BEAVERTON, Ore.—HDR10+ Technologies, a multi-industry association that encompasses more than 170 adopters and nearly 20,000 certified devices, is reporting that the France 2 UHD TV channel will be broadcasting the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in 4K Ultra HD which utilizes HDR10+ metadata technology to optimize video image quality on a scene-by-scene basis.

The broadcasts, which will run February 6 to 22, are just the latest example of how HDR10+ is being used for a variety of applications in the entertainment industry, the group said.

In addition to providing superior video quality, France 2 UHD will be offering three different immersive audio mixing options on compatible televisions: a traditional mix balancing commentary and ambient sounds; a mix where the commentary volume is increased by 6 dB for greater voice intelligibility; and a mix that contains ambient sounds only, without any commentary.

According to Bill Mandel, co-manager of HDR10+ Technologies, LLC “We are pleased to work with France Télévisions Group to utilize HDR10+ to help the Olympic Games enthusiasts to enjoy the highest quality video and audio possible”.

Jacques Donat-Bouillud, director of distribution, France Télévisions Group added that “France 2 UHD is proud to deliver the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in native UHD. This exceptional image quality and more immersive sound will enable our viewers to experience these Olympic Games as if they were on the slopes or ice rink.”

For more information on HDR10+ please contact info@hdr10plus.org

In technological terms, a trend can have several different interpretations or even stages. It can be applied to an emerging audio technology that is not yet fully mature or adopted. Once uptake is underway a trend becomes current, as an increasing number of broadcasters begin to follow the initial adopters until that particular technology is firmly established in the market.

This does not happen immediately, which means an innovation can keep appearing at NAB Show for several years and seem like it is not that new at all anymore.

The reality is that implementation often takes a long time, as broadcasters’ replacement cycles or plans for new facilities come around and they get ready to install what are still the latest systems. This point is illustrated by Costa Nikols, strategy adviser for media and entertainment at Telos Alliance, who quotes Devoncroft Associates research showing that upgrading the audio infrastructure, which had been well outside the “Top 10” of broadcast priorities, was now in the “Top 5.”

Changing Priorities
“There’s a lot of investment going into improving audio quality, incorporating Next Generation Audio [NGA],” he says, referring to an umbrella term to define immersive and personalized audio experiences. “That also brings all these immersive experiences and customization and personalization features to the table, but how long is that going to take?

“I think we’re just at the beginning of something that’s going to be exciting and wonderful,” Nikols adds. “But if you look at the early adopters, it’s generally the national broadcasters that have adopted SMPTE ST 2110 and 2022-6 initially. Slowly, it will make its way out to the station groups and Tier 2 and Tier 3 broadcasters.”

The most visible NGA system is Dolby Atmos immersive audio. Atmos is specified by many of the leading streaming platforms, including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, but it’s not yet a standard part of linear broadcast transmissions. But, as Nikols points out, there is a growing market for enhanced sound that goes beyond TV and into mobile and other areas.

“Around the time of last year’s NAB Show, the number of devices that supported Dolby Atmos was 1.5 billion,” he says. “The most recent figure is over 3 billion, so it pretty much doubled by the beginning of this year. But the market, as far as the content providers are concerned, is not really delivering on the capabilities of the consumer electronics that are already deployed.”

Forward-Looking Feature
Professional equipment is also ready for the wider rollout of NGA and immersive systems, with all leading mixing console manufacturers accommodating technologies such as Dolby Atmos on their new and current desks.

“Global events often incorporate NGA formats like Atmos as they tend to push the technological boundaries,” Christian Struck, senior product manager for audio infrastructure at Lawo, says. “NGA has been a topic of interest for over a decade and we have integrated these capabilities into our systems, both physical and virtual. There is a gradual increase in demand for immersive audio and it remains a forward-looking feature for people exploring advanced audio workflows. Real-time metadata transport as defined in SMPTE 2110-41 will also help push this.”

Henry Goodman, director of product management at Calrec Audio, agrees most audio consoles now on the market enable immersive mixing, but does not see it as a priority for many viewers.

“Whether the public is taking advantage [of what immersive programming is available] is still quite a big question,” he says. “And the vast majority of distributed content is still not immersive.”

A parallel situation exists with the adoption of Audio Over IP (AoIP), Goodman adds, noting that Calrec is still selling consoles that are not SMPTE ST 2110-compliant.

“AoIP is getting towards being the norm, but it’s not across the board yet,” he says. “And you’ve also got different types of AoIP. On smaller systems, people are using Dante for connectivity and while it’s IP, it’s not a 2110 infrastructure.

“For larger, major investments people are certainly building AoIP infrastructures, but there’s still some way to go [because] if you’ve got a lot of investment in baseband audio and video, it’s not a slam dunk that when you upgrade one of those studios you would necessarily choose to go IP because of the impact it has on the rest of the system,” Goodman says.

The Importance of Having an IP Backbone
Phil Owens, senior sales engineer for Wheatstone, agrees that although old technologies continue to play a part in audio installations, there is now more of a swing towards newer formats.

“While legacy equipment still needs to be incorporated, the backbone of pretty much all new systems will be IP,” he says. “The flexibility of an IP network is the primary driver for this. As full 2110 networks become more widespread, stations are adapting the IP approach even if they don’t implement 2110 right away. Having a basic IP infrastructure keeps that door open.”

IP also plays a key role in remote and distributed production, which, again, have been a consideration for over five years and, after getting a boost during the pandemic, are growing in scope and reach.

“Distributed production is not just about saving costs, it’s about utilizing the facilities that you’ve got more effectively and more efficiently,” Calrec’s Goodman observes. “And we’ve had quite a lot of discussions with broadcasters about them widening their content offering with more niche-type sports because, by looking at doing things with remote production in a more distributed way, they can then justify covering sports that they would never have been able to justify covering before.”

Lawo’s Struck agrees that the rise of remote production—or REMI (remote integration)—models are another significant trend. “These centralize resources while enabling distributed production across multiple locations,” he says. “This approach offers flexibility in how equipment is bundled and deployed. Automated productions also remain a consistent focus. They are particularly well-suited for news programs and scripted productions, though they are not applicable to more complex, dynamic productions.”

Of all current trends, artificial intelligence (AI) will have a high profile at NAB Show, with initiatives such as the PropelME startup hub, showcasing companies using the technology to change how the broadcast, media and entertainment market operates. While most on the audio side of broadcasting agree AI will make an impact on sound, the view is that—like other technologies before it—this is not happening quite yet.

“When we talk about AI, sometimes it’s just confused with automation,” Nikols says. “Automation technologies have been around for a while and they allow you to have complex workflows with lots of ‘if-then’ decisions.

“And for the most part AI is that,” he added. “But Generative AI coming into the game allows some really cool stuff to happen with auto-mixing and can determine what content really needs to come up and how to adjust for all the other different channels that don’t necessarily need to be part of the main audio all the time.”

As familiar as some—or all—of this year’s audio trends are, they are playing an important role in shaping the future of broadcasting, even if their full implementation is not happening just yet.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Fresh off a successful effort to elevate the quality of its video and audio NextGen TV signal to Louisville, Ky., viewers watching WAVE-TV’s Kentucky Derby coverage with High Dynamic Range (HDR) and immersive audio, Gray Television is at it again.

This time the broadcast group will offer NextGen TV viewers in eight of its NBC markets the Paris Olympics in HDR when they open Wednesday, July 24. Viewers in three of those markets also will be able to listen to immersive audio of the games.

As with the Derby, the stations will upconvert the network’s standard dynamic range HD video feed and audio mix to Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos immersive sound.

While the effort will enhance the viewing experience of NextGen TV households, the endeavor takes on added significance because the station group sees the broadcasts as another critical step in promoting NextGen TV to the public.

In this interview, Rob Folliard, senior vice president of government relations and distribution at Gray TV, discusses the station group’s HDR and immersive audio deployment, its plans beyond sports, when it might begin offering the enhancements as part of its NextGen TV broadcasts of other network partners and why broadcasters should waste no time stepping up their efforts to promote NextGen TV.

(An edited transcript.) 

TVTech: How many local Gray Television stations will be offering the Paris Olympics as NextGen TV with HDR and immersive sound?

Rob Folliard: We have eight NBC affiliates that are broadcasting a 3.0 signal right now. I expect all of them will be up and running in HDR by the Paris Olympics. I know for certain at least three of the eight will also have immersive audio—Dolby Atmos. 

