Claudio Lastrucci has always felt driven to explore undiscovered territory.
It’s a quality that has informed all of his innovations as head of research and development and managing director of Italy-based Powersoft, and perhaps nowhere more than in the creation of DIGAM, the company’s signature.
Short for Digital Audio Amplifiers, DIGAM is a patented amplifier technology employing Power Factor Correction (PFC) that has enabled Powersoft to create products so compact, powerful and efficient that some in the industry once believed their claims were simply too good to be true.
Lastrucci understands the skepticism: “Changes in technology require time to show that the principles behind their development are correct. It’s not something that happens in months. It takes years.”
Indeed, in the June 2003 issue of Live Sound International, amplifier designer Jeff Kuells presented a thorough evaluation of the Powersoft model Q4002, leading his report with the statement, “How small can power amplifiers get before they become ergonomically difficult to use? I believe Powersoft might have found the limit.”
The Q4002 is only 1RU, weighs just 21 pounds, but it packs four independent channels that deliver 950 watts per channel (RMS). It was mind-boggling at the time, and only a bit less-so now.
Still, Lastrucci and company haven’t found the limit on the size-to-power ratio front, with the more recent M50Q 4-channel model for touring and install applications capable of delivering 1,250 watts per channel (at 4 ohms) from a 1RU package that weighs just a bit more than 16 pounds.
Although PFC was a familiar concept in other industries, it was new to professional audio when it was first introduced by Powersoft 15 or so years ago. Combined with PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) technology, the result was one of the first true high-power, full-bandwidth Class D professional amplifiers, a product roughly a fifth the size and weight of traditional amplifiers while offering a significant increase in efficiency.
“It’s a factor of 10,” Lastrucci notes about the efficiency. “In 1995, our technology was outside the view of anybody in the business, and we were the first company to offer it, but now that it’s commonly known we have something like 250,000 units worldwide.”
PFC also allows the amplifiers to operate at line voltage around the world, from 95 volts to 265 volts. The power supply remains stable under any AC line condition while maintaining a consistent power output from the amplifier. And perhaps most significantly to Lastrucci, it helps produce energy savings of approximately 40 percent.
In addition to DIGAM, which was patented worldwide in 1997, Lastrucci also holds international patents for a variety of power electronic topologies, control methods, acoustic transducers and other technologies, and as a result, he is often referred to as the inspiration behind Powersoft.
In conversation, however, he is quick to point out the contributions of the company’s staff, insisting they all share a common drive to change the rules of the audio industry with the work they pursue. “Most of them are musicians and sound engineers, so music and sound are their life. They are very passionate about what they do. I don’t know, maybe it’s something that is in the blood.”
