Les Misérables: The Arena Spectacular World Tour landed in the 91,000 sq m Taipei Arena this January, and was backed by the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra and a Winly Corporation-deployed L-Acoustics L series concert sound system.
Promoter HIGH WIN tasked Winly with designing a professional sound system that would provide solid audio for live speech, songs and orchestra, as well as programmed sound effects to the 13,500-seat arena.
Scott Kuo, PA & sound system engineer at Winly, commented: “We were working with musical theatre content that’s traditionally delivered in an acoustically treated concert hall. Our system design needed to deliver that concert hall experience into a vast so we turned to L Series for its concert-grade power and clarity.”
The system consisted of two main L/R hangs of three L-Acoustics L2 over one L2D to cover the arena’s first and second-floor audience areas. Two sets of six L-Acoustics KS28 subwoofers were flown behind the main hangs, while two further sets of three ground-stacked KS28 subwoofers in cardioid mode delivered low-end definition to the entire arena. Twelve Kara II provided front-fill. A second-floor wing seating area was covered by a side-fill system of one L2 and one L2D per side. A delay system comprised of two L2 per side covered third and fourth-floor audience seats.
On stage, actors and opera vocalists received clear monitoring from 12 X15 speakers positioned at the front of the stage. Live orchestra performers relied on ten X8 speakers and five 5XT coaxial boxes positioned for respective instrument section groups. All performers on stage also relied on four X12 speakers positioned in its four corners, while a monitor engineer delivered mixes on a pair of X15 monitors.
A combination of LA7.16, LA12X, and LA8 amplified controllers drove the main and monitor systems with an L-Acoustics P1 processor operating over a Milan-AVB network via LS10 switches.