[Troy F]

Well you guys are way over my head but from an actual observation when using one of the currently available "high end" wavemakers, there is no such thing as "soft start". Personally, I think that they need the power surge to get them going and without it they'd need to be extremely clean or they'd never get going. My opinion is that the powerheads we use are cheaply made and no amount of fiddling is going to make them quiet and long lasting while doing rapid start and stop applications.

I don't know what cost the components are for the project you guys are thinking about but you may want to look into the Tunze powerheads. My understanding is that they are rampable, put out huge flow rates and are air cooled.