The fifth year of “Encounter Night,” an event hosted by Coastal City Church in partnership with Jesus Culture that brought together dozens of churches from across San Diego County for an evening of music, worship, and unity at the Junior Seau Pier in Oceanside, was supported by House of God Productions deploying a sound reinforcement system headed by dBTechnologies ViO X206 line arrays.
Orange County-based House of God Productions (HOGP), which supplied lighting, video and cabling in addition to audio, flew left and right arrays of eight ViO X206 enclosures equipped with 100 x 15-degree waveguides per side for the mains. The full-range (66Hz to 18kHz) active loudspeakers incorporate dual 6.5-inch neodymium transducers and a 1-inch compression driver driven by a Digipro class D power amplifier (900 watts RMS) equipped with RDNet for remote control with dBTechnologies AuroraNet software. The main system was complemented by three ground-stacked ViO S118 active horn-loaded subwoofers on each side, extending the low-end response down to 39 Hz.
The pier has a capacity of 3,000, with permanent benches for 1,500 people and an additional 1,000 folding or temporary chairs when preferred to a standing room setting. The evening consisted of two worship services, both led through song. Worship artist Chris Quilala of Capital CMG headlined the event, and pastor Brett Miller from Jesus Culture joined him in leading. The first service presented six leaders from various local churches, and the second had four vocal leaders singing and leading the worship.
One of the major challenges for this year’s fully sold-out event was that in the past years, the audience would crowd the stage and stand behind the main PA hanging on genie towers. “Stacking the out fills on their cart is incredibly useful for this sort of amphitheatre-style seating, and we countered the crowding with additional front fills,” explains Jesus Culture front of house engineer Daniel Blackman, who manned the board for all churches involved. The two ground-stacked out fill carts included three ViO X206s in each, and four front fill ViO X206 enclosures were employed on the stage lip to address the front rows.
“One thing I’m always impressed by is the way the ViO X206s pushes for its size,” Blackman states. “We had no problem covering a crowd of over 3,000-plus people with hangs of eight per side, along with some front fills and side fills. Those boxes pack a punch!”
He adds that he kept the dB level averaging at around 97 dB with peaks of 100 dB: “We wanted to keep the mix full, present, and colorful while also making it comfortable for the average listener since we have people attending from many different backgrounds and demographics.”
Blackman is very familiar with dBTechnologies loudspeakers: “I have loved mixing on them for years. We’ve installed the boxes at both our Church campuses in San Diego and Sacramento, and love the value they provide for both live outdoor venues and indoor installs — the ViO X206 truly is an ideal box for many applications,” adding, “We mixed everything using Allen and Heath dLive for FOH, and I love the way they pair together with the ViOs. Great full, round sound.”
