Dante capability and sound quality at events with Powersoft Ottocanali

The shared workspace for professionals Cross Campus, located in downtown Los Angeles, is taking full advantage of the innovative hardware and software capabilities of this manufacturer's Ottocanali amplifiers, providing a more powerful sound for your events, with interconnection and state-of-the-art digital controls.

Cross Campus offers professionals and small and medium-sized companies workspaces to develop their activity in rental mode. On its main campus, located in downtown Los Angeles, talks are also held, seminars and events, to which important personalities have attended, like former U.S. President Barak Obama to businessman, physicist and inventor Elon Musk, among others.

In order to offer in these events the best possible sound quality, those responsible for this space contacted Matt Grossman, of Hollywood Sound Systems, who designed an update of the entire system with the incorporation of ottocanali 8k4 DSP+D amplifiers from the specialist Powersoft.

One of the requirements that this system had to meet is that it be as interconnected and automated as possible., "they were very explicit in that everything was controlled digitally, in such a way that they did not require a designated sound engineer present for most events," explains Grossman.. We knew we could do it with DSP and Dante and we wanted an amplifier that had that embedded functionality.".

Features they found in Powersoft's Ottocanali DSP+D eight-channel amplifier, that in addition to offering 8.000 W to 4Ω, incorporates DSP and Dante capability to meet all cross campus audio needs.

Grossman designed an audio system based on two Ottocanali DSP+D amplifiers to power eighteen CDD speakers of Martin Audio (sizes of 5, 6, 8 and 10 Inch) and a CSX112 subwoofer. For the main DSP, two drives are used Symetrix Radius 12×8 ex, while a system Shure ULXD4Q provides four wireless microphone input channels, with a fully digital signal path between the microphone input and the stage output of the Ottocanali.

A touch screen controller Crestron gives users access to automated audio programs, visual and system lighting. "Most of their events are of talking busts and relatively simple elements in the technical," says Grossman.. We have all the automated sound mixing, as well as the detection and correction of feedback, as well as application-specific presets available for any type of event, with default base programming for microphone and monitor volume, background music and lighting, etc..

Rack space and energy efficiency were also key to this Grossman-designed project, who shares a rack of equipment on each floor with the IT department of Cross Campus. "The demands of IT in a place like this are significant, and all that interconnect equipment takes up a lot of rack space. That left me with sixteen spaces in which to put the whole system, so I needed an amplifier with a small size. Achieving sixteen output channels of the two Ottocanali amplifiers and occupying only four rack spaces in the process was critical".

In addition to this space problem solved, another challenge was heat dissipation, "especially for sharing the space with IT," grossman stresses. I didn't want to run the risk of burning all the network equipment. After doing my BTU calculations, it was evident that Powersoft was the best solution: it operates practically without giving heat and, at the same time, provides all the output I need and share the rack".

In addition to the robustness of Ottocanali, includes Powersoft's fault tolerance system. "which allows us to have the option to operate a very basic version of the system completely in analog, even in case of a total shutdown of the network. These amplifiers are the only equipment in the system that gives detailed reports on their operation, including specific information about a component that is not working properly, or if the amplifier detects that one of my speaker drivers fails because the correct voltage is not provided", points out this professional.

Through Dante, this information may be automatically sent in real time to Grossman's email, "so that in case of any problem, I can call my clients before they call me. Everyone who has tried this system has been really impressed with the sound it offers.".

Proof of this is that those responsible for Cross Campus have selected Powersoft Ottocanali as the standard amplifier for all the spaces that this company has in the United States, and start the process of modernizing them based on this system.

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