Outline GTO powers Queen’s Day celebrations in The Netherlands

An Outline GTO system was deployed for this year’s Queen’s Day (or Koninginnedag), a huge annual celebration in Groningen, The Netherlands.

Queen’s Day actually lasts for 48 hours in total – it begins on April 29th, runs non-stop all day on the 30th (the official Queen’s Day) and ends on the morning of May 1st. This year’s celebrations were two-fold, as Queen Beatrix also announced she was abdicating in favour of her son, Prince Willem-Alexander.

The celebrations were held at the Vismarkt Square, which features difficult acoustics due to its small width (40 metres) compared to the length (100 metres), and its strict SPL regulation of no more than 85 dB (measured) for the buildings beside the square.

The limited height of the PA towers meant an extremely difficult task was required to deliver an equal SPL to at least 85 per cent of the designated area. According to the sound engineers involved, the GTO line source system did a great job of overcoming these problems.

The L+R FOH system was composed of 2 x nine Outline GTO, 2 x one GTO-DF (Down-fill), 16 DBS 18-2 subwoofers and six Lipfill 082 compact enclosures – designed to complement the GTO-DF – providing the critical front/lip fill coverage for the first rows. The entire set-up was powered by 24 T-11 amplifiers, also from Outline.

The organising office stated: “It’s been the first year that we’ve served the public area; 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, which provided the stage equipment, added: “When we fired up the system I knew that it was great. With all the limits the location did set, we still were able to deliver seamless coverage. The headroom at our disposal was simply astounding”.

Axel Nagtegaal of The Audio Specialists, Outline’s distributor for Benelux and Germany, commented: “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’. One certain GTO prerogative is the ability to ensure intelligible output over long distances – in my opinion higher than any competitor in the market’s large-format PA sector.”

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