Powersoft T604A

Is this amp OK?
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jmanso
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Powersoft T604A

#1 Post by jmanso »

Hey there everyone! It's been a while!

We've been running our 4xTitan48 and 2OT12s for a few years now, mostly trouble free, and always extremely happy with it.

But all these years we've been running them through some cheap Thomann amps and have decided to finally step up to a proper amplifier.

That said, we're now the proud owners of a brand new Powersoft T604A and the new Armonia ecossystem is just astounding.

Anyway, the goal of this post is twofold, one is just to double check that my plan is sound, and the second one is to find some help with the Armonia stuff.

So, first things first. The plan is to now fully run our soundsystem on a single 1U amp. Using the PowerSoft Powersharing calculator I can see that I should be able to run it like this:
Channel 1 - 2xTitan 48 in parallel
Channel 2 - 2xTitan 48 in parallel
Channel 3 - Omnitop 12 L
Channel 4 - Omnitop 12 R
Screenshot 2023-05-25 013711.png
now we are in the process of building 2 more tops and we should be also able to run those with no issue on channels 3 and 4, but our endgoal is to have 6 Titans v-plated with 4 OTs and while I ran the simulation and it seems like it would hold, it kind of looks too good to be true. Do you think this would actually have enough power?
Screenshot 2023-05-25 013711.png
Logic here is having 2 pairs of parallel Titans hooked up in parallel which I assume would produce a 2ohm load of 800w (we run 12nlw9300)
But I'm pretty sure I'm just doing this wrong so please, let me know.

For the Second part, Armonia is a beast, coming from a dbx PA2 this is just insanity. The 3way limiting seems fairly interesting, I was wondering if you've had any issues with them or if they are as fool proof as they are famed to be.
Also I have very little knowledge about the FIR filters but it seems very interesting and definitely a time saver. Has anyone generated these for the OT12s that can provide them ? Maybe pointers on some light reading on the matter :D

Cheers all, and thank you!
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jmanso
Posts: 134
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2014 6:33 am
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Re: Powersoft T604A

#2 Post by jmanso »

disregard the "SW" profile on channel 3, it's a remnant from another calculation

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Tom Smit
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Re: Powersoft T604A

#3 Post by Tom Smit »

jmanso wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 7:48 pm disregard the "SW" profile on channel 3, it's a remnant from another calculation
Disregard the RMS voltage on channel 3 as well?
TomS

Grant Bunter
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Re: Powersoft T604A

#4 Post by Grant Bunter »

Forget peak voltage and clip voltage if they are greater than the maximum allowable displacement voltage limit in the plans, ie 80V/driver. Don't use them, make them null.

You are after brick wall limiting, ie, once set, it doesn't matter what you do to mixer faders or whatever, the maximum voltage per cab is 80V. Find out from powersoft/armonia how to make that happen. Anything else is putting your drivers at risk.

Your amp doesn't have enough power for subs (i think). 3 x 8ohm cabs in parallel per channel is 2.66Ohms, or just over 2400W, which is greater than the specs of 1500W/2ohms.

You would be better served to add 4 more T48's, then run 1 parallel pair/channel on all 4 channels, and use another amp for your 4 x Otops, which would require 400W/channel for war volume, + some headroom...
Built:
DR 250: x 2 melded array, 2x CD horn, March 2012 plans.
T39's: 4 x 20" KL3010LF , 2 x 28" 3012LF.
WH8: x 6 with melded array wired series/parallel.
Bunter's Audio and Lighting "like"s would be most appreciated...

jmanso
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Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Re: Powersoft T604A

#5 Post by jmanso »

thanks for the quick answer. That would be my thought as well. Initially we were planning on having a T302 just for sub duty. But I guess we can flip that now since the 604 should in theory be more than enough to run 8 titans with a 2 per channel config. and then the T302 should confortably handle 4 OTops. Since we only plan on having a maximum of 6 Titans (and likely not this year), the 604 should be good to handle 4 titans and 4 OTs no biggie.

I found those limiter values a bit high to be honest, but Powersoft does recommend using at least the RMS and Peak Limiters for both mechanical and thermal protection.
from reading this: https://www.powersoft.com/wp-content/up ... n_v1.0.pdf I feel I should probably use the provided values for RMS, adjust the Peak to the 70v Bill recommends on the plans, disregard the clip one alltogether or set it to 70v and lower the peak to maybe 65, 62v

@tom Smit all other values are correct, the only thing the profile changes as far as I know is the attack / release times on the RMS limiter settings.

