Explore the Power of Powersoft's Armonía 2.10 Software Platform

August 14 2017, 03:00
Powersoft not only designs and manufactures some of the most powerful and sophisticated audio amplifiers available, it also provides its Armonía software, a powerful control and monitoring platform. So powerful indeed that the Italian company struggles to explain everything the software can do and train its users. To complement the recent introduction of Armonía 2.10, Powersoft created a new series of instructional videos, explaining the new features, including the new Smaart integration.
 

The latest Armonía Pro Audio Suite software version brings an innovative and interactive tuning feature that not only improves the process of measuring and aligning a sound system – but enables the user to work without noise in the immediate surrounding environment. Armonía v2.10 is now fully integrated with Rational Acoustics' Smaart v8 which can read real time, imported or shared location traces (smart, txt, csv, xml). The technology underpins the new interactive tuning plugin, opening up an impressive array of features to the user, such as offline manipulation with EQ, Gain, Polarity, Delay, Sum, Average, Merge amongst many others.

For the moment, Powersoft released four new videos to its YouTube channel that further explore the capabilities of its new Armonía 2.10 software platform. These latest videos cover Armonía’s Interactive Tuning Plugin, which features compatibility with the Smaart software measurement platform. Harnessing data from Smaart and pulling it directly into Armonía, Powersoft users can optimize their amplifiers’ performance using Armonía’s equalization and phase adjustment tools.

"While our mastery of Class D amplification, Power Factor Correction, and other innovations makes Powersoft’s hardware superior, it is our Armonía software that helps ensure peak performance of our hardware in any setting,” comments Gino Pellicano, US & Canada Applications Engineer, Powersoft. “With Armonía 2.10, we have integrated our Interactive Tuning Plugin with the incredible measuring capabilities of Smaart to make system tuning easier and more effective than ever before. With these YouTube videos, we are ensuring that our users can get up to speed on the latest capabilities of Armonía and optimize their workflow.”
 

The first video walks users through setting up input from Smaart within Armonía, allowing users to store and recall Smaart’s data traces seamlessly. Harnessing detailed measurements taken from reference microphones, these traces will help inform tuning decisions made within Armonía to maximize fidelity and performance.

The next video demonstrates how users can employ Smaart’s noise generator from within Armonía to create spectrum data traces using one or more reference microphones, as well as how to capture transfer function data traces including magnitude and phase. To improve readability and usability of the traces, the video shows how Armonía enables users to tweak the color and names of traces and even crop individual traces to display only the relevant information and reduce clutter.

The third video shows users how to overlay Smaart’s measured traces on top of any EQ section within Armonía for a given Powersoft amplifier channel. Utilizing Armonía’s invert function on the measured curve, the video demonstrates how a compensatory EQ curve can easily be drawn to match. Upon hitting the EQ interaction button, those filters are applied to the stored transfer function trace, allowing the user to quickly optimize system response, even when offline.

Applying this technique to both high-frequency and low-frequency output channels and then introducing crossover points, Armonía is able to generate a new curve based on the results of the combined curves, which enables the users to analyze the phase response between the low-frequency and high-frequency drivers both on and off-axis.
 

In the final video, an all-pass filter is employed to better align the phase of the two drivers. The video also shows a real-world sound example in which measurements taken at three mic positions within a space allow strategic manipulation of the delay of the subwoofer channel to solve alignment issues decisively.

As Powersoft’s System Engineer Manager, Luigi Chelli, states, “The concept of measuring and tuning a sound system has now been changed with Armonía. Forget about tiring Pink Noise listening sessions and complex multi-microphone setups. ‘Measure once and tune quietly’ is the key concept.” The new work flow for quiet, offline tuning, requires just a single set of starting measurements before the process is completed in virtual simulation.

EAW Greyboxes have also been integrated into Armonía. Once loaded as a path in Armonía options, the Greyboxes become available in the speaker configuration page, complete with a comprehensive range of options to calibrate the sound of the speakers. Options include air-loss compensation and amplifier sizing.

Powersoft has also included enhancements to the visualization of EQ in this latest release. Alongside optimized graphics, automatic frequency-reordered filters keep the most-used filters always to hand. The software update fully supports the control and monitoring of the standard non-DSP versions of the Quattrocanali and Duecanali amplifiers, giving access to control Gain, Mutes, MaxOutVoltage, as well as metering, faults and warnings.

Further additions to the latest Armonía software version include an expanded preset library featuring, amongst many others, official presets from BOSE SM Series, DAS Aero Series, custom d&b Max12-15, and custom NEXO GeoT. Firmware for all supported devices is also included in the installation package. Armonía will prompt the user to update device firmware to benefit from all the latest enhancements.

The Armonía v2.10 software also supports multiple serial ports at once in the Communication Manager and provides minor fixes on the X Series, DSP4 and other models. The new release is ready to download from the newly-launched dedicated Armonía website: http://armonia.powersoft.it – which also includes a quick overview of the main features of the software, as well as the latest Armonía tutorial videos.
www.powersoft-audio.com
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