Mt. Horeb United Methodist Church

Lexington, SC

While Mt. Horeb United Methodist Church regards itself as philosophically conservative, its embrace of worship technology has been anything but.

The church, whose name refers to the mountain that Moses descended from with the Ten Commandments, constructed a $17 million auditorium that opened in 2015 on its 70-acre campus. At that time, the venue was generously outfitted with state-of-the-art audio-visual capabilities, including a pair of DiGiCo SD9 consoles as front-of-house mixers for the church’s east and west worship spaces, used for their contemporary and traditional types of services, respectively.

In May of 2020, the Lexington, South Carolina church updated the larger of the two sanctuaries—the 1,900-seat auditorium used for contemporary worship—with the newly-introduced DiGiCo Quantum 338 console, keeping it at the leading edge of worship audio technology.

The Quantum 338 desk was installed and commissioned by Clark, an Atlanta-based design-built firm, which also integrated two DiGiCo SD-Racks with 32-bit “Ultimate Stadius” mic preamps and one SD-MiNi Rack in the church’s video production room.

“We’ve had two DiGiCo SD9 consoles here for a while now and we really like the DiGiCo ecosystem and software, which works very well with our style and workflow, so it made sense to stay with DiGiCo,” explains Mt. Horeb Production Manager and Lead Audio Engineer Seth Ely. “At the same time, we know DiGiCo really stays at the leading edge of this technology, so we knew the Quantum 338 would also keep us there, too.”

Ely, who adds that the SD9 formerly at FOH in the auditorium is now being used to mix monitors there, says they never looked far beyond that DiGiCo ecosystem; however, what they did look at were the SD10 and SD5CS and realized that the new Quantum 388 offered even more advanced features but with a similarly compact footprint and same basic work surface and workflow as the SD9 desks they already were familiar with. “The Quantum 338 came along and it was a perfect balance of those two things,” he says.

“Also, our auditorium is a larger space, and the types of services we do there can vary considerably, so we needed as much flexibility as possible from a FOH console. The Quantum 338 has plenty of that.”

-Seth Ely

“The challenge for this project was that the auditorium also hosts some very big touring concerts with some well-known Christian music performers, as well as the church’s Christmas and Easter shows,” explains Clark’s Brian Morrison. “In addition, the worship leader was considering adding some additional musicians onstage for their Sunday services. The SD9 is a great console, but it was reaching its input and output limit, so the Quantum 338 was the perfect solution for them at this time.”

The Quantum 338 desk is on an Optocore fiber loop, which makes access to the FOH and monitor consoles and the auditorium’s d&b audiotechnik PA system simpler for visiting artists and engineers. “They can plug directly into the stage pockets and access the 32-bit pre’s in the racks and the console on the network,” Morrison says. “Quantum gives the church the flexibility they need as they grow while also providing a workflow they were used to, and it hit a price point that they wanted to stay within. It was right on target in every way.”

“This is the right console for us, and it came along at the perfect time.”

-Seth Ely