Adventure Cinema
UK
HK Audio brings blockbuster sound to the Great British outdoors
With more than 70 venues on its calendar and over 200,000 tickets sold in 2024 alone, Adventure Cinema has become the UK’s leading open-air film tour. Bringing beloved blockbusters, cult classics, musicals and family favourites to historic estates, castle courtyards and iconic green spaces across the country, its popularity has grown alongside its audiences. With that came a pressing need to scale up its technical capabilities.
To meet the demands of larger, more acoustically complex outdoor environments, Adventure Cinema turned to long-time partner HK Audio, working closely with UK distributor POLAR to explore a system upgrade that could deliver clean, powerful, and consistent sound to increasingly expansive audiences.
Having relied for years on HK Audio’s trusted Linear 5 system, the team at Adventure Cinema knew the brand’s quality and performance, but now they needed something that could offer serious long-throw coverage without compromising clarity. Director Mark Thompson contacted POLAR’s Andy Plunkett and together they arranged a demonstration of HK Audio’s COSMO line array system.
COSMO Makes a Powerful Impression
“I’d heard COSMO previously, so was very confident it would perform – one of HK’s mantras is ‘the demo sells the system’ and they’re not wrong,” says Andy. “It’s fair to say that the guys at Adventure Cinema were blown away! We were able to easily reach their stated furthest distances for coverage with just three COSMO C10 modules. The audio quality was unlike anything they’d experienced previously, and they pretty much made their minds up on the spot.”
The demonstration was held at a rugby ground near Adventure Cinema’s Bishop’s Castle HQ, offering a true-to-life environment to test the system under open-air conditions. For Jon O’Neill, head of sound at Adventure Cinema, the improvement was immediate and unmistakable.
A System That Exceeds Expectations
“Our HK Audio Linear 5 system has served us brilliantly since we started, but we really needed to up our game for much bigger events,” he explains. “Obviously, we weren’t going to buy a load of boxes without hearing them first, so it was great that POLAR were able to arrange a local demo so quickly. When I heard the system on the day, there was no doubt that COSMO was the way forward.”
In total, Adventure Cinema invested in 26 COSMO C10 line array modules and six CS218 subwoofers, complete with rigging hardware and wheel boards for easy touring logistics. Six Lab Gruppen PLM12K44 amplifiers round out the system, delivering reliable, high-headroom power for any scenario the cinema teams might face on the road.
For Ollie Farr, project manager at Adventure Cinema, the rollout of the new system couldn’t have come soon enough. “I couldn’t believe how good everything sounded at the demo – there’s no doubt it’s really going to elevate all of our shows this year.”
Cinema-Quality Sound at Every Venue
The new COSMO systems are now deployed across Adventure Cinema’s three main touring teams, with full confidence that they’ll meet and exceed the audience expectations at every stop.
“POLAR looked after us really well last year, and this year they’ve again delivered 100 percent,” says Mark Thompson. “I’m not the sound guy here, but I have to say the COSMO system really impressed, and I’m sure the investment is going to be well rewarded for many years to come.”
With HK Audio’s COSMO system now forming the backbone of Adventure Cinema’s technical setup, audiences across the UK can expect immersive, cinema-quality sound – whether they’re watching a film beneath the stars in a castle courtyard or a city park.