TVT: The Paris Olympics deployment of NextGen TV HDR and immersive audio follows a similar deployment for this year’s Kentucky Derby at Gray TV’s WAVE-TV in Louisville. What lessons did you learn from that experience?

RF: A lot of it is related to the marketing and promotion side. We marketed and promoted the heck out of it, and we saw a reaction locally.

We also partnered with a consumer electronics store as well to give away NextGen TVs, and that was successful. We're copying a lot of the promotional effort that we did in Louisville for the Derby. We’re using the Olympics, as well, just to let people know about NextGen TV and create a buzz.

At this stage, that's the most important thing: to let viewers know what we're doing and creating that buzz so people want to buy TVs. Then, if we can turn that into some advertising campaigns in partnership with local retailers, all the better. I think it really was the promotion where the Kentucky Derby project was successful, and we want to model that for the Paris Olympics.

TVT: Can you offer a little more detail on how you are promoting NextGen TV for the Olympics?

RF: We're already promoting the Olympics, so now we're including tags and other info in those promotions that say, “And you can watch the Olympics in HDR.” So, a lot of it we're doing anyway, but now we’re also adding the HDR message. In those markets where there's immersive audio, then we’re adding the Dolby Atmos immersive audio message as well. 

We are also promoting HDR and immersive audio online on our station websites where viewers can learn more. There isn’t a national retail partner, but ideally each market will find a partner.

TVT: Like the Kentucky Derby, your NBC affiliates for the Olympics will be offering the public HDR in the form of Dolby Vision and immersive audio in the form of Dolby Atmos. How did you decide on Dolby’s implementations?

RF: Dolby's been the gold standard for decades. So that was pretty easy. Certainly, on the audio side of things. Dolby has been a great partner for NextGen in general. They've been supportive the whole way. They have involved themselves. They have made themselves available, and they provided a lot of information for our promotion and our marketing as well. I know Dolby is partnering with some other broadcasters promoting the Olympics. 

Dolby's aggressive, and they want to promote NextGen TV, and that goes hand in hand with what we want.

TVT: It won’t be long until we are past the Olympics and into college football and the NFL. Will there be the same technical setup for football? NFL? College?

RF: That's the goal. We are working with our network partners at CBS, Fox and ABC in order to get the necessary approvals. As you know, there are many different special sauces of HDR, and to the extent any network has a preference—like NBC has a specific LUT [Look Up Table] that they want everyone to use—great.  We'll do that if the network has certain specs. We want to work with them on that to make sure we don't get crosswise with anyone.

TVT: What are Gray TV’s plans with respect to other markets where your stations are affiliated with other networks? Are there plans to follow suit in those markets? 

RF: Absolutely. NBC was the priority because of the Olympics. We saw the Olympics as an obvious tentpole segment in August, so NBC had to go first. Then, we expect to have everybody up by the fall for football. Because, you know, nothing moves the needle –nothing makes TV sell—like football. 

The bulk of the TV sets are always sold in the second half of the year, in the fall, and then in the winter during the holiday buying season. It's because of football. So, the promotional campaign will work perfectly well, making it available for football.

TVT: What about the rest of the schedule—beyond sports?

RF: With NBC, we're already doing it 24/7. In Louisville, the moment we turned on the upconversion, it was the full 24/7 stream. It was all of our news, all of our syndicated content, all of our local content and all of NBC’s content.

It'll be the same thing with Fox, CBS and ABC. It'll be the full 24/7 stream that'll be upconverted to HDR so when there are other high profile events in the fall, they'll all be in HDR.

TVT: Obviously, there’s more to NextGen TV than HDR and immersive audio. There’s also program restart and interactive and on-demand content that Gray’s looking to take advantage of? How is that playing out?

RF: They are all coming. Restart is on our menu of things to get launched in the relatively near future. We aren't there just yet, but I expect it'll be up in the next couple of months. At that point, there’s another NextGen TV feature that is promotable, consumer-friendly and is the type of feature that's going to make TVs sell. 

Restart is the most popular feature in Europe with their HbbTV. We'll lean on the lessons that our fellow broadcasters in Europe learned by promoting that. 

Many people from all the different departments within Gray will be meeting within the next couple of weeks to really strategize on how we want to promote this. What can we do? What do we think consumers will like?

We want to get everyone in the company thinking about what NextGen can do. They can take that back to their departments and their teams and start coming up with ideas.

You know, we've now built it out to where it makes sense to start experimenting with NextGen TV features to see what sticks. Given the viewership data we're able to pull for NextGen sets, it's going to be very quick and easy for us to tell what was successful. We'll be able to learn much more quickly than we ever could in the past.

TVT: Pearl TV, to which Gray belongs, has promoted NextGen TV to the public for several years, especially around the holiday buying season. Here Gray is promoting it in conjunction with major sporting events like the Derby and the Olympics. What’s your message to other broadcasters when it comes to promoting NextGen TV?

RF: I think it's critical that we all start promoting NextGen TV, and we all make it more visible. This is the future of our industry. The DTV standard was developed in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. We can't continue to broadcast with the best technology of 1988, and that's what we’re doing. We need to move forward to a modern IP-based technology. It's not 1988 anymore.

We're not just competing with ourselves. We're competing with Google, Apple, YouTube and Amazon. If they have a better product than we do, then we're going to be in trouble. If they have a better technology than we do, then we're in trouble. We need to keep pace with our real competitors out there, and NextGen is the way to do it. 

But not only do we need to complete this transition, we also need to let consumers know. We need to make consumers excited to buy TVs to watch NextGen because it doesn't do any good if we complete this transition and nobody owns a TV.

We've got a short window to get all of this done and to remain competitive with the streamers who have the advantage of an IP-based system where they can run targeted ads, they can run addressable advertising. We need to catch up, and NextGen TV is our last, best opportunity to do so.

Sound production is the artistic and technical aspect of broadcasting that is completely subjective. The balance of the sound elements, for example the voices (commentary), as compared to the volume levels of the sound effects and music, is subjective to the point until you cannot hear and understand what is being said. 

As a sound practitioner, I express the tone of a production using equalization to adjust the bass and treble of an audio passage, however my experience guides where I ultimately make a subjective evaluation of the proper level and tone of any adjustments.

Even certain sound phrases and terminology indicates a level of subjectivity. I worked with a British producer at the BBC who said that the mix sounded “wooly.” What is my subjective understanding of wooly sound?

Who Get the Blame?
However, this subjectivity may be related to the reproduction technology or method or perhaps a medical condition such as tinnitus. 

Broadcast sound is subjective because, as the sound mixer, I control the outcomes. But what if I have tinnitus or frequency-specific hearing difficulties? For example if the mixer has lost sensitivity in the higher frequencies then there is a tendency to compensate by adding high frequencies to the mix resulting in a shrill, more brittle sound to the consumer. 

What if the listener has frequency-specific hearing loss? Then possibly the listener may have difficulty with speech intelligibility. Consider if the listener has cheap or improperly installed speakers or just rear-mounted speakers in the TV set? This is clearly beyond the control of the sound mixer, but who gets the blame?

As a newly minted sound mixer, I will never forget a phone call I received from an ESPN executive telling me the mix did not sound right. Perplexed by the call I asked, “What’s wrong?” After some hemming and hawing from the executive, I asked, “Is it the balance or tone or what?” After some silence, I hung up. I am sitting in a 5x8-foot audio control room, trying to mix a live show with the incessant roar of equipment cooling fans behind me and a communications network that is never silent. 

There may be a chance that something doesn’t “sound right.” Well, the executive called back, and I quipped that, “It sounds fine here,” and hung up again. Needless to say, I did not work for ESPN for awhile.

My subjective impression was that it did sound fine where I was, and I am sure that it did not sound right to the executive listening over TV speakers. I never got the opportunity to ask the person what they were listening on, but improper speaker placement and setup was the demise of some fellow audio folks who got burned for bad sound because someone improperly set up the speaker system for Dolby Surround in the network QC room. Who got the blame?

Balance is the most difficult aspect of an audio mix to master. Overly zealous announcers and an unscripted event such as football or baseball can result in the voice being either too loud or too soft. Audio compressors help to smooth out the audio, but to me overly compressed audio is just as hideous as “bouncy” audio or burying the voice in the mix.

