Organised by the Ministry of Culture for Taiwan, the 28th Golden Melody Awards (GMAs), Chinese speaking territories’ biggest awards ceremony, tasked Winly Engineering & Trading with designing and supplying an L-Acoustics system that provides coverage.
Winly has worked on the GMAs since they started 2 decades ago and is fully aware of the importance of this most prestigious event and spent a considerable amount of time prior to the event on the design and preparation of a system that could cope with the venue’s deep, yet narrow configuration, basing the design on L-Acoustics K1, K2, Kara and SB28.
“A big challenge for the system design was the shape of the venue, its limited rigging possibilities and the fact that the production requested no fill system in front of the stage,” said Winly’s President and Production Manager for the event, Andy Chen. “With the help of L-Acoustics’ Alvin Koh, we made an initial design of the system with L-Acoustics 3D acoustical simulation programme, Soundvision, to provide us with the optimum result.”
The final design comprised 2 main hangs of 6 L-Acoustics K1 plus 10 K2, with 1 each positioned left and right of the stage. The L-Acoustics K1s at the top of the hangs covered the raked seating at the rear of the arena, which extends to a distance of approximately 75 metres at its furthest point, whilst the K2s were angled downwards to cover the majority of the arena floor. Outfills of 2 hangs of 8 Kara each covered the seating areas to the sides and further hangs of 6 Kara downfills handle the VIP area directly in front of the stage.
“There were many restrictions, one of which was that the main PA had to be pushed forward to provide better sightlines for the stage design,” added Sound Engineer Mike Li. “All the subs were also flown to clear the sightlines, with 2 arrays of 6 SB28 per side hung in a cannon configuration, 1 hang in front of the other, offset in the vertical to provide all the sub harmonics needed for the venue, while achieving great control on the stage area. We knew that by choosing this combination we would be able to deliver the audio requirements for the event.”
“Thanks to Alvin’s assistance and valuable system design advice, despite all the challenges and restrictions, we produced an optimised design for the event,” concluded Chen. “Everyone was impressed with the directivity control, even coverage and tonal balance of the L-Acoustics system for every seat in the Arena.”