With more 80m album sales, Andrea Bocelli is classical music’s biggest recording artist. Alongside his recording career, Bocelli is also a big name on the live scene and recently performed two sold-out UK shows.

Staged at the First Direct Arena in Leeds and SSE Hydro in Glasgow, these called on an Outline GTO loudspeaker system, which was specified by Bocelli’s regular FOH engineer, Andrea Taglia and provided by Britannia Row Productions with support from Outline’s UK distributor, CUK Audio.

Taglia had used the GTO system throughout Bocelli’ss 2013 US tour, and designed a system of 45 GTO enclosures in three hangs of 15 operating as a mono LCR set-up. Each hang used four Mantas enclosures as down fill (proving the value of flying hardware that is compatible across a range of loudspeakers), with 24 Outline SubTech subwoofers for the low end. Additionally,12 LIPF 082 compact stage lip-fill covered the close field, with small arrays of Outline Butterfly for side fill. The entire system was powered by Outline T-Series amplifiers and controlled by multiple Lake LM-26 units.

‘Working with Outline GTO, GTO-DF, GTO-Sub, Mantas, DVS 12 and Lipfill 082 products on the Bocelli US tour has been a great success – it is a light and compact system that is very easy to handle and store on trucks and also speeds up load ins/outs,’ Taglia says. ‘From a sound point of view, it is a very linear system. Using FIR filters extensively throughout the processing greatly improves its natural response, which is the best starting point for a classical music concert where we mainly use the best microphones with only hi-pass filters and a little reverb.

‘Venues are always arenas in the US but I am used to preparing an accurate sound design for each using Outline’s Open Array software – it is a very quick, reliable and detailed prediction tool, so every sound design is tailored to every venue,’ he continues. ‘I always use mono systems designed around venue geometry so it was a LCR/LL/RR system for Glasgow and a LCR for Leeds due to the different shapes of the rooms. A mono system built around a ‘star’ concept allows me to align it exactly to the stage centre that I use as zero reference to provide a sound image that keeps the attention over performers on stage and not over the loudspeakers.

‘PA systems should not be made for a specific music style but to provide the best possible diffusion. A large system such as GTO allows for better low frequency control, a major plus when using a large number of condenser microphones on stage as we do for Bocelli, as well as providing the long throw that in indoor venues allows us to use fewer delays, thus reducing set-up time and providing a much better sound image.

‘I always use a centre subwoofer arc delay as it provides the best match for the centre cluster dispersion. If the venue is wider than 90° I match the horizontal coverage of the arc delay to that of the centre cluster by adding two subwoofer cardioid arrays of four subwoofers each under the left and right hangs - they are then aligned to the subwoofer arc delay and effectively widen its horizontal dispersion to cover the entire venue’.

He concludes: ‘A linear system such as GTO with great overall coherence, which provides real low frequency control and delivers very even coverage over distance really helps the mixing engineer concentrate on the mix itself, rather than the technology - and that’s what the people come to hear.’

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