Ray LaMontagne recently kicked off his North American tour with an Adamson Energia PA powered by Lab.gruppen PLM series amplifiers with Lake Processing.
Fourteen PLM 20000Q amplifiers power the system that consists of Adamson E15 and E12 line arrays enclosures as well as E218 subwoofers. Integrated Lake Processing provides speaker processing, monitoring and control. The amplifiers were provided by Eighth Day Sound (Cleveland and the UK), the production company behind the tour.
“It’s great to see the Lab.gruppen amplifiers packaged with the Energia system,” explains Jon Lemon, FOH engineer for the tour. “Lab.gruppen amps are absolute workhorses, I never have any concerns when I know they are powering the PA.”
The PLM 20000Q (Powered Loudspeaker Management) system seamlessly integrates a four-channel amplifier with the Lake Processing platform, Dante networked signal distribution, accurate load verification and real-time performance monitoring.
Energia presets – designed by Adamson – use Lake’s FIR filter and linear phase crossovers. Two Lake LM 44s, located at FOH, handle signal distribution between FOH and the amplifiers.
“I use Rational Acoustics Smart v7 to assist the tuning process and make adjustments on the Lake filtering in the amplifier via a tablet interface,” adds Kyle Smith, system tech for Sound Image. “It’s incredibly efficient and makes set-up a breeze.”
The PLM 20000Q provides four discrete output channels, each rated at greater than 5000 W into 2.2 – 3.3 ohms (4400 W into 4 ohms). To achieve this output power, Lab.gruppen engineers designed a universal (100 to 265 V) Regulated Switch Mode Power Supply (R.SMPS) with power factor correction to reduce peak current draw.
“It’s incredible how much power these amplifiers provide,” adds Lemon. “We started the tour with 16 amps and quickly dropped the count down to 14 – we just didn’t need them. It’s not often that you can say something like that.”
