Outline featured the GTO-DF, the newest member of the GTO (Grand Touring Outline) Series of line array loudspeakers, at the just-concluded 131st AES Convention in New York.
First introduced at PLASA 2011, the GTO-DF is designed to serve as a down fill box, providing high-quality sound to the first several rows of the audience while located within a GTO array.
“The GTO-DF rounds out the performance coverage of the highly regarded GTO line array loudspeaker system,” 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 unique new waveguide was designed at the request of Jason Farah, co-owner and vice president of Special Event Services in Winston-Salem, NC, who identified the need to address the issue of down fill coverage from a new perspective.
The Outline engineering team looked at the problem and designed a better solution than simply tagging on an Outline Mantas loudspeaker to the bottom of the array. The GTO-DF, with its purpose-built, radical new horn design and acoustic lens, delivers accurate performance within the form factor of a GTO array.
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.
“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 incorporates Outline’s exclusive acoustic lens aperture gradually flaring out downward. It is loaded with four 8-inch mid-woofers and two 3-inch compression drivers (the standard GTO line array cabinet features 10 speakers with two 15-inch woofers, four 8-inch mid-woofers and four 3-inch compression drivers).
GTO-DF is also 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 0 degrees to minus 25 degrees to ensure precision aiming of the sound into the audience and not onto the stage. The waveguide offers 120-degree horizontal coverage from 315 Hz to 17.5 kHz.
The GTO-DF, a bi-amped system, can handle 800 watts (AES) and 3,200 watts (peak) for the mid-woofer section covering the 200 Hz to 1 kHz range. The high-frequency section handles 250 watts (AES) and 1,000 watts (peak), covering a 1 kHz to 17.5 kHz range. The cabinets weigh 172 pounds each.
