Outline
July / August 2008
Outline is another company founded on a passion for music. When Guido Noselli first started the company back in 1973 it was to produce top quality hi-fi equipment.
Outline is another company founded on a passion for music. When Guido Noselli first started the company back in 1973 it was to produce top quality hi-fi equipment. When disco shimmied on to the scene, the company were well placed to take advantage. Over the 35 years since its creation, Outline has grown to become a well respected international brand with over 30 distributors in five continents.As audiences have become increasingly more demanding of live and fixed install audio systems, Outline have striven to meet their needs, constantly innovating and pushing the abilities of audio rigs.
Outline prides itself on delivering a comprehensive range of professional audio products built without ever cutting corners or compromising their high standards of quality and operating reliability.
Today, Outline equipment is used in thousands of permanent installations and mobile set-ups in over 30 nations and forms the cornerstone of high quality sound systems in live concerts, theatres, clubs, cinemas, conference halls, resorts, hotels, shopping malls, indoor sports arenas, stadiums.
Indeed, just months before mondo*dr’s visit to Outline’s HQ in Brescia, Outline’s Butterfly line array had been filling Wembley Stadium in London as part of the Foo Fighters massive London concert. This was, said promoters, the largest rock event ever staged at the new Wembley stadium. The organizers called in Britannia Row Productions. Sound coverage of the stadium was mainly to 148 Outline Butterfly CDH 483 Hi-Packs, backed up by 72 Outline Subtech 218 subwoofers; powered as always by Outline T9 power amplifiers (2 x 4800W in a single rack unit and weighing in at just 12 kilos).
Foo Fighters’ show, System Engineer Davide Lombardi was very complementary about the rig. “Butterfly is considered one of the best line arrays in this sector and is used regularly on the occasion of key events.”
What, we asked Sales & Marketing Director Giorgio Biffi, has been the most important product in the company’s history?
The response is unequivocal: “Butterfly. 100%,” he says, adding that the product name is almost better known than the brand Outline – particularly in Asia. But it was the H.A.R.D. 212 stage monitor which brought the company to the attention of many major audio specifiers.
“It opened a lot of doors in the live entertainment market,” says Biffi. “It increased Outlines reputation – people now know that we make high quality products so they consider us when preparing for a job”
Outline’s catalogue includes top level full-range speaker systems, some of them self-powered and internally DSP processed, such as the H.A.R.D. 212 and KANGURO system. Most recently, Outline introduced the Mini-COM.P.A.S.S, an ultra-compact version of the first-ever robotized loudspeaker (the PLASA-award-winning COM.P.A.S.S.) The Mini-COM.P.A.S.S. is a self-powered loudspeaker system for stand-alone use or combined with a series of other elements to form a Vertical Line Array. Fitted with four 5” mid-woofers and two compression drivers with a 1.75” diaphragm coupled with two D.P.R.W.G. wave-guides, Mini-COM.P.A.S.S. enables users to adjust its directivity on the horizontal plane from 60° to 150° (even asymmetrically) with mechanical steps of 15° per side in relation to the axis. Four presets can be recalled by users for each single step set, in order to have 16 different combinations of horizontal dispersion, thus ensuring users a wide range of choices of coverage.
Former boxing champ Mimmi Zambara ensures the cabinet making process has success stamped all over it
