Chicago has been touring provincial theatres for the first time in four years, and according to Orbital director of sales, Andy Simmons, it has proved 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 analogue, 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 were 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 Armonia.
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."
(Jim Evans)
