Golden Melody Awards

Context

The Team

The Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan is Music to the Ears

Organized by the Ministry of Culture for Taiwan, the Golden Melody Awards (GMAs) is the Chinese-speaking territories’ most prominent and prestigious music awards, with nominations open to artists from countries such as China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. Since it’s such a prominent broadcast award ceremony, the GMAs have set the region’s standard for stage design, audio, lighting, and visuals. For the 28th edition of the GMAs, Winly Engineering & Trading was tasked with designing and supplying a system that would provide superb coverage for the host challenging environment of Taipei Arena.

The Challenge

Since the GMAs started two decades ago, Winly has worked on the awards show and comprehends the importance of the show, and has spent a considerable amount of time designing and preparing a system that could cope with the Taipei Arena’s deep yet narrow configuration. Winly’s President and Production Manager for the event, Andy Chen, noted some of the system design’s challenges were the venue’s shape, its limited rigging possibilities, and the fact that the production requested no fill system in front of the stage. 

The Solution

With the need for clean sightlines, and therefore no option to incorporate delays, the final design comprised two main hangs of six K1 plus 10 K2, one each positioned left and right of the stage. K1 at the top of the hangs covered the raked seating at the rear of the arena, while angled downward, K2 covered the arena floor. Outfills of two hangs of eight Kara each covered the seating areas to the sides, and other hangs of six 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,” adds sound engineer Mike Li. “All the subs were also flown to clear the sightlines, with two arrays of six SB28 per side hung in a ‘cannon’ configuration – one hang in front of the other, offset in the vertical – to provide all the subharmonics 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.”

The Result

The assistance and valuable system design advice provided by L-Acoustics designed a successful show. Chen noted, “With the help of L-Acoustics, we made an initial design of the system with L-Acoustics 3D acoustical simulation program, Soundvision, to provide us with the best result.” 

Everyone was impressed with the system’s even coverage and tonal balance. Despite all the challenges and restrictions, the team produced an optimized design for a successful production of the Golden Melody Awards.

Project photos