Poland - Fryderyki 2025 is Poland’s leading music awards ceremony. The gala performance, held in April 2025, was the culmination of a celebration that spanned Poland.
Held in the Tauron Arena in Kraków, the show was built around the power of DiGiCo Quantum consoles, with four Quantum 338s for front of house and monitor mixing, plus an additional Quantum 225 dedicated to public speaking and host mixes. The entire system was supplied by Brawlers, the audio production company owned by Remigiusz Kasztelnik, who was also on site to produce the audio for the event.
Organised by the Association of Audio-Video Producers and the Phonographic Academy, this celebration of Polish music took place in three different cities. On 23 March, nominees in the jazz categories gathered in the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. A week later, on 30 March, Katowice and the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra held the awards for Classical music. The event concluded with the Gala of Popular Music at the Tauron Arena in Kraków that mixed dozens of live performances with special guests and presenters, all broadcast live.
In order to manage this high-profile evening, the audio was split into zones, labelled A and B, with each managed by a single engineer at the front of house position and another at the monitor position, both mixing on a Quantum 338. This structure proved essential in managing the high channel count, frequent change overs and last-minute schedule shifts of this fast-paced evening.
The front of house mix for Zone A was handled by Piotr Szreder, with David Atamaniuk in Zone B. Each engineer worked within their own zone, but were interconnected via a fibre-loop and co-ordinated routing. This ensured the front of house engineers for both Zones were able to call-up any mix source instantly, while monitor engineers, Piotr ‘PacMan’ Pac-Pomarnacki and Sławek ‘Guadky’ Gładyszewski, could work independently and adapt to the needs of each artist.
“The Quantum series gives us the headroom and routing freedom to do these kinds of shows without breaking a sweat,” said Szreder. “You can tell these consoles were designed with productions like this in mind. The high channel counts, layered control, Macros, and powerful Snapshots are all essential features for our work.”
There was a wide variety of performances, with artists ranging from full bands to acoustic duos, and included orchestral features. A highlight was the triumphant performance of Edyta Bartosiewicz’s classic hit Sen accompanied by the Beethoven Orchestra. The engineers managed the rapid scenes with Snapshots, storing each scene to aid in the quick-fire change overs, a method that meant the engineers could reset in seconds.
“From pre-show rehearsals to final broadcast, the DiGiCo Quantum platform delivered exceptional performance throughout Fryderyki 2025,” recalls Atamaniuk. “Backed by the experience and coordination of Brawlers, and led by producer Remigiusz Kasztelnik, the sound system handled one of the most complex musical productions in Poland with elegance and ease.”
Each zone utilised individual SD-Racks, Zone A included one SD-Rack and a SD-Mini Rack. Zone B used two SD-Racks, connected via The Optocore loop and fully redundant across HMA fibre infrastructure. This closed-loop structure enabled real-time routing between consoles and racks, allowing for low-latency communication between engineers working at the FOH and monitor positions.
The Quantum 225 dealt with the spoken word presentations as a stand-alone system. Managed by Piotr Mastalerski, this system handled presentations from host, Gabi Drzewiecka, a music journalist and television personality, plus many more guest appearances.
At FOH, both zones implemented Waves SoundGrid Extreme servers, integrated with the Quantum 338s. These provided dynamic processing using third-party plugins for vocal shaping, parallel compression, EQ, and spatial effects. This was useful for the live television broadcast, allowing quick adaptation to voice and performance types while maintaining pristine broadcast sound quality. It was a system that proved very successful for Kasztelnik.
“Whether it was a high-octane rock act, a pop ballad, or a presenter’s heartfelt speech, each word and note was exactly where it needed to be,” he concludes. “With DiGiCo at the heart of the audio system, the team mixed it all like clockwork.”
