Outline Presents New GTO -DF SP at AES 2011

Outline showed GTO-DF, the newest member of the GTO (Grand Touring Outline) Series of line array speakers during AES 2011. First introduced at PLASA 2011, the GTO-DF is designed to provide exceptionally high-quality sound to the first several rows of the audience at an event, filling the sonic gap often experienced by event attendees who are seated near the stage.

"The GTO-DF rounds out the performance coverage of the highly regarded GTO Line Array speaker systems," says Tom Bensen, senior vice president and managing director of Outline North America. "In the past, the front several rows of the audience could be slightly off axis to the main FOH arrays, leading to an audible reduction in coverage, especially in the critical high-end frequencies that are responsible for intelligibility. The GTO-DF, with its bottom-mounted constant directivity horn with embedded acoustic lens, is designed to reside on the bottom of a GTO array to provide the first several rows of seating with the signature GTO sound enjoyed by the rest of the audience. GTO has set a high benchmark for audio quality in the live event market and the GTO-DF continues that tradition."

The new waveguide was designed at the request of Jason Farah, co-owner and vice president of Special Event Services in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who identified the need to address the issue of downfill coverage from a new perspective. Outline's engineering team looked at the problem and designed what it says is a technically superior solution to simply tagging on an Outline Mantas speaker to the bottom of the array. The GTO-DF, with its purpose-built new horn design and acoustic lens, delivers accurate performance within the form factor of a GTO array, the company says. Special Event Services was one of the first companies to adopt the GTO Line Array system and the first to deploy the GTO-DF with simultaneous debuts of the cabinet on both the Darius Rucker Tour and ZZ Top/Lynyrd Skynyrd Tour, both with desired effect.

"The GTO-DF made all the difference in the world," says Farah. "The coverage was exactly as the Outline 3-D Open Array prediction software envisioned and the sound was magnificent. Plus, it's the same footprint and hardware as the rest of the GTO family, so it made flying the rig so much simpler."

GTO-DF is an eye-catching enclosure, with Outline's exclusive acoustic lens aperture gradually flaring out downward. The GTO-DF offers four 8" mid-woofers and two 3"compression drivers (the standard GTO line array cabinet features 10 speakers with two 15" woofers, four 8" mid-woofers and four 3" compression drivers). GTO-DF is mechanically compatible with GTO, so it can be easily added to a flying array. Unique to the GTO-DF is a vertical dispersion range of zero degrees to minus 25 degrees to ensure precision aiming of the sound into the audience and not onto the stage. The exclusive waveguide offers 120 degrees of coverage from 315Hz to 17.5kHz.

The GTO-DF, a bi-amped system, can handle 800W AES and 3,200W peak for the mid-woofer section covering the 200Hz to 1kHz range. The high-frequency section handles 250W AES and 1,000W peak, covering a 1kHz to 17.5 kHz range. The cabinets weigh in at 172 lbs (78 kg) each.