Butterfly and mini-COM.P.A.S.S., two of the vertical line arrays manufactured by Brescia’s Outline, were used for the lighting ceremony of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City, at the crossroads of 50th Street and Fifth Avenue.
America has celebrated Christmas round this tree — decorated with 20,000 colored lights — since far-off 1931. Once again this year, there was a show that attracted thousands of people.
On stage to celebrate the event, amplified by the Outline arrays — as well as other world-famous systems — stars such as Aretha Franklin, Shakira, Alicia Keys, Rod Stewart and even the Muppets, all performing great Christmas classics.
The show, transmitted live on NBC, was dedicated to U.S. servicemen and women, who, along with the Big Apple’s mayor Michael Bloomberg, turned on the lights of tree.
The work of fine tuning the Outline rig was entrusted to PRG sound engineer Matt Bell, who states: “I chose the Butterfly system because we needed a line array that was compact in design and high powered. We hung all of the systems from Genie lifts, so we were limited to how much weight we had available. The Butterfly system allowed us to hang the correct amount of cabinets to cover the space. We were all very impressed with the coherence and intelligibility at 70 meters for such a small array. The frequency response was very flat and stable which allowed me good SPL levels without interfering with the broadcast mix. This added to the success of the event.”
