Japan’s most eagerly awaited summer music event, the Fuji Rock Festival is the largest in the country and ranks among the world’s major music festivals. Held in Naeba since 1997, it has consistently delivered some of the biggest acts and artists to Japan’s music fans.
Today, it pulls in more than 100,000 fans, fulfilling founder Hidaka Masa’s ambition of changing the way Japanese fans listen to music and offering them the opportunity to hear new sounds while surrounded by nature. ‘A festival for enjoying music and nature, created by everyone – artists, audience and staff all working together; this is Fuji Rock, a state of mind, rather than a rock event,’ he says.
The event’s 2013 edition featured performances by top names from the Japanese and international alternative rock and electronic scenes, including Bjork, The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, Vampire Weekend, XX, Skrillex and Tame Impala.
The festival’s White Stage was equipped with an Outline large-format line-source rig, comprising 24 GTO elements, two GTO-DF (down fill) and 18 ground-stacked DBS 18-2 subwoofers.
‘Before purchasing Outline’s large-format system, I had the opportunity of testing it personally at several large concerts in Asian stadia with famous bands from both East and West,’ says Masaaki Azuma, pro audio veteran and festival sound engineer. He is the owner of Japanese rental company Try Audio, which was responsible for the Fuji Rock project. The company’s equipment stock already includes 48 Butterfly systems, 18 Mantas and 36 Subtech 218, with relative Outline T Series power amplifiers.
‘Thanks to the enormous dynamic range, the system can handle the nuances of genres well as rock, including orchestral music,’ he adds. ‘Its intelligibility is unrivalled at astonishing distances. What I heard at Fuji Rock during the mix confirms Outline’s claims regarding the long-throw performance of this system. I’m really impressed.’
‘The presence of GTO in Japan, the super-technological Far East nation, is an important strategic tessera in our expansion plans’, says Outline CEO, Giorgio Biffi. ‘As is already the case in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia and elsewhere, from now on it will be easier to meet the numerous requests for our products – regularly included on riders – in that part of the world, which has such a dynamic live sound reinforcement sector. Welcome to the Outline family, Try Audio.’
More: www.outline.it