Grant Bunter
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Re: Powersoft T604A

#6 Post by Grant Bunter »

About going to 6...

IMHO, it's not worth the effort to build, nor the expense, of 2 more cabs when the same increase could be gained by adding a V plate.

You see, a doubling of cabs adds +6dB, so half of that in this case is +3dB. Adding a V plate is +3dB.

While we're at it, absolutely no point in powersoft being in charge of your cabs, because the amp cannot know what your cabs need for protection. So, don't trust their settings unless you test them.
As I said before, contact powersoft and ask them how to get brick wall limiting. It's the only thing you want/need...
Built:
DR 250: x 2 melded array, 2x CD horn, March 2012 plans.
T39's: 4 x 20" KL3010LF , 2 x 28" 3012LF.
WH8: x 6 with melded array wired series/parallel.
Bunter's Audio and Lighting "like"s would be most appreciated...

jmanso
Posts: 134
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2014 6:33 am
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Re: Powersoft T604A

#7 Post by jmanso »

6 Titans would be the "final form"

Plan moving forward is to redo our v-plate ( We made one about 5 or 6 years ago out of MDF just to experiment and it's long become unusable), make 2 more tops and bring the final stack to 4 vplate t48 and 4 omnitop 12.

That will likely be all we can budget for the rest of the year.

From that step, the next move would be to add 2 more titans, but realistically this is not something that will happen due to the logistics of transportation and storage.

I think I remember seeing here someone building a "foldable v-plate" that would then screw into into the titan. Does anyone recall the thread?

jmanso
Posts: 134
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2014 6:33 am
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Re: Powersoft T604A

#8 Post by jmanso »

well. It's here!
WhatsApp Image 2023-06-14 at 13.43.43.jpg
Let the testing begin.

Just as an update, from the powersoft documentation found at https://www.powersoft.com/wp-content/up ... ions-1.pdf

5.3 Clip limiter
The Powersoft clip limiter is a “brick wall” limiter that blocks the driving signal, not allowing it to
exceed the threshold. This limiter has a fixed attack time of 0.3 ms with a lookahead of 0.3 ms that
allows to anticipate peaks before they occur and therefore with the benefit of less distortion by not
having a hard clip. Clip limiters are very fast and are the last safety tool that can be used to avoid
loudspeaker damage. To achieve the best result in quality and performance, it is suggested a gain
reduction between 0 and 3 dB and to engage also Peak and Rms limiters.

Bruce Weldy
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Re: Powersoft T604A

#9 Post by Bruce Weldy »

Don't trust anything you read about setting up the limiters without actually putting a volt meter on the outputs to see if the limiter actually stops the voltage where you want it. There is no other way.

The problem I have with the manual you linked is that nowhere do they discuss excursion limits. If you set it up based solely on thermal ratings as their calculator suggests, you are most likely looking for trouble.

6 - T39 3012LF
4 - OT12 2512
1 - T24
1 - SLA Pro
2 - XF210


"A system with a few knobs set up by someone who knows what they are doing is always better than one with a lot of knobs set up by someone who doesn't."

jmanso
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Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2014 6:33 am
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Re: Powersoft T604A

#10 Post by jmanso »

oh I plan to follow the plans and what was suggested here. 62~65v of Brickwall limiting and nothing else.

I may eventually use some old drivers to test some more extreme values they suggest but not a priority for the moment.

I will likely use it on the OT12s as I don't really run limiters there anyway. As long as I don't hear any distortion or weird limiting artifacts I'll likely leave them on.

Will run a multimeter to validate it of course.

Fastskiguy
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Re: Powersoft T604A

#11 Post by Fastskiguy »

This might be a dumb question but is there much of a difference between 45 and 65 watts? If not, why push it?

Joe

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Tom Smit
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Re: Powersoft T604A

#12 Post by Tom Smit »

Fastskiguy wrote: Wed Jun 14, 2023 9:38 pm This might be a dumb question but is there much of a difference between 45 and 65 watts? If not, why push it?

Joe
Did you mean "volts"?
TomS

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Seth
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Re: Powersoft T604A

#13 Post by Seth »

Difference between 45 and 65 watts is 1.6dB
Difference between 45 and 65 volts is 3.2dB
Build in process - 2 WH6, one Alpha 6a loaded, one PRV Audio 6MB250-NDY loaded

Two 2x6 shorty SLA Pro's
One T39, 16", 3012LF loaded
Tall AutoTuba, 20" wide, 2x 8" MCM 55-2421
TruckTuba, 8½" wide, 2x 8" MCM 55-2421

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