Orbital Sound’s use of Powersoft X series amplifier technology been growing steadily since its first investment early in 2016. From the pantomime season, it is now touring on the hit musical Chicago, 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 a powerful combination. The system was specified by sound designer Rick Clarke, whose association with the production dates back to 1998 and who passed away recently.
Orbital’s new eight-channel Powersoft X8 amplifiers provide the production with 32 channels of amplification in just 8U: ‘They are working really well and sound extremely good,’ Simmons says. ‘Overall, I am very pleased with the sound of the whole show.’
The X8 allows analogue, AES and twin Dante all to feed into the amplifier’s 8x8 matrix, and provides protection and settings for each Flare loudspeaker combination. The amps were purchased from CUK Audio to run the new PA, when Orbital’s existing 4-channel 2-input/4-output amplifier wasn’t sufficiently flexible for the task.
‘The software was a big issue,’ Simmons says. ‘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 adverse 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 customise 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 proved particularly impressive: ‘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 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 amount of different types of limiting available means you can really get into optimisation for specific speakers and applications.’
The purchase has been popular with Chicago’s touring sound engineers, who according to Simmons, have given them rave reviews: ‘The back-up we have received from CUK and Powersoft has been exemplary; nothing’s a problem,’ he says. ‘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.’