Surround and Immersive Sound
Audio is subjective and specific to the listener’s environment, reproduction device and physiological condition. Now factor that by two—the producer of the sound and the consumer of the sound. Sound was pretty easy when it was mono and the television cabinet (housing) was the size of a refrigerator with front-facing speakers. 

Stereo was a little more complex with two speakers and the task of creating a “phantom center” for the voice. Surround sound created more problems with a dedicated center speaker for voice and five other speakers for effects and music. The other problem for surround was proper placement of the center speaker in a world where there really is no place for a center speaker. Technology helped here with the divergence of the voice into the side speakers and the introduction of soundbars.

Immersive sound ushered in a whole new set of issues with still only one center speaker plus an additional four upper speakers to generate more noise and further mask the announcers. What’s an audio person to do?

First, understand your own hearing abilities and do not always trust your ears. I have tinnitus and high-frequency hearing loss, but I do not artificially compensate for the tone of a mix to my liking. Generally, a “flat” mix will cover a lot of reproduction possibilities from poor room acoustics, improperly placed speakers and even cheap speakers.

Second, new mixing techniques can deliver better results. Consider this. The center speaker may not be just for voice. Try spreading out the sound (diverging the sound) into the left, right, left height and right height speaker; not to the point of distracting the listener, but to reinforce the sound like a phantom image. 

This technique works well with immersive sound and soundbars. (See my November column on sound mixing or my book “Immersive Sound Production: A Practical Guide.”)

Finally, at home, after the show, listen to your mix. Also ask for input from your peers and non-audio types. Fred Aldous from Fox Sports used to tell me he always listened to his mother when it came to his mixing. Mama is usually right. 

Immersive sound was almost a causality of the pandemic because in-person broadcast and sports productions were shuttered and virtually all engineering and financial resources were diverted to getting and keeping live content flowing—by remote control. Remote production practices and technology advanced quickly and subsequently benefitted less popular secondary sports and content for smaller targeted audiences with an easier engineering setup and overall cheaper production costs. 

Consequently, immersive sound was pushed to the back burner. However, I believe 2024 will see a revitalization of the dimensional sound format. Why? Because immersive sound production and reproduction technology is available and affordable, however the next task for practitioners is to create the “wow” factor and stoke the consumer attraction.

Consider this: Television is basically two dimensional with the picture parked directly in front of the viewer and significantly, television depends on the sound to give dimensionality to the experience. Since the picture is in front and the screen stretches vertically, why not fill the front sound space with sound from top to bottom? It may not seem intuitive to put more sound above the viewer and it may not be appropriate for all applications, but a sport like basketball certainly benefits from sound above the viewer.

Where to Put the Sound
I believe there still is a reluctance to push the sound envelope (experience), which may be a hangover from uninspiring 5.1 surround sound production and strict loudness compliance; but clearly more atmosphere behind and above the viewer does not add much to the interest of the soundfield. Many sound practitioners approach immersive sound as another horizontal layer over the existing surround, ear-level layer. No doubt this is a limited creative approach to immersive sound. 

Additionally horizontal layers of sound are hard for most soundbars to reproduce so by pushing the sound into the upper front space, the sound design also takes advantage of the mechanical sound reproduction of a soundbar using up-firing speakers. Immersive sound design for soundbars is more about creating a sound experience over reproduction of an accurate soundfield.

Basketball on television is perfect for advanced immersive sound applications because the visual coverage beyond a wide shot of the action on the court is close-up, head-to-toe of the athlete under the baskets. With the basket perceptibly above the athlete there is a clear motivation to put the basket sound above the viewer and create a front vertical soundfield of sports specific sounds. The front soundfield consists of the Left, Right, Left Height and Right Height sound zones acting as a coherent, controllable sound space where sound can be steered anywhere vertically in front of the listener.

Basketball sound is perfect for immersive soundbars and application of the principles of Front Vertical Soundfield Reinforcement (FVSR). What sounds go above the viewer? With film there is “room tone” ambiance as well as specific effects, and increasingly, film sound production uses electronic digital spatial enhancements.

Broadcasters and content streamers of dramatic and serial content produce their sound similarly to film, but with sports, the sonic palate is undeveloped beyond the absolute consumer-expected sounds like the crack of the bat. Imagine head-to-toe sound of the athlete or putting the viewer inside a bobsled at 80 mph.

What About Field Sports?
With basketball the benefits of advanced immersion applications such as FVSR is obvious, but look at the majority of televised sports, particularly field sports such as baseball as well as football and soccer. These sports are heavy ambiance with a center focus on the sport’s specific sounds. 

With advanced immersive sound practices such as trajectory mapping it would be possible to recreate the dimensional movement of the ball in the soundfield—think a moving asteroid! Think AI-rendered soundfields. Or simply by elevating mono and stereo sounds, elements between the ear-level soundfield and the above soundfield can create a more integrated soundfield with clear correlation between the front and front height speakers.

Sound design for immersive sound is about reproducing a dimensional experience, which to me is all about creating and mixing for soundbars. Since the production sound mixer will probably not mix over a soundbar and the vast selection of consumer soundbars are so different in design it is hard to expect a sound practitioner to mix for soundbars. 

However, the sound practitioner should be considering the reproduction side of sound. The sound mixer needs to be familiar with the physics of soundbars and have a willingness to experiment. After a little practice the sonic outcomes for the sound practitioner will quickly improve. Additionally, I have published a practical guide to immersive sound production with case studies and examples to share my experience and ideas and help jump start the immersive sound initiative.

The creative possibility for immersive sound is an open proposition although a challenge because the ATSC 3.0 did not mandate advanced audio standards for immersive sound. Some in our industry don’t really see the need for immersive sound, but its time has arrived, and it is up to the audio practitioners and the entertainment industry to stretch the boundaries and promote this truly innovative entertainment experience. 

LANCASTER, Pa.–Immersive Music/Media Group (Immersive MMG) is a collection of unified creative professionals rooted in a Dolby-certified Atmos mixing room, recording space, and media facility. We offer our clients the highest quality and most cutting-edge services within our industry, as our goal for each project is to facilitate a positive, meaningful, memorable, and unique experience from start to finish. It’s why our facility offers a range of services, including shooting, editing and grading, in addition to mixing and recording, in order to provide Immersive MMG and our clients with a competitive edge.

At the core of Immersive MMG’s services is our sound studio, a premier destination for audio services. We’ve had everyone from Grammy-nominated producers to songwriters to audio engineers to instrumentalists walk through our doors.

All in the Name
A primary focus of our company is Atmos and other immersive audio formats, and at the core of our Atmos studio is a computer-based content development design with a DAW/video production computer connected through 128 MADI channels to a dedicated Dolby Atmos Rendering Master Workstation (RMW). This supports DaVinci Resolve Studio editing, color grading, VFX and audio post production software. We use DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fairlight audio post production tools and a five-bay Fairlight Advanced Console for mixing and mastering for our musician and post production clientele alike.

Implemented in 2020, Fairlight’s flexibility and feature set seamlessly support our spatial workflow. For example, we can mix with native Atmos integration and patch ins and outs to and from additional in-house hardware, computers, and speaker setups, all from within Fairlight’s Patch Input/Output menu. For extra control and a greater variety of workflows, Fairlight gives us the ability to swap the order of effects, dynamics, and EQ.

Blackmagic Design has continued to up its game with each new version of DaVinci Resolve Studio, and version 18.5 is no exception. On the Fairlight page alone, many of the most recent upgrades are practical and useful to our daily processes, such as fine control of automation level trimming and the addition of edit and mix groups. But two of the biggest additions for our workflow are bus panning and rewire support.

Bus Panning and Rewire
Since we focus on Atmos and other immersive audio formats, being able to use bus panning and placement is a huge timesaver and helps to streamline our mixing process, especially with dense and complex material. Rewire support is another benefit to our workflow and helps to make what can be a tedious process of connecting certain types of third-party plugins and software much smoother, saving us time and energy. 

The these latest upgrades help us leverage the workflow and processes that we have developed over the years in audio-only DAWs, while reaping the additional editing, color grading and VFX benefits of the entire Davinci Resolve platform. This results in a win-win for us and our clients and helps us to truly offer the highest-quality services possible.  

For more information, visit www.blackmagicdesign.com.

Immersive sound for broadcasting is all about spatial orientation, sonic separation and hoping that the listener can reproduce some dimensional sound through speakers or headphones. Clearly the sound mixer can’t control the sound ecosystem or how the consumer listens to content, but it seems that immersive sound reproduction is a moving target and certainly creating a compelling sound mix that may well be heard over speakers, soundbars and headphones is no easy task.

