Powersoft technology is supporting a major audio upgrade at two of South Korea’s leading retail destinations, with the company’s Mezzo and Quattrocanali amplifiers powering both Background Music (BGM) and Public-Address (PA) systems at Shinsegae Premium Outlet shopping centres in the cities of Busan and Yeoju. Powersoft’s South Korean distributor, DasanSR, enlisted system integrator LCS Global to design and deliver the project.
Both sites are open-air outlet malls operating 365 days a year, where any interruption to announcements or background music is unacceptable. The new system replaces ageing amplifiers with modern, networked Powersoft amplifier platforms, restoring coverage in hard-to-reach areas and delivering an improvement sound quality, operational convenience and system stability. At Busan, the upgrade – to a fully live system – was completed by LCS Global over the course of a fortnight, while at Yeoju the main phase of work was carried out over five nights, all with no disruption to day-time trading.
The two shopping centres share a similar layout, with multiple smaller buildings lining pedestrian ‘streets’ and amplifiers distributed in insulated rooms throughout each site. From the outset, both locations were built around digitally networked infrastructures using the now-obsolete CobraNet platform from source to amplifier. The 2025 upgrade (which followed an initial phase completed in December 2023) focused on replacing failed and at-risk amplifiers with the new Powersoft models while simultaneously modernising the network architecture. The Yeoju mall now combines CobraNet and AVB, with AVB audio expanders feeding analogue signals to the Powersoft amplifiers, while the Busan site has been migrated to a Dante and QLAN architecture, with Dante audio expanders providing both analogue and Dante outputs in a redundant configuration to ensure uninterrupted operation.
Across both malls, LCS Global deployed a large fleet of Powersoft amplifiers, including Mezzo 322 A/AD, 324 A/AD, 602 AD and 604 A/AD, Quattrocanali 1204 DSP and 2404 DSP/DSP+D, and Duecanali 804 DSP+D and 1604 DSP+D units, in combination with a mixture of Bose, JBL, QUAD and Biamp loudspeakers. The compact 1U form factor of Mezzo and the flexibility offered by the Quattrocanali amplifiers allowed LCS Global to maximise channel count while saving valuable rack space, in some cases achieving eight channels in just one rack unit (1U) with paired Mezzo amplifiers.
“The client asked us to maintain high performance, ensure broad compatibility with existing components and make the system easier to service,” said project team leader Jeong Wang-ho, outlining the brief from Shinsegae. “By switching to Powersoft, we were able to restore coverage in zones that had gone quiet due to amplifier failures, reduce heat generation and offer operators real-time monitoring of every output channel. The experience at the Shinsegae Premium Outlets has really confirmed our belief that, for us, ‘digital amplifiers mean Powersoft’.”
For real-time monitoring, LCS Global leveraged Powersoft’s ArmoníaPlus as a central control and monitoring hub, allowing staff to manage power, mute status, levels and output impedance across both sites from a single interface. According to Jeong, the real-time impedance monitoring offered by ArmoníaPlus is one of the most valued features, enabling early detection of line or loudspeaker issues before they become audible problems. At the larger Busan site, dual-path signal routing using both Dante and analogue outputs ensures that audio continues even in the event of a network fault.
Compared with the previous domestic-brand amplifiers, the new Powersoft systems deliver noticeably greater clarity and headroom, with richer low-frequency reproduction even in high-impedance configurations, Jeong continued. Background music – particularly multi-instrument material such as jazz – now has a deeper, more immersive character, and in zones where both amplifiers and loudspeakers were replaced the improvement is described as “dramatic”. He noted, however, that simply replacing the amplifiers was enough to demonstrate a marked improvement in the quality of in-store audio.
“With additional rack space freed up by the compact, efficient Powersoft amplifiers, both sites are now well placed for future expansion and redesign,” added Jeong.
Feedback from Shinsegae is extremely positive, with the client further noting that the “premium Italian” identity of Powersoft, emphasised during the proposal stage, resonates strongly with the luxury positioning of the Shinsegae Premium Outlet brand.
“Although it wasn’t an easy decision to prioritise sound quality in a non-performance environment, the combination of superior audio, ease of maintenance and operational reliability proved that it was a highly worthwhile and justifiable investment from the end customer,” concluded DasanSR’s Jeong.
