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St. Patrick Sound System

Documentation for the sound system in the church at St. Patrick Catholic Church, Hutto, Texas.

The system was built to be turn-key. For a normal Mass, nobody needs to touch a mixer. Turn the system on, pick up a microphone, and go. Everything on this site exists for the times when that is not enough.

I need to...

Find your role

You do not need to read this whole site. Find yourself below and read that one page.

If you are... Read this Length
A priest or deacon celebrating without help Priest or Liturgist Alone 1 page
Leading choir or music Choir or Music Leader 3 pages
On the AV team AV Team Volunteer 5 pages
A musician visiting for one event Visiting Musician 1 page
Running a workshop, funeral, or parish event Events and Workshops 2 pages
Maintaining or replacing the system Technical Reference The rest

What the system is, in one paragraph

Microphones in the church, plus a stereo feed from the choir's mixer, all arrive at a Q-SYS Core 24f processor in the AV rack. The Core does the real work: it sets levels, controls feedback, and sends the right mix to each destination, including the main speakers, the assisted listening system, the cry room, the choir monitors, the livestream, and an outdoor jack. The Allen & Heath CQ-20B in the choir area is a submixer: it handles choir microphones and instruments only, then hands one stereo pair to the Core. The Core's settings are fixed and do not need adjusting between services.

Full system overview Signal flow diagram

The most important thing on this site

Do not change the Q-SYS Core settings

The Core is tuned for this room. Its levels, EQ, delays, and feedback control were set during commissioning and should not be adjusted to solve a one-off problem. Almost every problem you will actually hit is a microphone, a battery, a mute button, or a cable — not the DSP.

If you genuinely believe the Core needs a change, see Who To Call.

The CQ-20B is safe to touch

The choir mixer is meant to be adjusted. Choir leaders and musicians can change levels there freely. If it gets into a bad state, you can restore it from a saved scene in about 30 seconds — see Backup and Restore.

About this documentation

Maintained by Head Consulting LLC for St. Patrick Catholic Church. Source lives in a private git repository; this site is generated from plain Markdown files so it stays readable, printable, and editable long after anyone involved in the original install has moved on.

This is a working document, and it says where it is unfinished

Details that have not yet been verified on site are marked like this:

[CONFIRM: an example of something still to be checked]

Those marks are deliberate. A gap that is labelled is far safer than a gap that has been filled in with a plausible guess — everything on this site that is stated plainly has been confirmed or read directly from the equipment.

The open items are listed in the Change Log. If you can answer one, please do.

Last reviewed: September 2026. See the Change Log for revisions.