don't require a lot of updating like other equipment and the right mic can last for years and years. Recently Church Production Magazine partnered with DPA Microphones and Summit Church in Raleigh Durham, North Carolina, to see how the d:facto and 2028 hand-held vocal mics worked for this multi-campus's energetic worship.
In this video, our Marcel Patillo interviews Justin Rand, the broadcast audio engineer for Summit's Capitol Hills campus, and Keegan Pierce, their front-of-house engineer and the associate production director for all of Summit.
Rand used the d:facto mics and says they have a super flat frequency response for a studio-quality mic. They decided to use it on the lead singers and backup vocals during weekend worship. "When DPA designed these mics, I know they said they wanted to make them sound like the singer wasn't actually using a microphone. I record all of our worship sets every weekend, and listening back to the raw tracks, I could totally tell what he meant by that because it sounds like the singer's right in front of you singing," Rand enthuses.
Pierce tells us they do all of their broadcasting from his campus. They have 10 other campuses that are either permanent locations or portable setups in schools and other locations. He says the mics were plug and play and they were able to immediately use them and notice a difference in the quality of the sound. He says the two mics they tried could have very different purposes. Pierce says he would recommend the d:facto for larger operations and the 2028 for smaller setups.
"Smaller church looking for a single [mic] that's going to sound great, and your audio setup is such that your front-of-house console is also your monitor console, the 2028 microphone is a great way to go. It sounds great. The vocalists will like the higher frequency response in their ears, and it just gives them that air that they need to be able to hear their voice as well," Pierce explains. "If you're doing more of a multi-console setup, you're doing a live streaming or you're doing a recording type session, I think the d:facto is a much cleaner way to go with a natural voice presence. And then you can really dial in those EQs for a house, for a monitor, and for an online or a broadcast application."
To learn more about this Church Production Road Test for DPA Microphones at Summit Church and hear the worship they recorded using them, watch this video.