Outline GTO Line Array Speakers Help Deliver the Word for Joel Osteen's America's Night of Hope Event

Outline Grand Touring Outline (GTO) line array speakers were used exclusively by Special Event Services (SES) to supply front-of-house sound for the recent Joel Osteen Ministries America's Night of Hope 2012 event. The program, featuring musical presentations and inspirational speeches, took place at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., home to the Washington Nationals baseball team, and featured 12 stacks of six GTO speakers each, mounted on specially designed mobile speaker carts for easy "wheel-in" setup. Sound for the event was completely run from the ground level by the GTO cabinets. This allowed attendees to enjoy crystal-clear, loud, full-range sound from any vantage point in the stadium.

"For this event, we were asked to shoot all the audio up from the ground," says Jason Farah, owner of SES. "The stadium seats 41,487, with the elevation of the top seats at 115' in the air and 250' back from the GTO speaker stack -- that's almost a football field away -- and the sound was simply incredible. The band sounded full, rich, beautiful and clear. You could hear and feel every note. But when Pastor Osteen came out to deliver one of his messages, people in the farthest corner of the stadium, in the back row of the third seating deck behind the foul-line pole, were responding as enthusiastically as the audience behind home plate. GTO presented an amazing sonic experience."

Reed Hall, senior director, audio and technical production for Lakewood Church Joel Osteen Ministries, was also impressed with the GTO setup. "During our event in Washington D.C.'s Nationals Park, I had the opportunity to walk the entire stadium during sound check and the actual event," he says. "The frequency response and clarity were incredible. At extreme edges of the park, the top rows are almost 300' from the speaker carts, yet the sound was clear, concise, and had an impressive amount of low-end, considering the distance. For the past year I have had the pleasure of using this Outline rig in venues across the country and have been very impressed from day one. They just sound great out of the box, with no tuning and no subs. When Jason Farah from SES hands the Outline PA over in the afternoons, an 18,000-seat arena sounds like a 3,500-seat auditorium. SES has a little secret called GTO that puts them way ahead of the competition."

The GTO series of line array speakers, offering a unique combination of high-power output in a compact and relatively lightweight cabinet, feature Outline's patented Butterfly design. When coupled in an array, the company says GTO's unique V-shaped front baffle allows individual sound sources to be positioned much closer together than in conventional line-source systems. This facilitates acoustical coupling between high-frequency modules, thus producing a smooth yet extended HF response. It also creates the ideal "unbroken baffle" shape through an array, which minimizes diffraction and deterioration of the mid-high frequencies, contributing to the far-field performance of the system. A GTO line array system is capable of delivering a true visceral response to the audience while maintaining clarity, the company says.