The Music Inside Festival in Rimini this year saw Powersoft X series premium amplifiers serving both PA and monitoring on all three stages at the Rimini Fiera for performances from The Martinez Brothers, Paul Kalkbrenner, Sven Vath, Chris Liebing, Loco Dice, Len Faki, Ilario Alicante and Sam Paganini. The two-day event also saw the new Loud Professional Formula F221 subwoofer used for the first time.

The combination of the two Italian manufacturers was selected by Amandla Productions, who had taken over the Festival’s technical production and needed expertise in large-scale festival sound reinforcement.

‘The synchronisation with Powersoft was excellent and we already have plans for to develop further projects together,’ says Loud Professional’s Event Production Director, Francesco ‘Scody’ Scotti. ‘As for the new sub, we were delighted with the excellent results achieved.’

In order to satisfy the requirements of some of the world’s leading EDM exponents, extensive testing was required: ‘This necessitated creating a library of dedicated presets,’ Scotti explains. ‘The huge potential of Armonía [Powersoft’s digital signal monitoring and processing software], with its powerful DSP, has enabled us to fully optimise our system capabilities. The Powersoft/Loud Pro combination guarantees exceptional performances along with the powerful and easy system management.

‘In our quest for efficiency, the greatest benefits can be seen in both the precision and power. But power is nothing without control, and the limiter section, by virtue of providing many excellent tools, not only guarantees great longevity but also the perfect balance between each section. In fact, the Powersoft processing system is probably the most powerful in the world, with the ability to offer supreme signal management. And as for economy, the X Series allows us to minimise the space and weight required while maintaining a high power output.’

Although Loud Professional is a relatively young brand, it is already installed in some prestigious clubs and has powered several electronic music festivals. But Scotti realises that it is in the low frequencies that the system will really be judged – which is where their 21-inch sub comes into play.

‘Certainly, the music programme relies a lot of low frequencies and these are reproduced faithfully and with great precision even when subjected to high levels of stress (such as a 12-hour festival). But the depth of control across the complete audio spectrum offered by Powersoft means we can control every single note with absolute fidelity.’

Michele Azzimonti responsible for the sound design on each od the event’s three stages. Particularly pertinent was the Green stage, which used two clusters of 12 Loud Professional VH Layer 212H, equipped with two 12-inch woofers, along with two 6.5-inch horn-loaded twin midranges and three 1-inch drivers in combination with a planar wave guide, all driven by Powersoft X8 amplification.

Particular attention was devoted to minimizing the room’s reflections from the opposite wall to the stage with an accurate pointing of the systems, and with gain shading. The LF for this stage comprised 32 VH Sub 121H, arranged in eight blocks of four loudspeakers arranged in a line along the stage front. The coupling of four cabinets allowed the system response to be extended down, while the linear layout ensured uniform horizontal coverage.There was no need to reduce the rear emission of the subs, as these cabinets already offer an exceptional directivity with a ‘natural’ cut off of the rear output.

Also used as front fills were ten VH SM15 speakers, equipped with a 15-inch coaxial woofer, to address the front stage area not covered by the main clusters.

At the Blue stage, Powersoft X8 drove 24 Loud Professional VH Layer112H+EMD (Three Way Line Array Elements), 24 Loud Professional VH Sub218R and ten Loud Professional VH SM12H for front fill. As with the Green Stage, careful attention was taken in pointing and setup, given the room acoustics and the reflections of the wall opposite the stage. The main system was supported over the first 8m by ten VH SM12H front fills, featuring a 12-inch woofer and a 1.4-inch compression driver, both neodymium.

For LF coverage, production preferred a hybrid arc-delay/end-fire configuration. The 24 VH Sub 218Rs were divided into two parallel rows of 12 cabinets each. These were spread across the 18m of the stage front, created a control array up to a frequency far above the crossover frequency, ensuring uniform distribution. The end-fire configuration allowed the presence of low frequencies on the stage to be minimised. As with the other stages, all speakers were driven by the powerful Powersoft X8 amplifiers.

Controlled with the Armonía software, the entire tuning of the system was achieved using the capabilities of the onboard DSP, while signal distribution was handled by a Meyer Galileo Callisto 616.

The smaller Red stage provided the greatest acoustical challenge because the bottleneck of the side walls, just few meters from the stage front, created a tunnel 20m wide, 50m long and 7m high. Loud Professional VH Layer 112H were used in two-way configuration – six cabinets per side as the main clusters. Two further systems, stacked over the subwoofers, served as front fill.

Scotti reports that ‘the incredible frequency response and definition of these new cabinets that, even in such an acoustically difficult environment, allowed every single bass note to be fully appreciated.’