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AED Rent Open Up with First 80 QSC Powerlight 3’s
Belgian company AED Rent has become the first European customer for QSC Audio’s new PowerLight 3 Class D amplifier as the manufacturer moves into the next generation of amplifier technology.
Sensing that QSC had substantially raised the bar when it showed its new flagship amplifier for the first time at this year’s Pro Light & Sound expo in Frankfurt, the Belgian company this month confirmed an initial investment in 80 top-of-the-range PL380’s as it upgrades its rental stock; and it promises that this is just the beginning.
AED Rent specialises in providing dry-rental support uniquely to production and rental companies (rather than end users); although sharing its early history with QSC’s territorial distributors, AED bvba, the two companies today operate independently, though co-operatively, under separate ownership.
Managing director of AED Rent, Eddy van Nuffel, says that the new amplifier was earmarked for purchase as soon as it was announced, and they began beta-testing back in March. “We conducted listening tests and the amplifier sounded extremely musical, with impressive Class D efficiency right across the frequency spectrum,” Eddy van Nuffield reports.
As for reliability issues, he was able to fall back on AED Rent’s long history with the brand. “QSC have never made a product which was unreliable, so why would they start now!” At the same time AED Rent’s MD was impressed by the amount of power generated from such a small package.
The 8000W PL380 combines a pair of 4,000-watt Class-D amplifier channels with QSC's PowerLight power supply to serve up more than twice the audio horsepower of any previous 2U PowerLight amplifier. Within the PL380 circuitry, reactive ‘back EMF’ from the loudspeakers is recycled into the power supply to help promote a plug-to-plug efficiency rating of 85% that reduces AC power consumption to a bare minimum, all while delivering more energy to the loudspeakers. This give it the highest overall efficiency of any amplifier currently available.
The first batch of PL380’s forms part of a strategic inventory upgrade for AED Rent as some of the pre-existing frontline amplifiers — stalwart performers such as the popular PL2 and PL4.0 — are deployed to other duties to be replaced by the PL3.
This was certainly in AED Rent’s thinking as they upgrade a hire fleet that contains a number of uniform, multipurpose QSC PL4.0 racks — for both FOH and monitor use; they have also regularly used QSC’s classic MX3000’s and PL236’s over the years.
“Many of the old MX3000 amplifiers are still operating in install, and we plan to pull these out and replace them with our PL4.0 racks,” says van Nuffel. The new PL380’s will then fill the void created by the migration of these racks — a trend which QSC believes will be emulated by other major league production companies around the world.
Rental and production companies in Belgium have already been quick to take note of this sizeable investment in cutting-edge QSC technology as they strive to make their own inventories compatible with that of AED Rent.
In picture: QSC’s PL3 series.
17th September 2007
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