The introduction of the line array to the professional audio market in the 1990s marked a revolution for live concert applications and installations. With its high directivity on the vertical plane, a line array can focus its sound beam on the audience area, enhancing intelligibility in highly reverberant environments and enabling uniform coverage over distances much greater than those achievable with traditional sources. Due to this high directivity, the positioning of the cluster and the orientation of the individual speakers are critical. In many applications, it is necessary to adjust the angles of the array to achieve the typical “banana” profile that directs the sound beam downward towards the audience. Misalignment in the height of the cluster or the angles between units can significantly compromise sound quality in the audience area. Moreover, once installed, the dispersion characteristics of the array cannot be altered. This limitation led to the conception of digitally steering the sound beam generated by a line array.
