The opening of the Dutch cultural season traditionally takes place in August in Amsterdam. With more than 400 shows of 2,000 artists on 30 stages, the Uitmarkt is the largest cultural event in The Netherlands. This year for the 30th time, the events were concentrated on and around the Oostelijk Havengebied (Eastern Harborarea) in Amsterdam, with the old harbour buildings and modern architecture as décor for the different live television registrations.
Focus advanced event technology was contracted to take care of the light and sound of the UPC main stage, as well as the 11 other stages. New to the event was the deployment of a Alcons pro ribbon sound system on the most important stage that was positioned on the end of the “Java island.”
The Focus team—with Guus Bridié, Kees Veen and Bart Mesman—designed the sound system, which comprised 36 units LR16 compact line array modules, 14 unit LR16B line array bass cabinets as front system with 12 LR14 ultracompact line arrays and LR14B line-array bass cabinets as front-fill; all were powered and controlled by ALC4 two 2kW controller amps with DDP™ drive processors. For the sub-reproduction, a “sub-arc” was formed with 16 BF362s placed next to each other.
Bridié, system tech, says, “Due to the location being surrounded by water, stronger effects of wind had to be taken into account. For this reason, we flew a third array behind the FOH position comprises two LR16Bs, six LR16s and six LR14s. With that, the total throw was about 120 meters. For an event like the Uitmarkt, with live television and a large audience, speech intelligibility is of main importance. With Alcons, we’ve been able to reach an unprecedented intelligibility. All guest engineers were very, very positive on the system’s performance.”
In addition to the main stage, on the smaller Noord-Holland stage was an Alcons pro ribbon system that comprised LR16 and LR16B units.
Kees Veen, technical project supervisor, says, “The Alcons systems on the different stages were assembled from the inventory of The Ribbon Network members. As a result of the far-reaching standardization with identical speakers, amplifiers and processing, the systems were very easy to integrate without any adjustments.”
For additional information, visit www.theribbonnetwork.net and www.focusamsterdam. For additional SR news, visit The Briefing Room.