Horizontal Layers
The problems often begin with overly conservative sound design, but as sound practitioners we must start somewhere and build forward. Typically, sound design looks at audio as horizontal layers—for example, immersive sound proposes an ear-level horizontal layer of sound and a stratus of sound above the head of the listener. NHK, the national broadcaster in Japan, has even recommended that there should be sound projected from below ear level.

When immersive sound was initially contemplated and tested it was reasoned that these above sounds should be captured and placed into the upper sound zones and reproduced by the height speakers. Even basic sound design principles would suggest that the sound mix should be what you would hear as if you were there. Horizontal layers of sound are fine for basic immersive sound production and academic consideration, but if the “real” sounds above the spectator’s head are diffused atmosphere and excessive PA noise, then not much of these sounds are particularly constructive to an interesting immersive soundfield/mix.

Further I would argue that too much atmosphere in front of the listener is boring, fatiguing and impacts speech intelligibility and is one reason why the immersive sound mixer should consider alternative mixing designs. For example, most soundbars project the sound from in front of the listener and I believe that this should be a major consideration for the sound designer/mixer. 

Since most immersive soundbars project frontward, upward and sideways then the question is—are up-firing soundbars projecting more atmosphere in front of the listener, thus diluting the mix? This could be the case if the front left and right height channel are used primarily for ambiance and atmosphere. 

Basketball, For Example
Consider that if the front height channels are projecting sounds from the front and upwards, then it makes sense to use the front height channels to reinforce the screen action, dialogue and ancillary audio. Front Soundfield Reinforcement (FSR) is a concept that I have promoted since a presentation I made at Germany’s Tonmeister conference in 2016. 

FSR basically supports using the complete front vertical soundfield—left and right channels along with the left and right height channels to mix a front “soundframe” around the visual presentation. For example, basketball has a clear top frame with the net and hoop and bottom frame with the floor. By placing some sounds in the vertical perspective this design helps to elevate a 2D image into a 3D soundspace.

Testing of basic immersive sound production began in 2014 with NHK in Japan and later in 2016 with NBC testing various microphone schemes at the Olympics and American football. In 2016, Seoul Broadcasting System adopted ATSC 3.0 and used the MPEG-H encoder to transmit the 2018 World Cup into the homes of Korea.

 The 2018 World Cup was probably the first major sporting event that made available an immersive sound mix with the addition of an overhead atmosphere layer constructed from Schoeps microphones. Felix Krückels was the sound designer and worked with Helmut Wittek on an immersive array, the ORTF 3D, which was described as a “double-layered ORTF using eight microphone capsules.”

Capturing immersive sound with ambisonic or 3D array-type microphones creates a stable dimensional foundation, but is not necessary to create an immersive experience, particularly with sports sound. 

For example, according to NBC Sports’ Karl Malone, director, sound design, NBC has created immersive sound at Notre Dame football games for several seasons and uses a variety of mono and stereo microphones to create immersive sound. Simple immersive sound production does not require 3D microphones or 3D mixing busses, however virtually all mixing consoles used by the broadcaster—Lawo, Calrec and SSL—have 3D panners, which easily allow for spotting/placing the sound elements around the intended listener. 

What 3D sound does need is more adventurous sound designs and a good understanding of encoding and how decoding/rendering affects the sound design. In my basketball example I suggest a pair of lavaliere microphones to capture the backboard and net swish and to route these sounds as audio elements/objects to be rendered into the front left and right height channels. 

An experienced sound practitioner might ask, “What happens to these above sounds in a stereo or surround mix?” Interoperability between formats has been a problem, but digital sound, metadata and rendering solved some of the conversion issues between formats. Dolby Atmos, Auro 3D, DTS:X and Fraunhofer MPEG-H are examples of encoders for distribution of immersive sound; and when the audio reproduction device detects a particular codex it will renderer the proper balance and spatialization appropriate for the reproduction device and the number of transducers. For example, with a Dolby Atmos enabled up-firing soundbar it should project the net sounds above the listener.

The wide range of reproduction devices does not guarantee similar sound experience, but I would argue that just about anything is better than rear-mounted television speakers.

Hope is not a strategy; successful immersive sound is in the mix. 

I began experimenting, testing and writing about immersive audio in early 2012 and remember hearing the term “Next Generation Audio” (NGA) sometime thereafter. Since then, a variety of groups have advocated for a variety of features and formats for the next-generation content producers and equipment manufacturers to build on. 

Currently NGA describes such features as immersion, interaction and intelligent interface between playback devices and reproduction devices, but in the United States there was no government mandate to keep forward momentum with the implementation of those features. To add to the confusion, not only was there no mandate, but there were also competing and incompatible formats with Dolby Atmos and MPEG-H.

Neither Dolby nor Fraunhofer invented immersive sound or NGA, which is actually a direct result of technology advances and clever compression schemes that achieved greater capacity and quality for producing advanced audio. Immersive sound is possible because broadcasters can get the minimum of 10 discrete channels of sound—5.1.4 to the consumer within a narrowly defined data bandwidth. The audio bandwidth can be allocation for audio beds, channels or objects to enhance the immersive experience or for interactive features.

Is it Worth It?
Immersive sound may not be the ultimate entertainment experience for every consumer—research shows a steady rise in stereo and 5.1 surround soundbars but with only a very modest increase in 7.1 and the “other category,” which would include some variation of immersive sound. This leads me to believe that perhaps immersive sound production, particularly for sports, is just not compelling enough to spend extra money on higher-quality speakers.

Immersive sound has been the most fostered focus of NGA, perhaps because it was the most developed feature with the ATSC 3.0 rollout. But the illusion of cinematic sound seems delusional with the proliferation of “faux immersive” DSP processing and soundbars that make all kinds of claims of immersive sound reproduction. I ask again: How can you get an immersive experience from an up and side firing soundbar? Maybe the consumer is savvier than first thought.

The broadcast world has understood the craving of user-controlled sound since consumers have been able to shape their home sound with the inclusion of the bass and treble controls. Dolby was quick to introduce dialog controls, but nothing as interactive as alternative dialog channels that have been suggested with NGA.

Dolby ushered in personalization with the introduction of Dialog Normalization, which was obviously a good idea for different listening environments and content, but Fraunhofer’s MPEG-H offers the possibilities of true user interactivity. For example, with over-the-air broadcasting the coaches and player language can be problematic, but an isolated and controllable coaches’ channel eliminates the prescreening and sanitizing that take place in a live broadcast. Significantly for the CFO’s, a coaches’ channel could be monetized. Note, Dolby claims the same level of interactivity through using object channels.

All this interactivity can be ultimately limited by the producers and rights holders with options for improved dialog, alternate narration and even select objects such as radios and wireless microphones. The ability to control any one of multiple players’ or coaches’ microphones and listen in mono or stereo—that seems like a pretty immersive experience to me.

Rendering the Content
The final and probably most under-valued benefit of NGA is the ability to render the audio content to virtually any consumer device or format. For example, consider that the audio elements are embedded in the digital stream and can be combined—rendered to a proper recipe for a mono, stereo, surround or immersive sound mix. 

The early shortcomings of surround sound were the downmix and metadata. Also remember that using the set-top box for combining surround channels to derive a stereo mix has always been problematic for accurate and equivalent sound productions because many of the sound elements are baked into the mix. Rendering takes all the ingredients and makes a whole new cake. 

Rendering is the final process before reaching the consumer and in theory, rendering can take different transducer characteristics, configurations and containers and optimize a soundscape for any listening device. However, I am still mystified as to how you can get an accurate representation of an immersive landscape from side and up-firing soundbars—although it really does sound better. 

A lot has been said about the potential of Next Generation Audio. While the technology is evolving, content with compelling immersive sound and interactivity is lagging, except in gaming. Just as surround sound started conservatively, immersive sound production has started conservatively as well. 

One significant difference is that early soundbars were a big improvement for surround sound, but I am not convinced that the immersive sound experience has benefitted as much from soundbars as surround sound did.

The immersive experience is different for us all, and Next Generation Audio provides a framework, but no roadmap. I have recently published a book with Focal Press titled “Immersive Sound Production—A Practical Guide” that presents an advanced approach to live immersive sound design with a concentration on live sports and includes more than 60 different sports case studies. 

