Outline Awarded European Patent for Warped Finite Impulse (WFIR) Technology

After having been awarded an Italian patent in 2022, Outline’s technology for Warped Finite Impulse (WFIR) filter has now been granted a full European patent by the European Patent Organisation.

A pioneer in professional loudspeaker systems and audio technology, the Italian manufacturer stands for their proud precision performance in both large-scale sound reinforcement applications and most reliable, trustworthy fixed installations, served to the entire audio community by their renowned, brand-agnostic Newton processor with onboard WFIR filters.

Developed in-house by their own engineering team, the design of Outline’s Warped Finite Impulse Response (WFIR) filters is now protected by an international patent – as European Patent EP3763134 was recently granted to Outline by the European Patent Office.

The designation of “warped finite impulse response” technology for sound processing applications has been the subject of several patents across the professional audio and audiology sectors – a broader context that further underlines the significance of the European grant now awarded to Outline.

WFIR filters are a most distinctive feature aboard Outline Newton, the revered and trustworthy FPGA-based audio system control and networking digital processor, employed in most complex and important applications before huge audiences, at both entertainment and civil-religious gatherings worldwide – driving a most varied palette of loudspeakers by different manufacturers as a genuinely brand-agnostic processing solution.

“Substantial improvements over traditional FIR filters are intrinsic to WFIR filters, which – thanks to their semi-logarithmic scale operation, in line with the very nature of human hearing – maintain maximum filtering resolution over the entire audio range – even in case of increasingly high sampling frequencies”, offers a Company’s statement.

“Taming the high impact on computing power associated with traditional FIR filters, which Newton nonetheless more-than-adequately provides for, WFIR technology also allows the use of raised cosine filters for a superior level of accuracy in equalisation”, continues Outline’s claims.

“Add to this the further benefit of a 10X-res factor at mid-low frequencies, where it matters most in live sound – all the while being impervious to the latency issues that traditionally affect FIR filters, too, and you realise what tangible benefits Outline Newton empowers its users-base with”, they add.

While the technical performance and behaviour of WFIR filters can easily be demonstrated with established test-and-measurement platforms (like, for instance, Audio Precision toolsets), users in the field claim their audible advantages become immediately evident in real-world applications; one well-known UK-based Newton owner recently commented how “WFIR filters are something that need to be heard to be believed” – actually vouching for the experience of many other Newton users worldwide.

A leading European manufacturer of pro audio technologies and tour-grade loudspeaker systems for concert sound reinforcement, the Brescia, Italy-based Outline introduced Newton in 2017 on the path to the immediate acclaim of an instant-classic audio tool, subsequently adopted by a number of most distinguished audio professionals and leading live-sound companies, delivering a unique feature-set in a robust, user-friendly, most trustworthy device.

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More Info: outline.it