First of all, 84 of Powersoft's K10 amplifiers occupied prime position in Cleveland during a whirlwind four-day event which saw Donald Trump formally capture the Republican party presidential nomination.
A little more than a week later, and across the country in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic party's nomination to run for President and again Powersoft was on hand to amplify proceedings in front of 4,700 delegates, who cast their ballots at the Democratic National Convention. This time 104 K10's were deployed.
These events marked the start of the U.S. general election, and for such historically and legally significant events, audio intelligibility was the paramount technical consideration.
With 2,472 delegates in attendance at the 2016 Republican National Convention, for ATK Audiotek, which has been handling convention audio for more than two decades, this meant choosing what they believe are the most reliable, efficient, high-performance amplifiers.
Pat Baltzell, sound designer and FOH engineer for ATK Audiotek, was responsible for the audio system for the event at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, and began the design process last December: "First and foremost, this was a speech-based event, so the design approach had to take into account that every single seat needed to clearly hear what was being communicated," he says. "Further, the venue is being used to maximum capacity, and there was a seated floor where the basketball court normally is."
To ensure reliable audio and maximum intelligibility, ATK chose to integrate the 84 Powersoft K10 amplifiers, which were used to power all primary speaker clusters, in this case JBL VerTec 4889s. The clusters in the primary system surrounded the stage, and ATK also placed 14 delay clusters in 200 level upper deck seating area.
Over at the Wells Fargo Center in downtown Philadelphia, 104 Powersoft K10 amplifiers ensured that more than 180 speeches and 15 performances at the Democratic National Convention were heard by delegates with absolute clarity.
Once again, the underlying purpose over the four days was to select the Democratic Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees for the highest office in the land - and ATK Audiotek this time relied on this large deployment of Powersoft K10 amplifiers to deliver the audio.
For the primary audio system, ATK specified six clusters of JBL VerTec 4889 loudspeaker arrays located around the stage and 12 time-delayed clusters for the arena's upper deck. ATK's Alex Guessard configured and time aligned the system using Powersoft's Armon