Trying to get beyond all the hype you read about immersive sound, I spent several months preparing to listen to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and Super Bowl LVI in immersive in my home in Decatur Ala. I confirmed that NBC Sports produced 5.1.4 Channel Immersive Sound, but it is still difficult to get immersive sound into the home.

In an ideal digital world, you would be able to hook up your digital antenna to an ATSC 3.0 tuner and receive a UHD video signal and immersive Dolby Atmos sound from your regional terrestrial television provider. I am about 35 miles from the antenna and have good terrestrial reception, but Huntsville Ala. is not an ATSC 3.0 market yet. There are nearly 50 markets in the United States that transmit ATSC 3.0 with Dolby Atmos as the immersive audio standard but no luck with my trusty digital antenna.

My Roku Ultra streaming device said it is capable of Dolby Atmos so I searched out satellite, cable and streaming services and continued my quest for immersive sound. NBC delivered 4K UHD with Dolby Atmos sound for the 2022 Winter Olympics coverage to customers through distribution partners including Comcast, Verizon, fuboTV, YouTubeTV and Prime. Comcast and Verizon did not offer service in my area and Direct was only interested in selling me their biggest package and no one could tell me if the Dish Hopper delivers immersive sound. With a $69 a month contract minimum, satellite or cable was out of the question for this experiment.

‘Sophisticated Handshaking’
While I searched for a service provider I spent half a year’s earnings from my TV Tech writing commission and bought a high-end Yamaha Soundbar with Dolby Atmos and 49 speakers firing in all directions. I hooked up my soundbar directly to my Roku Ultra and hooked the 4K output from the soundbar to my Sony 4K television. 

After 10 minutes of fiddling with menus and remotes I was able to get sound through the system. Although the sound was better than my Vizio surround sound soundbar, I was not convinced that I had immersive sound. Initially I was suspect of the HDMI interfaces and contacted Neal Roberts, senior manager, Broadcast Partnerships at Dolby Laboratories (Neal has since moved on to HBO Max).

Neal told me that regardless of the version of HDMI, consumers will always have audio and with later versions supporting more capabilities.

“The connection is controlled by the sophisticated handshaking between source and sync devices that HDMI supports,” Neal said. “This ranges from stereo at minimum, to 5.1 channels of decoded PCM audio, to an encoded DD+ bitstream that includes Dolby Atmos, to decoded audio and metadata [known as “MAT”]. For example, a new set-top box connected to a legacy soundbar/AVR might produce a stereo or a 5.1 channel surround sound experience, while that same HDMI signal connected to a newer soundbar or AVR would be capable of reproducing a Dolby Atmos experience.”

So it seems that it is possible to deliver immersive sound to the consumer, but I question the depth of immersive experience since it was difficult to hear much sound above me. 

The Right Sound for the Right Sports
Now is the time to consider the consumers and how-to best create an effective soundfield over soundbars. Up-firing soundbars need something to up-fire. Birds and aircraft belong in the height channel, but I question how much ambiance and atmosphere should be directed into the height channel. Clearly the most popular American sport—football—does not offer any sports sound that logically should be in the height channels except the PA and atmosphere.

However, there is a large reservoir of activities, such as many winter sports, that benefit from an aggressive vertical enhancement. For example, with ski jumping, simply by placing the last microphones on the jump in the height channels it gives a clear aural impression of lifting off. Elevating sounds is a significant aspect of immersive sound and sports struggles with what sounds should be elevated into the height channels. My upcoming book shares more than 50 case studies on immersive sound production for sports.

I think the 2022 Winter Olympics proved that the infrastructure for producing and delivering immersive sound is working itself out, but significantly I think audio producers must consider advanced immersive sound production practices and create an immersive sound experience beyond atmospheric embellishments.

In 2016, I presented the concept of “Front Soundfield Reinforcement” which coalesces the front vertical soundfield into a cohesive aural pallet. Contemporary immersive sound production is typically horizontal layers with a surround layer at ear level and another height layer with usually four channels of sound. If you contemplate vertical layers where the front left, right and the height channels collectively reinforce the front soundfield, then the concept of Front Soundfield Reinforcement seems like a logical solution for soundbar reproduction.

Basketball clearly demonstrates the benefits of Front Soundfield Reinforcement. Basketball uses a camera under each basket which visually has significant vertical dimension. By placing microphones by the net and on the floor and routing the net microphones into the height channels, the illusion of being under the basket is complete because the net sounds are heard above the listener.

When I reflect on the state of immersive sound production I accept that perhaps atmospheric embellishments are enough for the average sports consumer, but I think an enhanced and entertaining experience is necessary to engage an audience that seems to have lost its appetite for TV sports. Listen up. 

SAN FRANCISCO—Comcast will deliver to Xfinity subscribers the 2020 Summer Olympics from Tokyo in Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos immersive audio. 

Dolby Vision delivers ultra-vivid picture quality, and Dolby Atmos offers an immersive audio experience. Together, the technologies bring viewers closer to the action, Dolby Laboratories reported. 

Both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos will be used to present the opening and closing ceremonies, popular sports, such as gymnastics, track and field, swimming, diving, beach volleyball, golf and tennis, at each night’s primetime show, the company said.

NBC Olympics’ primetime coverage in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos will be available in most markets, and all X1 customers with eligible devices will be able to view re-airing of the show the next day.

For X1 customers with eligible devices, the Golf Channel will present the golf competition at the Olympics with both technologies. The Olympic Channel will do likewise for tennis and wrestling, the company said. 

The enhanced coverage will be available to Comcast Xfinity subscribers at no additional charge. Viewers will need a compatible TV and an Xfinity X1 device to experience the Dolby Vision presentation. To enjoy Dolby Atmos, they will need a compatible audio device and Xfinity cable box, such as the Xi6 or XG1v4 cable box, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

This story was originally published in TVT's March print issue, previewing the 2020 NAB Show. As of March 11, the NAB Show has been postponed indefinitely. 

For the past several years, TV broadcast audio equipment manufacturers have been responding to their customers’ needs for IP networking and issues of interoperability, the implementation of immersive audio functionality and, increasingly, virtualized workflows. What is the current state of play with regard to these three hot topics?

VIRTUAL PRODUCTION ENABLED BY IP

The adoption of IP networking is helping to reduce costs, not least in the elimination of remote trucks and crews on certain productions, together with the more efficient use of plant equipment.

“Virtual production products can help broadcasters streamline workflows, reduce downtime on consoles, improve cost efficiency and expand the variety of coverage, plus integrate with other equipment via open source transport mechanisms,” says Dave Letson, vice president of sales for Calrec Audio.

The company’s 2U RP1 remote unit enables and supports REMI workflows. “Calrec’s Type R can provide station automation on an IP network, while the company’s VP2 operates on Calrec’s Hydra2 backbone,” adds Letson. They too introduce workflow efficiencies and reduce costs. “Both products enable stations to reap many of the benefits of using a Calrec console, but without a physical control surface.”

Audio over IP was the foundation for Infinity, Telos’ intercom platform, according to Martin Dyster, project director for Telos Infinity. System designers can leverage the combined advantage of Infinity AoIP and Infinity Link VoIP transport to bring together disparate audio components into a seamless system.

“The AoIP network connectivity between Infinity and the production audio system is native and doesn’t rely on dedicated interfaces or bespoke edge devices,” Dyster said. “[Infinity] enables the user to take full advantage of its hybrid WAN/LAN connectivity to combine both local and remote subsystems seamlessly into one larger integrated system.”

CHALLENGES ABOUND

Yet there are still some challenges with IP networking and its implementation.

“It would be nice to say that all IP streams are the same, but they’re not,” says Wheatstone Senior Sales Engineer Phil Owens, noting that sample rates and packet times may vary. To better facilitate interoperability, he says, “Wheatstone is designing our next generation Blades [I/O devices] with this in mind, allowing for compensation for various streams/flows/essences in the most flexible way possible.”

Where some of the IP standards fall short, says Shawn Anderson, product manager at intercom manufacturer RTS, is that they focus on audio transport, not control. “One of the things that we helped spearhead was the AES70 Open Control Standard, to try and give some people at least a pathway to have unified control across different systems,” he says. But individual manufacturers can offer far more control of their own products with their native protocols, he observes.

“We’ve still got a way to go before manufacturers’ implementations and customer expectations are in alignment,” agrees Dyster. “NMOS is meant to be the panacea, but adoption by manufacturers has been slow, and interpretations of the standard can vary between manufacturers.”

