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[Nathanshort]

Fail safe and adaptive sytem topology has been around in major installations such as airports and sports stadiums for years. Not so much in America, but all over Europe.Check out the picture below, which shows a couple of popular 1U 4 chan amps. Try finding space for more uPs, FPGAs, etc., for the heavy duty processing of the future.Not really. If the future is smaller lighter and much more powerful. A failure would mean that a large section of the coverage area is missed.

Iain.

Plenty of Room for Powerful DSP!!!   

http://www.powersoft-audio.com/en/products/power-modules/dspc.html

[Iain.Macdonald]

Fail safe and adaptive sytem topology has been around in major installations such as airports and sports stadiums for years. Not so much in America, but all over Europe.

Such designs are specific per site or per venue system designs. I envision a more generic control structure based on a robust bidirectional network with a flexible self awareness per box, to respond to new control input, or changing circumstance. That is a mouthful and easier to write than do.

Check out the picture below, which shows a couple of popular 1U 4 chan amps. Try finding space for more uPs, FPGAs, etc., for the heavy duty processing of the future.

Those images are a bit of a red herring. Why would a powered loudspeaker designer limit themselves to use 1U packaging and components? While this may not be apparent to those to who don't know their way around inside amplifiers, many of those capacitors are connected into the exact same circuit nodes in parallel to combine together and look like fewer larger value caps, because you can't get the full capacitance you want in that short package height constraint. Using fewer taller capacitors may ultimately use close to the same volume, it will require a lot less board area. Likewise more height could deliver similar cooling with less heat sink footprint. I expect the switching frequency and on resistance of suitable power devices to continue to improve in my version of the future, further shrinking modest power designs.

If they can fit DSP inside current power amps, I see little reason to expect there's no room inside powered cabinets amp modules, while this amp/dsp/communication module volume does factor into the original box tuning/design.

My future is more powerful but cheaper processing, and by powering the boxes one at a time, the size of the per box amplifiers is kept smaller, cheaper, etc. My future is less affected by single failures. Fewer, larger amps, could be more cost effective but less immune from systemic failure.

JR

PS: Again I apologize for taking over this thread,,, this is an old concern of mine, I should probably drop since I am not personally involved on either side, but hopefully that makes me more objective to communicate my views.

Hi,

Nothing wrong with discussion. Two nations divided by a common language? Smart move changing the argument to suit. Take note of  Ivan's post, because the majority of the industry follows his viewpoint, whether installation based or touring/events etc. I note you still talk about distributed amps/processing. Unless you have some new technology, we still have to power a speaker, Whether this power source is in the box or in a remote rack. If you insist on having it in the speaker, how do you intend to switch the amp when it fails, assuming that each speaker cabinet has a spare amp on board? Those pictures are not red herrings or squid! Those are current state of the art, 4 channel amps. Yes they have rudimentary DSP, but nothing like the future (like in the next 6 months) requirement. It's OK to speculate about the distant future when we are all dead. But I tend to respect readers time, and stick with the near future, and realistic views. If you want some blue sky thinking, then it might well be the case that we don't have loudspeakers. Everything will be plugged in to our brains a la Matrix. 

Iain.

[Iain.Macdonald]

Plenty of Room for Powerful DSP!!!   

http://www.powersoft-audio.com/en/products/power-modules/dspc.html

Nathan,

If it wasn't clear, I was talking about separate amps, not powered speaker modules. Of course, you could easily put more DSP in with a module. The amp on the right is a Powersoft product, and there is definitely not enough room for substantial amounts of extra DSP, over and above that already on the add on card.

Iain.

[John Roberts {JR}]

I repeat it is pointless to argue about the future so I won't. I only raised "my" vision about the future in the context of the issue surrounding poor correlation between DSP commands and results. In my future the problem becomes academic and fades away. 

In the present and "your" future, the need for resolving the DSP babel is pressing and likely to persist. While the market "could" eventually sort this out. We never managed to get all 1/3 octave GEQ on the same page after decades in the marketplace.

Who knows maybe this time will be different.   

JR

[edit- bzzzt I was wrong... Even in my future there is merit in getting the control interface correct since I can imagine applying room EQ to different boxes from different companies. Of course applying EQ to taste is less critical, but we would still want different boxes in the same system to act the same in response to some global control input.  /edit] 

[Nathanshort]

Nathan,

If it wasn't clear, I was talking about separate amps, not powered speaker modules. Of course, you could easily put more DSP in with a module. The amp on the right is a Powersoft product, and there is definitely not enough room for substantial amounts of extra DSP, over and above that already on the add on card.

Iain.

Ian,  that IS exactly what the DSP in a powersoft looks like.   Modules and K Series, are hardly different,  and quite powerful. 

And I think you would find the PKN  DSP not much larger.

[Matt Errend]

Nathan,

If it wasn't clear, I was talking about separate amps, not powered speaker modules. Of course, you could easily put more DSP in with a module. The amp on the right is a Powersoft product, and there is definitely not enough room for substantial amounts of extra DSP, over and above that already on the add on card.

Iain.

I've held the KDSP module in my hands which is the very powerful DSP board available in the K series of amps from Powersoft and it is very compact (1.5" x 3" or so), and the KAESOP board is even more compact (which enables ethernet audio and control). KDSP is about as state of the art as it gets these days and capable of advanced FIR networks. Either way I still don't really see your point, as any manufacturer still has the option of increasing the size of the chassis to accommodate DSP and Ethernet control boards.

[Peter Morris]

I've held the KDSP module in my hands which is the very powerful DSP board available in the K series of amps from Powersoft and it is very compact (1.5" x 3" or so), and the KAESOP board is even more compact (which enables ethernet audio and control). KDSP is about as state of the art as it gets these days and capable of advanced FIR networks. Either way I still don't really see your point, as any manufacturer still has the option of increasing the size of the chassis to accommodate DSP and Ethernet control boards.

FWIW – this seems to be one of the directions things are going with amps , DSPs & FIR filters at the moment.

http://www.eaw.com/frontrow/2010/06/_eaw_today.html
http://www.turbosound.com/news/2011/03/Turbosound-partners-with-Lab.gruppen
http://www.l-acoustics.com/products-la8-30.html

As for the size of the boards …. in addition to the powersoft DSP have a look at this, 11cm x 13cm -  4 outputs and lots of horse power.

http://www.fouraudio.com/en/products/hd2.html

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