JBL, CROWN & POWERSOFT AT 58TH ANNUAL GRAMMY AWARDS
25 February 2016
It was Powersoft’s job to deliver 720,000 watts of clear audio to more than 18,000 music fans at the 58th Annual Grammy awards in Los Angeles’ Staples Centre, viewed by over 24 million worldwide. The PA of choice was JBL’s VTX Series line arrays, powered by Crown I-Tech HD amplifiers..
ATK Audiotek was on hand to provide audio services for the event. With LL Cool J hosting, Grammy Awards were bestowed on Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran, Alabama Shakes and Meghan Trainor. 72 Powersoft K10 amplifiers, situated in a dozen racks located around the venue delivered reliable audio, powering all the stage monitoring, front fills and upper level seating areas.
This year’s system featured two hangs of 12-box JBL VTX V25 loudspeakers on either side of the stage for the main PA in addition to two 16-box VTX V20 loudspeaker side clusters, two nine-box S25 subwoofer clusters and three eight-box VT20 delay clusters, ensuring that every seat in the audience could hear what was being said at the appropriate time, regardless of distance from the stage. Driving the loudspeaker clusters were Crown I-Tech 4x3500HD HD amplifiers and Crown MA 12000i power amplifiers powered the subwoofer clusters.
With two principal active stages in front of the venue, in addition to a dish stage near front of house, Powersoft K10s provided a monitoring power to the system’s side fills, wedges and drum fills. Speakers consisted of two ATK C6 cabinets per side, four ATK M5 wedges across the front of the stage, a drum subwoofer consisting of an ATK CSW218 dual 18” speaker with an ATK M5 on top, and various ATK M2s.
Front fills consisted of 12 JBL VRX932 across the top, and several ATK CSW 218 subwoofers, placed for ground fill in front of the stage. The top seating level of the venue was covered by several ATK C6 cabinets, placed in proportional distances around the upper perimeter of the venue.
Powersoft’s Armonia DSP system allowed ATK to leverage DSP presets from Grammy Award events held at the Staples Center, says Stewart: “We can easily call up previous years and previous show settings from this venue, fire them up and be ready to go,” he says. “This saves a ton of time because we don’t have to start from scratch when we are tuning a room, and of course time is at a premium.”
Powersoft’s amplifiers deliver on efficiency measures too — particularly when it comes to the amplifiers’ tremendous output capability and minimal physical footprint. “The fact that we can get so much power into a 6U rack is always a consideration and a definite savings,” Stewart observes. “When we are pairing up these Powersoft amps with JBL speakers that have to travel across the country, trucking weight and volume counts. Producers are very aware of potential cost savings in these areas, and it’s another way Powersoft routinely delivers for us.”
More info:
Powersoft: www.powersoft-audio.com
Australian Distributor: www.pavt.com.au
JBL: www.jblpro.com
Australian Distributor: www.jands.com.au
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