Letson believes the biggest issue facing broadcasters is how and when to transition to an IP environment. “Most broadcasters will continue to leverage their major financial investments in proprietary systems for some time,” he says.

New Calrec products bridge the company’s proprietary Hydra2 and standard networks. “These initiatives enable broadcasters to choose the pace at which they switch over to IP technologies,” says Letson. Those products alternatively enable customers with greenfield developments to dive straight into an IP environment, he adds.

GOING IMMERSIVE

Immersive audio capabilities have been incorporated into TV broadcast standards worldwide—the question now is what manufacturers are doing to enable their customers to create immersive content and when such content might be more widely available to consumers.

“I don’t think you’ll be seeing immersive audio in your six o’clock news anytime soon,” predicts Owens. For console manufacturers, he says, immersive audio requires two things—more console bus outputs and the ability to pan in 3D with the addition of a z or height axis in the panning algorithms.

Another transition that could spur demand for immersive content is deployment of the NextGen TV standard as well as adoption of the SMPTE 2110 video transport over IP protocol, according to Larry Schindel, senior product manager for Linear Acoustic, a part of Telos TV Solutions Group.

“Broadcasters have committed to launching ATSC 3.0 services in 60 markets across the U.S. during 2020, and this includes the top 40 markets,” Schindel said. But immersive audio will largely be married with 4K video signals, he says, so video requirements will also need to be considered in tandem with the additional channels and processing to support immersive audio.

“It will be interesting to watch how quickly SMPTE ST 2110 adoption will take hold on a wide basis, and if new 4K/immersive buildouts will rely on SMPTE ST 2110 infrastructure or if they stay with SDI,” he added.

MONITORING IT ALL

The management of metadata will also become critical for both immersive and personalized experiences, Schindel says. And since consumers will be listening in a variety of audio formats, not just immersive, operators must be able to monitor all of them.

“With even more audio to monitor, it is important that we make life as easy as possible for operators,” agrees Mark Davies, director of products & technology for TSL. That will likely include the presentation of clear and concise displays to confirm everything is in the right place and legal at the point of monitoring, and allowing rapid fault finding when things do go wrong, he says.

Calrec is ready for that immersive future now, reports Letson. The company’s new ImPulse Core processing engine was designed to incorporate 3D immersive path widths and panning for multiple next-gen audio applications and input channels. “Height and 3D pan controls are provided, and paths of all widths can co-exist within a mix and be routed to/from each other with flexible panning and downmixing built in,” he says.

TEN YEARS HENCE

Now that we’re in a new decade, what do manufacturers think customers might expect to see at the 2030 NAB Show?

“Everything is moving towards more software-based systems,” says Anderson, and to cloud-based services and virtualization. That is being driven in part by consumers’ experiences with their smart devices and services such as FaceTime. “Their expectations are to see the same capabilities from their intercoms or their video content management systems.”

Davies concurs: “Audio processing engines will most likely be SaaS [Software-as-a-Service] running in the cloud. The only physical presence will be the control surface.”

“The rise of IP and remote production will naturally lead to fully virtualized workflows becoming more prevalent,” agrees Letson. “DSP resources will be centralized and allocated to productions as and when they are required, so a production hub can cover any event anywhere by tapping into centralized resources via IP networks. This will provide more efficient workflows allowing resources to be apportioned depending on the size of the production.”

But Dyster cautions, “I feel the real world moves slower than we would like to think. Undoubtedly a major driver will be the lower cost and availability of ultrahigh-speed data networks, the precursor being the roll-out of 5G,” he said. “But the real fun here is figuring out what our user interfaces will look like and how people might use our products differently. I can foresee hands-free production becoming the norm rather than the exception.”

But whatever broadcast workflows look like in 10 years, says Dyster, “It’s likely to mean greater simplicity, seamless integration with our ‘domestic’ communications devices, such as phones and computers, and minimal reliance on the hardware panels we use today.”

There is little doubt that the migration to the next generation of video (UHD/HDR) and advanced multichannel audio is well underway. 4K television sets are cheap, bandwidth is cheap(er), soundbars were the hit of 2019 International CES and content producers are beginning to understand the production benefits of UHD production with advanced audio features.

It is a different climate today than a decade ago with the transition to HD. The consumer technology implementation and installation is well underway. I believe that content producers and owners are seeing UHD/HDR and immersive sound as a premium feature for premium content. Adoption will accelerate as more content—movies, sports, games and music—become available in an enhanced spatialized format.

I asked a group of interested content producers, sound designers and mixers about their view of the path forward for immersive sound for sports and entertainment content. They included Stacey Foster, coordinating producer at “Saturday Night Live;” Fred Aldous, senior sound designer and mixer for Fox Sports; Mike Rokosa, technology executive at National Hot Rod Association (NHRA); and Karl Malone, director of sound design for NBC Sports and Olympics. (My comments are in italics.)

I started the conversation with the question: How long will it be before we see widespread adoption of immersive sound?

Stacey Foster: Every time I go to CES, I get encouraged with all the new technology. I think consumers are embracing soundbars and I expect the majority of the markets to be able to experience UHD with immersive sound somewhere between three to five years. I do not think it should take longer than that. At “SNL” we have worked very hard to push the entertainment side of NBC. Premium content is worth something. We took a couple of episodes and remixed them in Atmos and I was absolutely stunned, it galvanized me.

Mike Rokosa: I heard a Dolby Atmos demonstration for soccer and that started a discussion... OK, you can put the PA up there, but what else? With ball sports you are probably not going to put ball sounds above, but it got me thinking and talking about it. I felt there was something there for NHRA but I didn’t know what it was yet. So we worked with Dolby Labs and we came up with some unique approaches to our sound.

The entire panel agreed that immersive sound design will be guided by the content. Fred Aldous was excited about the prospects of immersive sound for NASCAR, but reserved on field sports like football and baseball.

Fred Aldous: I think if you were able to add overhead sounds to the in-car mix, that would enhance the mix and be a great effect to consume the listener. With a stick and ball sport, adding the additional ambiance and separating sources away from the front can give the consumer a more in-stadium experience.

Karl Malone: The first thing we need amongst ourselves, in our own networks, is the buy-in from production. Having producers and executive producers listen to immersive mixes and be familiar with what they can bring to their productions is very important.

Fred Aldous: I applaud the past chairman of Fox Sports, David Hill, because he wanted to change the way people watched and listened to sports. He gave us the resources to excel. At Fox, the sound is a key component of the brand, part of its signature.

NBC Sports and entertainment has been active to find production and distribution solutions for premium content produced in UHD with immersive sound.

Karl Malone: NBC began testing production practices and workflow for immersive sound in 2016 and continued with the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, where the remote venue A1’s sent various individual 5.1 beds, submixes and objects from some of the big venues back to our Stamford headquarters where we mixed them live in Atmos. Having one A1 mix all the Atmos events helped in having a consistent and reliable mix.

We also examined and tested a single (standalone) event. Our goal with HDR/ Atmos with Notre Dame was a single stream production. One truck outputting HDR and SDR with 5.1 and 5.1.4 respectively. One A1 mixing a 10-channel mix. The HD feed with 5.1 went to 30 Rock for commercial integration and direct to air and the HDR and 10-channel mix went to Englewood Cliffs for commercial integration, encoding and to air on DirecTV.

We worked out of NEP’s ND6, which was retrofitted with four full ceiling speakers and DP590 monitoring equipment. The room was redesigned to Dolby spec and they came in and tested for acoustic accuracy. Front desk production listened in stereo.

Our 10-channel truck mix was sent PCM to Englewood Cliffs (EC), the NBC SportsNet Master Control where commercial advertising was upmixed to immersive, integrated to the broadcast and then encoded to Dolby Atmos there. NBC has advanced technology labs in EC with HDR and Atmos monitoring with both professional “reference” and home “sitting room” confidence monitoring possibilities. We were given very accurate verbal and visual feedback from the labs to ensure that what we were airing was what we were monitoring using the “scene” emulations that the Dolby DP590 would output.

Stacey Foster: Beginning with the 2019 fall season of “SNL,” we are planning to produce 4K in the studio (cameras and graphics) and the switcher will send out a 2K live show and later distribute UHD/HDR with Atmos audio to our digital platform. Every mix position on the show will be able to work in an Atmosenabled environment. We are also working with Lawo and Calrec to implement a 12-channel-wide mixing and monitor matrix plus some other features. The after life of the show is in many ways the most important life of the show. It is going to be taxing to record all the stems, the whole archival side of the show needs a rethink, so there is plenty of homework to be done.

