Products

Factory Direct: A Look At The Powersoft Armonía Pro Audio Suite

Advanced power amplifier control software.

Gone are the days when a so-called dumb, brute force power amplifier was the simple connection between front-of-house electronics and the loudspeaker system.

We’re now in the age of the smart amplifier that is both software and audio driven, creating a close marriage between audio control software and the power amplifier.

In short, the power amplifier has now become a technology platform capable of supplanting many other pieces of gear that were stand-alone units like crossovers and room-tuning EQ units.

To meet the challenges of this union, Powersoft has created PC-based Armonía Pro Audio Suite advanced control software to manage its K, Q, D, Duecanali and QTU1400 Series amplifiers.

Armonía provides unique capabilities that allow system engineers to efficiently maximize the interaction between the amplifier and loudspeaker, while providing programmable control of key features like damping, EQ, limiting and crossover.

The full expression of Armonía is available to Powersoft amplifiers equipped with DSP and AESOP (AES3 and Ethernet Simple Open Protocol) cards.

But to develop Armonía, we needed to consider the real-world aspects of designing, implementing and running a sound system for touring or installation.

Back to Bass-ics
Ask any engineer, artist, show producer or audience member about the sound at an event and the bass response is usually at the forefront of comments.

Delivering tight, well defined bass frequencies is of paramount importance to the sonic success of an event. We have incorporated our patented Active DampingControl feature into Armonía for precise tuning of system damping for loudspeakers reproducing frequencies under 400 Hz.

Active DampingControl for maximizing damping parameters.

The value expressed for damping describes the ability of the amplifier to suppress undesirable movement of a cone near the loudspeaker’s resonant frequency.

A loudspeaker’s diaphragm has mass and the cone rigidity, the combination of which forms a resonant system. A loudspeaker also generates electric current from its electromagnetic voice coil moving within the magnetic field of the natural magnet structure.

When audio frequencies are applied to a loudspeaker, excess motion can be generated at or near the resonant frequency. So, the greater the damping number, the more control.

This complex relationship between amplifier and loudspeaker relative to frequency is not the only problem.

The effect of cable resistance on a high power amplifier’s performance also becomes significant at low frequencies, as the cable resistance can affect the output stage’s damping factor. As each installation requires different cable runs, the damping numbers can vary greatly.

Active DampingControl is a proprietary algorithm which compensates for cable resistance. This means cable parameters may be entered in either Metric or American Imperial units for cable run length and wire gauge.

Armonía then sets the cable resistance value and the algorithm calculates and applies the appropriate correction.

System engineers can now precisely tune each different setup based on the physical realities of a particular installation, yielding consistent sonic results from a particular amplifier/loudspeaker combination used over various events.