The Golden Melody Awards: Celebrating the Best of Taiwan`s Music Scene

The Golden Melody Awards (GMAs) is one of the most significant and prestigious music awards ceremonies in the Chinese-speaking territories. Organized by Taiwan's Ministry of Culture, it has been recognizing excellence in music since 1990. The awards are open to artists from all over the world, including China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. 

Over the years, the GMAs have set the standard for stage design, audio, lighting, and visuals in the region. It is a prominent broadcast award ceremony that is watched by millions of people worldwide. The 28th edition of the GMAs was held at the Taipei Arena, one of Taiwan's largest indoor concert venues that can accommodate up to 15,000 spectators.

To ensure that the event's audio requirements were met, Winly Engineering & Trading was tasked with designing and supplying a system that could cope with the Taipei Arena's deep yet narrow configuration. Winly has been working on the GMAs for the past two decades and understands the importance of the show. Therefore, they spent a considerable amount of time designing and preparing a system that could meet the event's specific needs.

Andy Chen, Winly's President and Production Manager for the event, noted that the venue's shape, its limited rigging possibilities, and the production's request for no fill system in front of the stage were some of the system design's challenges. With the need for clean sightlines, the final design comprised two main hangs of six K1 plus ten K2, one each positioned left and right of the stage.

The K1 at the top of the hangs covered the raked seating at the rear of the arena, while the K2 angled downward and covered the arena floor. Two hangs of eight Kara each covered the seating areas to the sides, with other hangs of six Kara downfills handling the VIP area directly in front of the stage. All the subs were flown to clear sightlines, with two arrays of six SB28 per side hung in a 'cannon' configuration to provide all the subharmonics needed for the venue while achieving great control on the stage area.

Despite the numerous restrictions and challenges faced during the design and preparation of the audio system for the 28th edition of the Golden Melody Awards, Winly Engineering & Trading delivered an optimized design that provided even coverage and tonal balance. The result was impressive, and the system successfully delivered the audio requirements for the event. Sound engineer Mike Li acknowledged the importance of flying all the subs to clear the sightlines, which enabled them to choose the right combination and deliver the best possible audio quality. The valuable system design advice provided by L-Acoustics was also instrumental in the system's success, and Winly made an initial design with L-Acoustics 3D acoustical simulation program, Soundvision, to achieve the best result.

 Overall, the successful production of the Golden Melody Awards is a testament to the expertise and dedication of the team involved in the project.