POWER TO THE PEOPLE

For 25 years, German manufacturer Camco has existed in various forms in the pro audio industry. For the last 12, the company has operated as one of the few independent amplifier manufacturers, focused on producing top of the range, reliable and innovative amps and associated products for an ever-expanding and diversifying marketplace.

    Beginning life as a PA rental company, Camco moved into pure manufacturing as it realised it could not find amplifiers that were reliable enough and that worked well with European voltages: “There were problems here and there so we decided to make our own,” explained managing director, Reiner Sassmann.

    With this in mind, and with more than a smattering of German engineering and efficiency thrown in for good measure, Sassmann has built a team that are intelligent and lateral thinkers allowing them to stay ahead of the pack and develop uncompromising solutions to problems that have fragmented the industry.

    One such problem, since the dawn of the digital networking age in live audio, has been that of protocols — a digitally snaking version of the classic VHS-BetaMax wars — that has wound its way around such products as CobraNet, EtherSound and mLAN and has fractured the ability of rental companies to hook up anything to anything without a collection of black boxes to curse and swear at.

    To this end, Universal Media Access Networks, in which Camco has a stake, has recently launched U-MAN, essentially an IEEE 1394-based streaming media network on which many other protocols can be piggy-backed. The system, which is command and control compliant, can run MIDI, TCP/IP, Ethernet, and Serial (RS232/435/422) in addition to XFN 1.0.

    As well as supporting up to 160,000 audio channels of varying sample rates simultaneously, U-MAN has a fixed latency of 125ms and will also provide analogue, AES/EBU, ADAT, MADI and TDIF interfaces in addition to EtherSound, CobraNet and mLAN bridging.

    Finally, this apparent ‘holy grail’ of networking can also support various analogue and digital
video streams as well as Mac, Linux and Windows command, audio and video streaming.
   
DIVERSITY
Of course, Sassmann and Camco also have their fingers in other pies, not least of which being their partnership with L-Acoustics, for whom they provide OEM solutions for the French loudspeaker manufacturer’s line array products as well as NEXO, whose products Camco also distributes.

    “There are others but I cannot give you details. The reason I have to be quiet about some of the other deals is because we are providing very specialised products and not just changing the sticker!” smiled Sassmann.

    With the live sound market expanding, the OEM market follows suit and Camco is perfectly placed to exploit this development. “What you have to remember is that at the high end of the market there are very few manufacturers and so, of course, when you do business together the direction in which the partnership develops is pretty clear,” Sassmann explained.

    With these market expansions (and it will be interesting to see if the trends continue with the current economic turmoil) Sassmann is confident that Camco is heading in the right direction: “Although there may have been an 8% increase in the turnover of the live market in general, we have not seen that directly. However, I am very aware of the business moving in a very positive direction. Also, as we provide the OEM manufacturing for various brands it is hard to put a figure of how much the live market is responsible for that.”
   
GOING EAST
With this in mind, and with the Olympics grabbing the headlines and our television screens as we write, Camco, like many others is expanding into the Chinese market. In July, Camco appointed Hong Kong-based Right Way Audio as its new and exclusive distributor in the territory. The respected company, which already carries products from the likes of Midas, Klark Teknik and L-Acoustics, almost immediately secured a major installation contract for the Camco amplifiers.

    Mick Anderson, Camco’s international sales director, observed: “As the complexity and maturity of the Chinese market continues to grow, it becomes ever more important to plan and develop long term business strategies. They say it’s not what you know but who you know that counts.

    “At Camco, we have found that it is a combination of both that works best in China. Right Way Audio’s knowledge and professional attention to service and support means that is correctly positioned to represent us and take our business forward in a truly pro-active fashion.”

    Hopefully for Camco this partnership will help to stem the piracy of its products that has come to light of late. Recently, Camco had a near perfect copy of one of its amplifiers delivered to the factory for repair. After close scrutiny by Camco engineers it was realised that they had not actually manufactured the unit, even though the pirates had even copied serial numbers.

    “It was a very good copy in terms of aesthetics but some of the electronic components, transformers and cabling were cheaper versions. They had even copied some of the earlier circuit boards that we have since improved on,” Sassman revealed.
   
COPYCATS
With a new and well-positioned distributor as well as some clever hard and software developments, Camco hopes to stem the tide of piracy and protect its intellectual property and copyrights, which are notoriously hard to keep hold of in China’s rapidly expanding economy.

    Even with Camco well positioned in the marketplace it is not complacent, believing there are always improvements to be made. Sassman: “We are seeing new loudspeakers coming to market that can take 6dB more and we see a clear line in terms of amplifiers that are designed to run off a 16 Amp plug in Europe or 30A in America.

    “At the moment the entire expansion of power is limited by the amplifier’s power supply. We have been working on many options in this area and I can say that there will be a big surprise from us soon. We will be producing a Class D amplifier with a three phase power supply.

    “The problem you have with amplifiers of more than 10kW, running at more than 90% efficiency as in a Class D amplifier, is that you have problems when you suck all the energy out of a 16A plug. So, if you were to run all of the channels on a four-channel amplifier with the same signal in parallel that would cause a problem.

    “We end up having to simulate the mains fuse inside the amplifier to protect it by applying limiting to the output. This has nothing to do with the capabilities of the amplifier; it is to do with the shortcomings of the power supply. The three phase amplifiers will overcome this problem,” concluded Sassman confidently.

    So, it is onwards and upwards for the Camco team and with their products being installed taken on the road globally — London, Tokyo and Barcelona and Northern Negev to name just a few locations of late — it appears that the company is in pole position as the power race surges forward.

TPi       

          
www.camcoaudio.com