Powersoft & EAW at Moomba Festival in Melbourne

Melbourne, Australia, March 18th, 2010 ? Moomba is not an event that you normally associate with a Music Festival, but one of with amusement rides, water skiing competitions on the river, night time fireworks, parade.... you can get the idea. In the last couple of years, the organizers have re-introduced a music stage where "local" acts can get up and play for people attending Moomba. Popular in the 80's the event marked the participation of most of the famous Aussie bands of the time. This years Festival taking place in Melbourne on last March 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th included Vanessa Amorosi and Colin Hay (Men at Work fame) among the acts.

The main stage front of house system was the recently purchased Powersoft K Series powered EAW KF740 system. The system consisted eight (8) EAW KF740 mid-sized line array loudspeakers per side, four (4) EAW SB1002 Arrayable Subwoofers (in cardioid array) per side and UX8800 processors all exclusively powered by Powersoft K10's. For the sub bass the K10's used the DSP cards to implement the Active Damping Control(tm) for amazing low frequency impact, clarity and cone control impossible to achieve in competing products.

The system was aligned and tuned on the Friday morning by Ben Clarke of Production Audio Services (EAW and Powersoft support agents), who decided to implement a true cardioid subwoofer array with the EAW SB1002's for the event. This effectively provided in excess of 22dB rear reduction of the complete subwoofer bandpass (27-80Hz). The EAW KF740's were run completely full range, phase aligned and overlapped with the subwoofer arrays for even greater impact from 45Hz and above. All system measurements and performance verification were made using the as yet unreleased Rational Acoustics Smaart V7 (of which Ben is part of the Alpha testing team).

"The system came together very easily, sounded great straight out of the box, took very little time to align and tune", commented owner Don Shepherd. He adds, "And that's about the last time during the weekend it was a straight forward festival!" Melbourne's reputation for unpredictable weather was about to be unleashed in all it's fury.

On the Saturday, Melbourne had its' worst "Superstorm" in 50+ years. Hailstones up to 4'' diameter in some parts of the town, flash flooding and up to 3'' of rain in a couple of hours. The whole system got pounded by serious hail then drenched by very heavy rain. Protection circuits in the amplifier racks received a true real world test. The pictures tell only part of the story. But as they say, the show must go on - and it did.. after everything checked out on the Sunday morning, the system was fired up and it performed faultlessly running for the next couple of days. Due to subsequent site power problems, requests were made to start combining amplifier racks onto a single circuit, which of course was no problem with the Powersoft PFC power supply technology. Crew even ended up drawing stage power from the amplifier rack power distributors.

Live proof of operating efficiency for a system consistently producing in excess of 288,000 watts of real amplifier power.

Overall the system was very well received by all stakeholders and those that used it. Mike "Ace" Baker - FOH Engineer for Colin Hay commented on the Monday... "Wow...No sound check, pouring rain, 1st show of the tour... WHO CARES?!! Rig sounded amazing and even chased the rain away. EAW once again retains it's spot on the top of my riders".