Dealing with an eclectic range of music acts from Diplo (EDM), Dropkick Murphys (Celtic punk) and Imagine Dragons (rock), to Leann Rimes (country) and Nelly (rap), among others, the Outline system faithfully delivered the essence of each musical genre for eager audiences of up to 15,000 people per show.
"Summerfest 2013 was our first experience with the Outline GTO system and I can say the sound quality was exceptional," says Bryan Baumgardner, audio operations and logistics, Clearwing Productions. "We knew Outline was very good, but the system far exceeded our expectations and worked flawlessly. The GTO system was used to provide the sound for a wide variety of acts, such as country and electronic dance music, for example. That is hard to do and only found in the realm of the best systems. The Outline GTO is right up there."
Summerfest, affectionately known as 'The Big Gig', is certified by Guinness Book of World Records as the "World's Largest Music Festival," drawing an audience of some 800,000 to one million people over the 11 days of the event. Acts ranging from headliners to local bands perform on 11 stages, with the Miller Lite Oasis Stage as the largest walk up stage. With the GTO system powering the performances for this stage, a wide range of different audio engineers operating the system for the different acts were very impressed with the sound.
"The GTO was fantastic and a pleasure to work with," says Mike Grabarczyk, audio systems technician for Clearwing Productions. "It really is a top-notch system. We had a lot of engineers come through, many using it for the first time, and they loved the power and clarity. Others were excited to use the GTO once again. It blew everyone away."
The Miller Lite Oasis stage system consisted of nine GTO, one GTO-DF down-fill and eight GTO-SUB subwoofer cabinets per side as the main FOH system, with four LIPF-082 Lip Fill cabinets used to even out coverage. Clearwing Productions staff used Outline's OpenArray 3D simulation software to ensure each cabinet was properly aimed to maximize audience coverage.
"We took existing computer models of the stage area and had no problem bringing that into Outline's OpenArray software," Baumgardner relates. "From top to bottom, everything about the physical design of the system is very straightforward to use."
"I think we really shocked every one of the audio professionals at the festival," adds Tom Bensen, Sr. VP and managing director of Outline NA. "Beyond the intense clarity and high-definition of the GTO, the most impressive feature was the system's headroom. It never seemed to end! We measured over 124dB C-Weighted at FOH, 80 feet from the array and we easily had 6dB or more additional headroom. To be honest, it even surprised me!"
(Jim Evans)
