Powersoft, a world-leading manufacturer of professional power amplifiers, delivered
pristine and reliable audio to a crowd of 71,088 gathered for Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s
Stadium last week, with over 120 of its K10 high-performance power amplifiers and
eight custom subwoofers featuring Powersoft M-System drivers. The pre-game and
halftime entertainment portions of the event — powered solely by Powersoft
amplifiers — featured energetic performances by Lady Gaga, Coldplay, Beyonce and
Bruno Mars, and reached no less than 111.9 million viewers worldwide.
Elite audio services supplier, ATK Audiotek, provided system integration and audio
services for the landmark event, creating an agile audio solution that consisted of
18 mobile speaker carts — each equipped with JBL VT4889 line array elements, JBL
VT4880A subwoofers and Powersoft K10 amplifiers. The speaker carts were rolled
onto the field for the pre-game, halftime and post-game portions of the event.
For the halftime performances, ATK Audiotek’s team had just six minutes to roll out
and set up the entire audio system, with the stage itself consisting of 28 individual
pieces in addition to the loudspeaker carts that had to be rolled into position on the
perimeter of the field. For the duration of the entertainment programming, the
Powersoft amplifiers — drawing power exclusively from generators — performed
flawlessly, enabling an energetic and memorable experience for fans in the stadium
and television audiences at home.
The compactness of the Powersoft amplifiers — which occupy approximately one
third the space of conventional amplifiers — helped enable a smooth transition
during set up from game time to halftime.
In addition to the full service sound system ATK provided for the entertainment
elements, the existing stadium PA system was augmented with additional low-end
reinforcement for mid-game music bumpers, referee announcements, and
announcer calls. “When the speakers were not out there and we were in game
mode, they wanted subwoofers to make gametime more exciting — so we had eight
locations of Powersoft subs set up permanently against the audience wall on the
field,” explains Pat Baltzell, Sound Designer and FOH mix engineer for ATK
Audiotek. “These helped us get an extra half-octave of audio, reaching the super-
low frequencies, between 25 and 35 Hz.” By using the M-Force loaded cabinets with
30″ cones, the ATK team was able to leverage roughly three times the power of
conventional drivers, the subwoofer count on the field from 24 to eight.
The M-Force powered subwoofers were positioned against the audience wall on the
field, four on each side, in evenly spaced intervals. Each cabinet, measuring
approximately 3.5’ x 4.5′ x 3.5’, was powered by a single Powersoft K10 amplifier.
“The M-force and K10 combination delivered exactly the low end we were looking
for, perfectly complementing the house PA,’ Kirk Powell, Systems Designer of ATK
Audiotek says.
In such a landmark event, fraught with challenges and millions of fans watching
around the world, Powersoft delivered: “I couldn’t imagine doing a Super Bowl
without Powersoft,’ Baltzell says.
