- Powersoft had over 100 K10 DSP+AESOP amplifiers at the 43rd annual American Music Awards, held at Microsoft Theater in Downtown Los Angeles on November 22nd. Around 7,000 people attended the event which was broadcast to over 10 million viewers across the U.S. and featured performances by Coldplay, The Weeknd, Demi Lovato and others.
ATK Audiotek's racks of Powersoft K10 DSP + AESOPs at the 2015 AMA AwardsAudio for the awards show performances was driven by over 100 Powersoft K10 DSP+AESOP amplifiers, located in racks situated throughout the facility. ATK Audiotek, which has been providing audio services for the AMA Awards for 25 years, handled sound services for the event — including equipment specification, set up, FOH and monitor engineering.
"For all the large shows we deploy, we depend on Powersoft for the main P.A., monitors and subs," said Sean Prickett, Audio Engineer for ATK Audiotek.
The AMA Awards is characterized by several musical performances throughout the evening, in addition to award recognition.
"For production staff, this means constant changes in both stages and performers," said Prickett, "There is dialog, but it is standard for us to have to go A Stage to B stage after a v/o right into another performance. It was certainly a case of ‘all hands on deck’ for everyone in the audio department."
"It is considered one of the top three music shows in the country, so there is a certain amount of prestige when the artists come in and they have certain expectations," said Mikael Stewart, VP Special Events, ATK Audiotek. "We are doing a lot of show in a relatively short amount of time, so everything has to go in, work right away, and be flexible."
ATK had already worked many shows in the Microsoft Theater prior to the music awards.
"Our system for Microsoft Theater consists primarily of four main hang arrays, four delay arrays, three balcony hung delays as well as under balconies and two different versions of front fills for FOH," Prickett said. "Typically, for these awards shows, we do a split up distributed drive system, unlike what we might do for typical touring situations."
For the main P.A. and main delays, ATK specified JBL VerTec 4089 line arrays and 4886 balcony delays, all powered by Powersoft K10s.
"We deploy a distributed system to give us more flexible set up for music and dialog, and it means we do not have to drive the P.A. as hard because there are many zones to create a nice even coverage pattern throughout the whole house," Prickett said.
ATK uses Powersoft's Armonia software to catalog and recall key DSP settings so the production team doesn't have to start from scratch when it comes to set up and room-tuning.
"These venues are very much the same, and the show hasn’t really changed its physical structure over the last five years," said Stewart. "We just load the presets from the Armonia software, which gives us a really good starting point so we don’t have to spend hours re-tuning the room."
Jim Ebdon, FOH Music Mixer, mixing during rehearsals at the 43rd annual AMA Awards"We use Powersoft Armonia exclusively for our DSP, and there is no other system controller in front of it," Prickett said. "We rely very heavily on this to tune the system, as well as facilitate EQ and level changes. The preset capability is a key feature for us, since time is always of the essence in these shows."
"The main reason we use K10 DSP+AESOPs at ATK Audiotek is because they allow us to operate in a reduced physical footprint, which is essential in the rack world when it comes to amplifiers," Prickett said. "Since each K10 takes up just 1U, we are able to have a spare amplifier at each location without tying up a prohibitive amount of rackspace. So in case one of the signals goes away, we have a backup at every single amplifier. There were absolutely no issues with any of the 100 amplifiers on our network. Everything went smoothly and without incident: this is the kind of performance we rely on."
