Florence (Italy), 12th September 2016 – Since making their first investment in Powersoft‘s groundbreaking X Series amplifier technology earlier this year Orbital Sound has seen them graduate from driving the sound during the pantomime season to full touring duty on the hit musical, Chicago, where they have partnered with the company’s new Flare Audio X2 Compact Vertical Point Source Array loudspeaker system.
Chicago has been touring provincial theatres for the first time in four years, and according to Orbital director of sales, Andy Simmons, it has been provided a compelling combination. The system was specified by leading theatre sound designer Rick Clarke, who passed away so tragically last month, and whose association with the production dates all the way back to 1998.
Orbital’s new Powersoft X8 8-channel amplifiers provide the touring production with 32 channels of amplification in just 8U, and Rick commented at the time, “They are working really well and sound extremely good. Overall, I am very pleased with the sound of the whole show.”
The X8 allows analog, AES and twin Dante all to feed into the amplifier’s 8 x 8 matrix, and provide protection and settings for each Flare loudspeaker combination.?
Speaking of the background to the purchase Andy Simmons said that the 12 X8’s had been purchased from distributors CUK Audio to run the new PA, stating that their existing 4-channel 2-in / 4-out amplifier wasn’t sufficiently flexible for their needs.
“So we started looking around,” he said. “The software was a big issue — we didn’t particularly like our existing software, and the fact that Powersoft was enthusiastic enough to invite input into the development of the software swung it.”
Simmons reports having experienced a “fantastic” demo day with Powersoft’s trainer, Luigi Chelli. “He showed what the amplifier could do and how resilient it is to a
dverse conditions, such as plugging all the outputs together, running it off a single-phase and earth – all things that amplifiers shouldn’t be able to do — and then went on to demonstrate how good they sound as well.
“The fact that it has the Dante network built-in and remote control with, most importantly, software that we could customize for the specific application was another essential.” Orbital also worked closely with Chelli to implement some features in the software that they needed, which now appear in the general release of Armonía.
In fact, Armonía had been particularly impressive, he said. “Its big advantages are the ability to create a speaker preset and to lock that up — but keep other parts of the amplifier control available to engineers.
“We wanted to have presets available that are downloadable from our website for staff to use. But the other element that impressed us is the total flexibility in the routing. Not many [devices] offer that degree of flexibility, and the fact that there are other presets already in the library for other manufacturers’ loudspeakers is a great thing to have in your inventory in an emergency. The number of different types of limiting available means you can really get into optimization for specific speakers and applications.”
Certainly, the purchase has proven popular with Chicago’s touring sound engineers, who according to Simmons, “have given them rave reviews”.
In summary, he says, “The back-up we have received from CUK and Powersoft has been exemplary; nothing’s a problem. We try to move gear on within 18-24 months and I am sure we will buy more [X-series amps] to replace older stock.”
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