First Baptist Church of Jonesboro was founded around the same time as its namesake city, now a suburb of Atlanta. You don’t last that long without understanding that things change, and that’s reflected in the recent installation at the church of a pair of DiGiCo Quantum consoles. A Quantum8⁵² has replaced the previous DiGiCo SD10 at front of house, while a Quantum3³⁸ is now at monitors. Both were purchased through Atlanta-based integrator Clark.

Like it did for many churches, Covid changed everything. First Baptist Jonesboro Media & IT Director Tom Gobebo points out that the church’s traditional orchestral/organ and choir worship style was expanded in the wake of the pandemic to include electrified instruments, as well as backing and click tracks. Along with more outside concerts and increasingly complex holiday event productions, the channel count and processing needed to follow suit. The Quantum8⁵² console was the right choice for this moment in the church’s media evolution. It’s also notable that First Baptist Jonesboro is the world’s first house of worship to install a Quantum8⁵², which came along at the perfect time.

“The 144 channels on our SD10 were no longer enough,” says Gobebo, whose arrival there coincided with the pandemic, a pivot point for the church’s media infrastructure. “We already had a 30- to 40-piece orchestra and an 80- to 100-voice choir, and that was just for regular Sunday services. We added more wireless microphones as well as a six-piece band with electric guitars and drums,” which currently share worship music duties with Jonesboro’s 3,000-pipe organ.

Further, the church at that time also changed how it handled its online streaming of services, making them fully live and thus requiring additional channels. That’s where the Quantum8⁵² was the game-changer. “We have literally more than doubled our inputs now, and that leaves us lots of extra channels for special events when needed,” says Gobebo.

The Waves processing that was integrated into the SD10 consoles is still there, but now split between the new desk’s A and B engines, adding a layer of failover protection. And the processing load has shifted to the console, itself. “Before, the SD10 was doing about 40 percent of the processing onboard; today, the Quantum8⁵² is doing about 80 percent of it,” he estimates, pointing to the desk’s Mustard Processing channel strips, Spice Rack plugin-style native FPGA processing options, and Nodal Processing. “There’s just so much more there now.” The church also doubled the number of stage boxes, as well, adding two more SD-Racks, allowing up to 220 inputs at the stage. And they are currently operating the church’s audio at full 96k resolution, up from 48k before.

“The audio staff at First Baptist Jonesboro has certainly loved the DiGiCo platform they’ve been using for years, but the arrival of the Quantum8⁵² gave them the chance to also have the channel count they needed while still standardizing around the console they’ve come to know and use,” observes Clark Business Development Manager Noah Hawley. “More I/O, more horsepower — those were all the things they were looking for as their worship style evolved. They get exactly that with the Quantum8⁵².”

The addition of the Quantum3³⁸ at monitors has wrought equally tectonic changes for the church’s media workflow, says Gobebo. “Having three screens on the console makes it so much easier to work on,” he says, adding that it also greatly aids in training the church’s mostly volunteer audio crew. “It makes a huge difference now that we have the band and so many more microphone inputs and the tracks,” he says, noting that as many as 21 of the vocalists can now be on stereo IEMs, with wedges for the choir. “With the Quantum3³⁸, all the patching can be done internally in the console. In terms of workflow, monitors are much easier to manage these days.”

And of course, then there’s the sound. “People have noticed, especially the musicians,” he says. “There’s more space and depth to the sound. So the sound quality is improved and the workflow is really enhanced. The Quantums have been a real step up for everyone.”