For the second consecutive year, Powersoft partner Barowski AG provided sound reinforcement for the main stage, situated on the Hauptmarkt in front of the city's main town hall, bidding successfully for the contract, issued by organisers, the City of Nuremberg.
Billed as "Germany's largest world music festival", and attracting more than 200,000 visitors over the three days, for its 41st edition, Bardentreffen focused on a variety of music from around the globe under the theme Sounds of the Islands.
Barowski AG had first fielded their X8 racks for the 2015 edition, but according to Michael Barowski, chairman of the board, they increased their inventory for this year. "We now have five X8 racks and an additional X4 touring set," he said. "Each amp in our rental stock occupies a single rack for maximum flexibility."
In addition to the X4/X8, the production company also deployed additional Powersoft amps for other applications, such as driving delays and near-fill speakers.
The main PA in this case consisted of EV X-Line, with further EV Xi-series enclosures deployed for out-fill and near-fill duties as well as drum-fill on stage. Other monitor speakers included wedges from Rocksound and L-Acoustics.
The move to Powersoft had been carefully thought-out. "We spent a lot of time researching how to replace our stock of different amps and controllers in the most efficient manner," Barowski continued. "We sold most of our recent amps in order to use our X4/X8 to power everything - from 5in near-fill speakers to full festival-size PA."
Barowski also knows that additional headroom is available if necessary, via a further X8 rack and X4 patchbay from the demo stock of Powersoft's German distributor Laauser & Vohl GmbH.
The advantages, he says, are obvious. "We have significantly reduced our variety of amp racks and therefore our time for setup, checking controllers, false deliveries on site. In fact since using Powersoft, our rate for checking misapplication or false cabling within racks is at zero."
In terms of deployment at Bardentreffen, Barowski ran the complete sound system on Dante using Powersoft's two redundant digital streams, connected to Yamaha CL5 digital mixer for FOH, PM5D for monitor, and two Rio 32-16 stage boxes. The entire festival was run via 5-core Ethernet Multicore (one line adapted for analogue signals as Intercom/Talkback/Shoutbox via CatCore stage boxes).
Finally, Barowski regularly controls and configures its amps via the Powersoft Armon
