The Dutch musical Soldier of Orange gave its final performance on July 12 after almost sixteen years. Since its October 2010 premiere, the production had played 3,967 times to four million visitors. An Alcons Audio reinforcement system served the purpose-built TheaterHangaar at the former Valkenburg naval airbase from opening night onward.
The venue placed its entire 1,100-seat raked auditorium on a 30-metre rotating platform. Sets surrounded the audience, which travelled between scenes with a 180-degree projection. The weight of the moving structure ruled out mounting the PA on the turntable, so the loudspeakers had to remain fixed around its perimeter.
Sound designer Jeroen ten Brinke specified nearly 100 Alcons LR14 pro-ribbon line-array cabinets. Fourteen locations each carried an L-C-R arrangement with dual-15-inch subwoofers, driven by 30 ALC4 amplified controllers rated at 2 x 2kW.
As the seats rotated, the right channel for one scene became the left channel for the next. Any obvious change in off-axis tonality, phase, or speech clarity would have exposed the handover. The design therefore depended on consistent coverage between all fourteen systems. Signals travelled over optical cable on a dedicated drum capable of a cumulative 7,000 degrees of rotation.
According to the production's sound engineer, not one loudspeaker in the LR14 arrays needed replacement during the entire run, despite an almost daily schedule. The closing story is therefore more than an account of an unusual immersive design: it is a rare, sixteen-year field record for the reliability of a large theatrical PA system.