"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, NC who identified the need to address the issue of down-fill coverage from a new perspective. Outline's engineering team looked at the problem and designed a technically superior solution to simply tagging on an Outline Mantas speaker to the bottom of the 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, 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."
(Jim Evans)
