The National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM), located in the heart of downtown Nashville, opened in 2021. The cultural landmark is brought to life through exhibitions, artifacts, and immersive audiovisual experiences that connect visitors emotionally and sonically to the music itself. Powersoft’s Ottocanali Series helps bring to life the centerpiece orientation theater, setting the tone for the whole guest experience.
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The theater is a hybrid space that serves as both an introduction point for visitors and a venue for live performances. With a large stage and a curved 32-foot-wide screen that expands to nearly 60 feet during presentations, the theater presented unique acoustic and engineering challenges. The screen design required a sound system that was both extremely shallow, to fit within the limited depth behind the screen, and mobile, so that speakers could move with the screen’s side panels and expand the audio field in sync with the visuals.
Article continues below“We had a clear goal we were trying to achieve,” said Tim Creed, CTS-D, president of CED. “The theater needed an audio system that could keep pace with the expanding screen, delivering a seamless, immersive experience for visitors. The challenge was finding speakers shallow enough for the space and light enough to mount on the moving panels, without compromising sound quality.”
To address these challenges, Creed turned to Innovox, a trusted partner recognized for its expertise in engineering custom solutions. Innovox provided a complete system design, including matched speakers, EQs and amplification. CED performed rigorous testing of the system, with the design exceeding every requirement, delivering the performance and flexibility needed for the space.
The final solution combined subwoofers positioned in the center, high-performance speakers integrated into the large central screen, additional lightweight speakers mounted on the traveling side panels and dedicated center channels. To power the entire system, Innovox recommended Powersoft’s Ottocanali Series, a choice that proved vital to the installation’s success.
The Ottocanali is an 8-channel, Class D power amplification platform capable of supplying up to 12,000 W of power at 4 ohms. Designed for multi-zone applications in medium- to large-scale installs, the Ottocanali Series supports any combination of Lo-Z or Hi-Z output connections and includes universal switch-mode power supplies with PFC. All amplifier platforms in the Ottocanali Series feature switchable main/aux signal inputs per channel, mono-bridgeable channel pairs, as well as a wide range of functions, including system control, alarms, GPI/O, and monitoring. The Ottocanali Series includes optional DSP+D versions outfitted with Dante inputs, enabling Ottocanali DSP+D amplifier platforms to seamlessly integrate within networking environments and give users a wide range of monitoring and sound-shaping capabilities.
For NMAAM’s orientation theater, the flexibility of the Ottocanali Series was essential. The system required amplifiers that could seamlessly handle a hybrid design of subwoofers, main channels and mobile side-panel speakers within a single venue. With its eight independent channels and DSP+D capabilities, the Ottocanali Series provided the control, tuning and efficiency necessary to achieve that balance.
The amplifiers feature Powersoft’s patented Smart Rail Management (SRM) technology, which recycles reactive energy from the loudspeakers. SRM reduces overall power consumption and heat dissipation, ensuring that the amplifiers run efficiently while lowering long-term operating costs, a benefit particularly important for a venue operating at the scale of NMAAM.
“I trusted Innovox’s recommendation on Powersoft,” Creed explained. “The Ottocanali Series gave us exactly what we needed – flexibility, reliability and world-class sound quality. The Ottocanali Series fits perfectly into the system and has proven to be an excellent choice.”
While the choice of equipment was crucial, the installation itself presented its own challenges, particularly in managing the cables for the retractable side panels. The cables had to extend and retract repeatedly without strain or signal degradation. With careful engineering, the team succeeded, and the system performed exactly as intended.
The result was an immersive audio experience that expanded dynamically with the visuals, creating a seamless sense of scale for visitors. According to Creed, the effect was striking. He said, “The speakers in the moving side panels widened the sound field in perfect sync with the visuals. It gave visitors exactly the kind of immersive experience we envisioned.”
The system’s performance has even been favorably compared to the theater’s separate high-end live system used for concerts and special events. According to the facility’s owner, the Innovox and Powersoft system actually sounds superior. “That was a real point of pride,” Creed noted. “Our Ottocanali-driven system, designed for orientation films and multimedia, was judged to outperform a world-class live performance rig. That speaks volumes about the precision and quality of Innovox and Powersoft.”
Since its installation, the system has operated flawlessly. Despite the mechanical complexity of the moving panels, the audio has never been a point of failure. “Powersoft has absolutely met our expectations,” said Creed. “We love working with partners who stand behind their products, just as we do. Despite the system’s moving parts, which could easily lead to issues over time, we’ve had zero problems with the audio itself.”
