L-Acoustics L1 Makes its Global Tour Debut on Joker Xue’s EVOLUTION World Tour L-Acoustics L1 Makes its Global Tour Debut on Joker Xue’s EVOLUTION World Tour...

L1 pilot partner MRT deploys L1, L1D and CS1 in the first large-scale L1 deployment on the Asian continent

GUANGZHOU, CHINA – July 2026 – Few artists command a stage in China the way Joker Xue does. The Mandopop singer-songwriter, celebrated for the emotional ballads his fans call “Xue-style love songs,” sells out stadium runs in minutes: the Guangzhou stop of his current tour cleared nine nights and more than 357,000 tickets, and Changsha added six nights and over 233,000 more, with both cities selling out in seconds. He is among the most-streamed Chinese artists of all time, with tens of billions of plays. In March 2026, he opened his fourth and most ambitious tour yet, ‘EVOLUTION’.

At its centre stood a four-sided stage that Chinese media billed as the largest ever built for a concert: 93 metres wide, 53 metres deep and rising 36 metres into the air, roughly the height of a twelve-storey building and covering 5,000 square metres, close to three-quarters of a football pitch. A 5,600-square-metre ring of LED wrapped the audience on every side, and the production played to crowds of tens of thousands each night. A stage on this scale, with no front and no back, made it the natural home for the first tour use of L1, the newly launched flagship of the L-Acoustics L Series, alongside its companion cardioid subwoofer, CS1, in the first L1 tour deployment in the world.

MRT Brings the World’s Most Advanced Large-Format Loudspeaker to Asia

L1 is the flagship of the L-Acoustics L Series and the most advanced expression to date of the company’s patented Progressive Ultra-Dense Line Source (PULS) technology, engineered to deliver the power, bandwidth and pattern control that stadium productions demand. For EVOLUTION, those capabilities had to answer to one of the most demanding stage designs in touring, and L1 reached the tour months before it reached the public.

Responsibility for putting that pre-launch system on stage night after night fell to Shanghai-based full production company, MRT, which had been running L1 on the tour for two months by the time L-Acoustics formally unveiled it in May. That trust was not given lightly. MRT is the only L-Acoustics certified L1 pilot partner in Asia, and one of just four worldwide entrusted with the system before its commercial release. Putting a pre-production flagship on a tour of this profile reflects deep confidence on both sides, built on MRT’s record supplying China’s largest live events and its close working relationship with regional distributor, Rightway Audio Consultants (Racpro), which supported the EVOLUTION Tour throughout.

A tour this ambitious called for capabilities that simply had not existed before. L1 answered with output and coverage while dramatically reducing the physical footprint of the deployed system. The system comprises of a main hang of four L1 and one L1D matching the performance of a 15-element K1 rig, while cutting rigging actions by around two-thirds and reducing overhead weight, which freed truck space and load on a stage already carrying enormous scenic and video structures. Just as valuable to the artist, the integrated cardioid design of L1 and CS1 keeps low-frequency energy on the audience and off the stage, giving Joker Xue a cleaner, more comfortable space to perform in across every night of the run.

Soundvision and the New-Generation Autofilter Tame a Four-Sided Stage

The design of the EVOLUTION tour stage presented a unique set of challenges. The four-sided configuration demanded consistent coverage in every direction simultaneously, with no primary axis to anchor the hang. Low-frequency management across an open stadium environment, where neighbouring reflections and spill can undermine intelligibility and tonal balance, presented another pressure point.

To address these issues, MRT designed the system around L1 and CS1 from the outset, using L-Acoustics Soundvision to optimise array angles, coverage overlap and low-frequency behaviour across every audience zone. For a configuration this complex, Soundvision’s new-generation Autofilter algorithm proved critical in shaping the low-frequency beam of each L1 array in three dimensions. This helped to minimise front-to-back tonal drift and reduce low-frequency spread.

L1, L1D and CS1: A System Built for Every Seat in the House

The final system comprised of four hangs of four L1 and one L1D and four hangs of eight CS1 handling sub-bass. An additional 12 L2 and four L2D served as side-fills, supported by 80 KS28, 82 Kara II, 36 LA7.16 amplified controllers and 52 LA12X.

The result was a system that delivered the same experience regardless of where an audience member was sitting. Joker Xue marked the occasion from the stage himself, telling the audience that what they were hearing was “not a launch, but the first second of history.”

For Front of House Engineer Zhang Junjun, it was the high frequencies that set L1 apart: “From my very first listen, I thought the high frequencies were absolutely beautiful. It has a sweet top end that never gets tiring. It’s comfortable any way you listen.”

“The biggest thing I noticed was how sonically clean everything was,” adds audio director Zhang Xiaonian. “There was no low-end rumble, or stray reflections to distract the artist. During soundcheck and mic setup, the whole audio experience was exceptionally clean.”

Music director Liu Zhuo found that he could push the faders without worry: “Every heavy-impact effect I mixed, every tone, and the clarity of the final output — that’s what really met and even exceeded my expectations.”

A New Reference for Live Sound

The EVOLUTION Tour is ongoing, with 12 dates in Beijing’s National Stadium still to come, followed by a to-be-announced run of venues outside China. By the time the China series draws to a close, Joker Xue will have performed to well over 2.5 million people across the country, with L1 delivering this performance every night.

For L-Acoustics, MRT and Racpro, the tour is setting a benchmark that the region’s live events industry will be measuring itself against for years.

“Mixing on L1 feels like driving a top-tier supercar,” says Junjun. “It’s unbelievably responsive and powerful, giving me the freedom to push the mix further than ever. Even when I pushed it to the limit, the vocals stayed silky and clear, with none of the harshness I’ve heard with other systems. And that gives me so much more confidence in my mix.”

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