Outline Butterfly at the Padua Porsche Jazz Festival

From November 11-14, the beautiful setting of the Verdi Theatre and the exclusive Caffè Pedrocchi hosted the seventh edition of the Padua Porsche Jazz Festival, one of the most prestigious jazz festivals in Italy.

The event, promoted by Porsche Italia, Miles Cultural Association, and the Cultural and Show Policy Department of Padua Municipality, attracted top artists on the Italian and international jazz scenes. The most important performers included John Patitucci, Danilo Pérez, Brian Blade, the Wayne Shorter Acoustic Quartet with Wayne Shorter, the Enrico Rava Quintet with Enrico Rava, Gianluca Petrella, Andrea Pozza, Rosario Bonaccorso, and Roberto Gatto, as well as the Italian Trumpet Summit with Paolo Fresu, Flavio Boltro, Dado Moroni, Fabrizio Bosso, and many more.

Outline sound-reinforcement systems were chosen for the entire festival. The floor-stacked Butterfly vertical line array at the Verdi Theatre consisted in ten Hi-Packs plus two Low-Packs, processed by two Lake Contours controlled via wireless tablet PC; the power amps used were Outline Series T. Two Stage 15 Plus and two Victor Live subwoofers covered the front rows of the audience, and eight H.A.R.D. 212s were used as stage monitors. In this case, digital control was courtesy of Genius 6 processors, while the amps were once again Series T units.

At the Caffè Pedrocchi--inaugurated in 1831 and considered one of the most famous and fascinating historical coffee houses in the world--two Outline Kanguro systems were used, (made up of two satellites and two subs), four Micra II, of which two were self-powered and two passive, with the latter connected in parallel with the first pair.

The owners of the rental firm responsible for the installation and calibration of the systems (Marco and Giuseppe Dicati) commented, "With music as refined as jazz--definitely not for all listeners--you don't often get thunderous applause. Here, on the other hand, it happened. The artistic manager of the Padua Porsche Jazz Festival is also convinced that a great deal of the merit should go to the audio systems, particularly the VLA Butterfly, able to reproduce even the most demanding parts of the shows, with very fast transients, but also to its ability of creating a relaxed atmosphere for the audience, thanks to the feeling of taking part in an absolutely natural, spontaneous acoustic event. Not only that, but the sound was identical from any position in the audience."