An early adopter has clearly been Mike Rokosa and the NHRA, which has been producing immersive sound since the beginning of their 2018 season.

Mike Rokosa: We had a lot to figure out from OB operation and workflow to replays, transmission and archive. Game Creek, our OB partner, did the work to integrate the listening environment into the truck—specifically fitting the A and B unit with overhead monitoring speakers. We had to build sound scenes for the replay machine. As much as was done with the live mix, there was equal if not more work on replays, records and distribution.

With transmission, we are doing a 10 channel mix and folding it down to 5.1 to Fox—actually what we deliver to Fox is 16 channels: 5.1 and the 10 stems for the Atmos. Our intent is to get the transmission people used to checking in 16 channels of audio through distribution.

Karl Malone: Any retrofit for HDR should include an Atmos upgrade and any new 4K trucks should offer the same. I can’t imagine the leading broadcast networks with the biggest sports events offering anything less.

Mike Rokosa: The audio community is aware of immersive sound, some are toying with it, others like NHRA are doing it. I do not think it is a big reach to get there. We only added a couple of microphones to our regular compliment… the place where you pick up the sound hasn’t changed, but what do we do with that sound is how we make it more compelling.

Fred Aldous: I really do not think that producing it (immersive sound) is going to be the bottleneck.

UHD/HDR and immersive sound content is already available with cinematic and dramatic productions and I would expect more major events like the Olympics to continue and expand the technology exhibition. Clearly a Super Bowl or a World Series is around the corner, but I see content with a strong fan base like the NHRA as a major driver to get the distribution systems ready sooner than later.

After talking to my colleagues and listening to immersive sound material for several years, I see that UHD and immersive sound has the potential to be much more than just “bigger”—it’s the new frontier for content producers and presenters.

Since ATSC 3.0 is a voluntary standard, I expect that we will see the adoption and implementation rate vary between content producers and providers. Additionally, there are still outstanding technical commitments and decisions to make, but the technology and technical options are on the table and ready. Clearly compelling content will drive consumer interest.

For most of us, the migration to immersive sound is a process and I think a lot can be learned from my discussion with my esteemed colleagues. Here are the takeaways:

1) Get everyone bought in—from management to production.
2) Start the dialog about sound design, with everybody—producers, directors, audio designers and engineering—and the sound design will follow.
3) Figure out the workflow—real time, replays, storage and archives.
4) Practice—capture, create and refine.
5) Push to get the distribution in place.

Immersive sound technology is getting ready. Are you?

Dennis Baxter has spent over 30 years as a sound designer contributing to hundreds of live events including nine Olympics Games.

He is the author of “A Practical Guide to Television Sound Engineering,” published in both English and Chinese and is currently working on a book about immersive sound practices and production. He can be reached atdbaxter@dennisbaxtersound.com.

Dennis Baxter is the new columnist for Inside Audio

The beginning of a new year is a good time to reflect on the past and look down the road to the future. Jay Yeary, my friend and colleague, is taking some time off. I will attempt to fill his big shoes by continuing to present concepts and ideas about audio for broadcast and broadband and how to navigate through the sound minefield to success. TV Technology is known for presenting the latest in technology and innovation, and I plan to continue Jay’s excellent work with a year long exploration of the technology and production practices that will make possible the transition into a new world of sound.

Technology makes possible advances in production practices and value. For example, advances in technology resulted in stereo and surround sound, and today we have the technology to transmit between 16 and 24 full fidelity audio channels and many more channels by adjusting the encoding parameters.

But now the question is: what will we do with all those channels of audio? Immersive sound and interactivity come quickly to mind.

IMMERSIVE AUDIO

For several years we have all read in TV Technology and other publications about ATSC 3.0, a set of voluntary broadcast standards for the production of advanced audio and video and at least one major U.S. network, NBC, has been moving forward with testing immersive audio.

NBC has successfully completed the audio testing by capturing and producing immersive sound using Olympic and college football content and distributing the production over its DirecTV partner. At an AES presentation, I heard a senior level NBC audio executive acknowledge it was better than he expected.

But there can be confusion. There have been a variety of audio papers and publications espousing a multiplicity of opinions about what immersive sound is, so it is beneficial to hypothesize a set of discussion parameters. Fundamentally, immersive sound includes some sound reproduction above the listener: either two front speakers for height, denoted as 5.1.2 or four speakers for height represented as 5.1.4. The 5.1 is the typical surround sound speaker setup and the .2 or .4 is the number of sound source channels above the listener. I say “sound source channels” because the sound above the final listener will likely be from side-firing or up-firing speakers or soundbars.

The question now is how does the audio practitioner get from 5.1 surround sound production to some sort of immersive sound?

There is little information and practical experience on how to produce immersive sound live and I plan to share the experience of my fellow sound designers and mixers as well as my practice with producing immersive sound in my 11.1 Genelec studio for the last six years. I assure you the solution is more than a “black box.”

Over a series of columns, I will examine the technology that will make immersive sound possible for the audio mixer, sound designer and content producer. Additionally, we will discuss production practices and possibilities to inform the audio practitioners who has to craft immersive sound.

In the last decade, audio has seen the development and implementation of digital infrastructure technology with digital networks using MADI and IP protocol and it seems that IP systems have touched virtually every signal path and flow that an audio person deals with. This may be the death of analogue audio except for the conversion of sound with transducers such as microphones and speakers.

Microphone reviews show up in the pages of TV Technology, but I plan to look at new approaches to conventional analog capsule microphones such as MEMS-based technology and computer controlled microphones that can beam form into a variety of patterns.

All the microphone manufacturers are experimenting with MEMS technology, but I suggest they get away from conventional microphone design. A MEMS-based shotgun microphone would probably improve durability, but I see new capture methods using beam steering as the future. Now marry those technologies. I have listened to a 19 capsule MEMS microphone and was surprised at the cost and sonic performance. We will discuss these topics later this year.

IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD

Fundamental to immersive sound production is vertical panning. The mixing consoles used for live broadcast and broadband are different than the virtual mixing desk in the post production world. Mixing immersive sound in a studio is firmly entrenched with film and drama because vertical panning is possible with Dolby Atmos, Auro 3D, THX and many other unknown (cheaper) programs that have vertical panners. However, 3D panners for live production of sports and entertainment have only recently seen the light of day with 2018- 2019 offerings from SSL, Calrec, LAWO and Stagetec, to name several. This year I will take the time to explore the possibilities and requirements of next generation mixing consoles.

I believe if we sound practitioners/mixers can hear it, we can mix it. Immersive sound monitoring in the confined space of the OB van is going to be a significant challenge. Test productions have been conducted in some existing OB vans and OB suppliers and designers are considering ways to accommodate immersive sound. Additionally, speaker manufacturers such as Genelec have a range of speaker sizes that seem to be a temporary solution. I would like to suggest that speaker manufacturers come up with alternative designs that would fit better in small spaces. I suggest there could be mathematically placed speakers to create some sort of virtual sound reproduction of any format from stereo to 11.1 or even a 22.1 immersive soundfield that would reside in the OB van. Master control would monitor in a proper acoustical environment with a variety of speaker configuration including soundbars and advise accordingly. Remember, essentially all consumers will listen on some configuration/variation of a soundbar, making a virtual sound reproduction platform at the capture point useful.

CONSUMERS DRIVE THE ADOPTION

Immersive sound is coming quicker than expected because there are standards, encoders and processors, but most importantly, the consumer can experience a better sound product over soundbars and headphones. Reproduction quality is only getting better. Is it perfect immersive sound? Good question, but probably not. Does it sound better to the consumer? Probably. But the consumer will get the ear of the content producers and drive the adoption of immersive sound.

For the audio practitioner the question is how do we produce sound for the future? Practice, test, learn and question.

The question that concerns me the most is how does the audio practitioner design sound for a wide range of playback options? Last month’s CES showed that there are plenty of consumer playback options… but soundbars are at the top.

Audio production will suffer from a range of reproduction options which are probably not capable of precisely reproducing the sound designer’s aural vision. The consolation is that it probably sounds better than what the average consumer was listening to and that is the starting point.

Over the course of the next year, we will take a look into that crystal ball for the future of audio, and most importantly, how you can best prepare for it.

