Italy’s Brescia Summer Festival has been a touring location since 1997, hosting the likes of David Bowie, Joe Cocker, Elton John, Bob Dylan and Neil Young. The 2015 headliners were Billy Idol, Van Morrison and Anastacia, in Italy on a leg of her Resurrection World Tour.
Staged in the Piazza della Loggia, Brescia’s picturesque Renaissance square, the festival used an Outline loudspeaker system, supplied by local rental company, Cipiesse. ‘The PA was made up of nine Outline GTO C-12 modules per side plus three Outline Mantas on down fill for the front rows of seats, which were close to the stage,’ festival audio chief Giancarlo Paladini explains. ‘We used eight DBS 18-2 subs per side, and four LIPF 082 on front fill.
‘Although this might seem an over-sized rig, it enabled us to avoid pushing the system – which in fact was almost always run at half volume – and the twin 12-inch speakers in the GTOs we chose for the main hangs ensured really nice low frequencies, appreciated by the various FOH engineers.’
Subs were groundstacked in an end-fire configuration, giving optimum performance and keeping the stage completely free, and the all-Outline powerhouse comprised 24 T11 amplifiers.
The square is 50m wide and seventy long and surrounded by buildings from 23-to-26ft high but, according to Paladini, ‘it was almost a case of plug-and-play, with just a pair of small adjustments on mid-mid/low frequencies, to limit the square’s reflections, rather than correcting the system. The various guests’ productions only made a few small tweaks of around 2-to-3dB on some frequencies, for personal taste and the timbre they wanted to give their artists, but never for any problems with the system’s operation.’
Front and side walls are always a problem as far as reflection is concerned, however, thanks to prior work with OpenArray software, accurate simulations were obtained, enabling to forecast and configure the loudspeaker set-up accordingly.
There were spectators at the sides as well as out front, with the audience occupying the full 40m width of the square. The side seating began a few rows further back than those in the centre, but the three Mantas enclosures systems enabled them to be covered as well.
‘Anastacia’s production team didn’t have any particular requests,’ Paladini says. ‘In fact, her FOH engineer was very satisfied with the Outline system’s performance after testing the set-up and didn’t change anything before the show.’
More: www.outline.it
