Regarded as the Netherlands’ most exciting annual party, Koninginnedag (Queen’s Day) is celebrated on 30 April in honour of Queen Juliana – although the past 33 years have seen Queen Beatix on the Dutch throne.
Music, dancing and ‘rivers of beer’ are the order of the day – which lasts for 48 hours. This year it began on 29 April, ran through the following day (the official Queen’s Day) and finished on the morning of 1 May.
This year’s celebration was particularly exhuberant, since Queen Beatrix abdicated in favour of her son, Prince Willem-Alexander.
Part of the celebrations, Groningen’s Vismarkt (Fish Market square) hosted an outdoor concert with Dutch pop-rock band Handsome Poets heading six acts. The square’s acoustics are well known to among rental companies, owing to its narrow width (40m) compared to length (100m), and strict SPL restrictions – no more than 85dB (measured) at the buildings at the side of the square. The limited height of the PA towers make the task of delivering an even SPL to at least 85 per cent of the designated area yet more demanding.
According to the sound engineers involved, the Outline GTO line source system that served the event overcame these problems. The LR FOH system comprised nine+nine Outline GTO, 1+1 GTO-DF (down fill), 16 DBS 18-2 subwoofers and six Lipfill 082 compact enclosures – the latest addition to Outline’s GTO family, designed to complement the GTO-DF, providing the critical front/lip fill coverage for the first rows. All systems were powered by Outline 24 T-11 amplifiers.
‘It is the first year that we’ve served the public area,’ said the event organising office. ‘We were able to fully perceive the singers, loud and clear. The low-end sounded unbelievably powerful yet never annoying’.
Erik Koster of Eko Geluid & Lichttechniek provided the stage equipment: ‘When we fired up the system I knew that it was great,’ he says. ‘With all the limits the location did set, we still were able to deliver seamless coverage. The headroom at our disposal was simply astounding’.
‘Currently, thanks also to the evolution of a market on which loudspeakers are increasingly sturdy and efficient, there is no doubt that almost all PAs effectively sound “loud”,’ adds Axel Nagtegaal of The Audio Specialists (Outline’s distributor for Benelux and Germany). One certain GTO prerogative is the ability to ensure intelligible output over long distances: in my opinion higher than any competitor in the large-format PA sector’.
From 2014, the tradition will contnue as Koningsdag (King’s Day), reflecting the recent abdication of Queen Beatrix and the investiture of King Wiellem-Alexander.
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