Dennis Baxter has spent more than 30 years as a sound designer. He is the author of “A Practical Guide to Television Sound Engineering,” and is working on a book about immersive sound practtices and production. He can be reached atdbaxter@dennisbaxtersound.com.

Audio technology has changed faces many times during the decades I’ve been in the industry. However, the biggest change by far was the transition from analog to digital, and once audio was turned into bits and bytes it enabled us to do things that seemed inconceivable in the past. Not only do we no longer record linearly, most of us no longer do anything in a linear fashion, with random access now being the way we record, work, and live our lives.

We’re currently undergoing another monumental transition in the audio industry, when audio technology can enhance user experience and drive quality forward or increase individual isolation, with instantaneous delivery often done at the expense of quality. The following technologies are all linchpins in our audio future and how we use or abuse them will determine the course of professional broadcast audio production.

MACHINE LEARNING

Most discussions of artificial intelligence seem to focus on robots taking jobs from humans while also performing all of our mundane household chores, leaving us simultaneously unemployed and free to get in some really serious binge watching. AI already has the ability to analyze and learn from itself, a process called “machine learning,” and this has helped create some powerful tools for audio production.

It is a brilliant use of computing power to have processes analyze themselves and their outputs or, in our case, analyze what we’re doing and offer suggestions to improve how and what we do. Anyone who mixes using presets is already relying on someone else’s idea of a good starting place, but machine learning takes this concept to the next level by analyzing in real time rather than just giving us a static starting point.

I was among the skeptics when it came to what are often touted as “automatic mix” tools until I discovered they are very useful for analysis, similar to using console meters in spectrum mode during mixes to monitor the overall tonal balance. These tools can act as a second set of ears listening for you, and that is almost always a positive thing. These machine learning audio tools are perfect for handling mundane tasks such as compliance and correction, which means they may one day free us from managing loudness and monitoring immersive audio down mixes.

IMMERSIVE AUDIO TOOLS

Immersive audio is the most exciting development for mix engineers since 5.1 surround, and it is the technology that makes me want to get back into daily audio production work. It seems like every month there is a new surround microphone coming to market to help create immersive content.

The possibilities for creativity and error with immersive audio are immense. Fortunately, there are now more tools than ever to help keep things from getting out of hand. Multichannel meters and panners that work across immersive busses are being released in software as well as in hardware form. These tools are accessible to just about everyone now, to the point that even the two primary workstations in my home studio, Pro Tools and Nuendo, include immersive panning, bussing, monitoring and authoring tool connectivity.

VIRTUAL AND AUGMENTED REALITY

Before 4K and HDR, 3D was the next big thing. Now the next big thing is supposed to be virtual reality. Slip on a VR visor and closed ear headphones and you become part of another world, that is, if the visuals are engaging enough to draw you in and the soundscape is enveloping and convincing.

This technology may be impressive, but a more intriguing alternative is augmented reality, where an enhanced version of the real world is presented through the screens of our devices. AR may actually present more challenges for sound designers than VR because many sounds need to be organic while others, such as audible cues, often work better when they sound totally artificial.

Since AR is viewed through portable device screens instead of visors, soundscapes are presented in virtualized surround on earbuds of dubious quality or through tiny device speakers. The challenge for audio professionals is to somehow make the augmented audio experience truly immersive and keep the viewer engaged when they can easily peer beyond their screen back to the real world.

THE COST OF CONVENIENCE

The era of personalized audio began with the introduction of the Sony Walkman in 1979 and it may finally have reached critical mass. We now find ourselves at the point where there is more individualized media consumption taking place than at any other time in history, yet very little of that media is the highest quality available.

Delivering digitized content using limited bandwidth requires widespread bit reduction to the point that it can be almost impossible to find digitally uncompressed content at the consumer end of the chain.

We’re balancing on the precipice of a very perilous chasm between convenience and quality. It may soon be the case that the only way to experience true uncompressed audio is to attend an unreinforced acoustic performance; or perhaps we’ll just have to start listening to the people around us.

Now more than ever, the goal of every audio engineer should be to create the best sounding, highest-quality audio imaginable every time we have the opportunity. We must strive to make people crave quality audio every time they listen or they will stop caring. We must use the incredible tools we now have at our disposal to create truly exciting, immersive and engaging audio for every single project, no matter where or on what device it will be heard.

In closing, this is my final Inside Audio column and I wish to thank everyone who has taken the time to read the column since I started filling it with words back in 2013. A very special thank you to Tom Butts for granting me this opportunity and to Terry Scutt for transforming my cogitations into sentences fit for print. Each column was an incredible learning experience and I can’t wait to read what Dennis Baxter will be sharing in this space in the future. His insights come from the leading-edge work he is doing in the very areas our industry is moving toward.

Jay Yeary is an audio engineer who has had the good fortune to spend his entire career in broadcasting. He is a member of AES, SBE, SMPTE, and TAB. He can be contacted throughTV Technologymagazine or attransientaudiolabs.com.

SEOUL, S. KOREA—SBS, the South Korean television and radio network is transmitting live UHD coverage of select World Cup matches over ATSC 3.0 in immersive and interactive audio using Fraunhofer’s MPEG-H audio format. The demos marks the “world’s first” regular broadcast of immersive and interactive audio powered by MPEG-H according to the broadcaster.

In addition to the opening match between Russian and Saudi Arabia, SBS says it is broadcasting more than 30 matches in UHD/MPEG-H over the ATSC 3,0 broadcast transmission standard during the month-long tournament, including the final and all matches involving the South Korean team. To complete the experience, the loudspeakers at the stadiums from which the matches are being aired include a 5.1 surround setup. For the viewers, SBS is offering three audio presets to hear each match: S. Korean, English or “pure stadium atmosphere.”

[Read: Do We Need More Audio? A Primer On Immersive (3D) Sound]

In addition, a “Dialogue Enhancement” feature will allow viewers to individually optimize the mix of dialogue and effects based on their listening situation

Although the U.S. iteration of the ATSC 3.0 uses Dolby AC-4 for audio, South Korean broadcasters are using the MPEG-H standard for ATSC 3.0 audio. 

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo. 

MUNICH—From time to time new technology requires development of new production techniques, and that’s precisely the situation South Korea’s three major broadcasters, KBS, MBC and SBS face when it comes to their deployment of ATSC 3.0 to provide 4K UHD coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics from PyeongChang, South Korea, Feb. 9-25.

Specifically, the broadcasters needed to learn all they could about immersive audio for coverage of the event.

South Korea has chosen MPEG-H as the audio system for its ATSC 3.0 implementation, so German research organization Fraunhofer –a major MPEG-H proponent– has made a significant effort to help the nation’s broadcasters prepare for immersive audio production of the Olympics.

Fraunhofer technology consultant Stefan Meltzer supervised the training of South Korean broadcasters in MPEG-H’s immersive and personalized interactive sound. In this interview, he discusses how ATSC 3.0 immersive audio will be used for coverage of the games, the approach Fraunhofer has taken to training, some of the immersive technology that will be used for the production, what Korean 4K UHD viewers will hear and how the new audio technology lends itself to a prototype ATSC 3.0-based mobile TV deployment planned for the Olympics.

TVTechnology:MPEG-H as part of the ATSC 3.0 implementation in South Korea will be used to provide immersive audio coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics. Tell me about its application. What events will it be used to cover?

Stefan Meltzer: I can’t say for the moment because that is something that is up to the Korean broadcasters working with OBS [Olympic Broadcasting Services].

But it is a high probability that the opening and closing ceremonies will be immersive, and then there is also a high likelihood that the sports of interest [to South Koreans] like short track speed skating and figure skating might be something that will be covered in immersive. Other events that might not be so popular in Korea might only be covered in 5.1.

TVTechnology:It’s not like you are starting with a completely blank sheet of paper, but immersive audio is quite a new technological capability. How have you helped South Korea’s broadcasters who will be involved with Olympic coverage get up to speed?

SM: We have been working with Korean broadcasters for nearly two years. We also have a demonstration room in Korea. Last year, we started to train South Korean sound engineers on immersive sound and the interactivity.

We now have four sound engineers in Korea who can help direct the broadcasts. We also have demonstrations that allow us to demo the technology and also the entire production chain, as well as listen to it over speakers and on an immersive sound bar.

In addition, we have regular training with people coming over from Germany. We also have an inspector as a consultant and an inspector as a consultant to Olympics production for OBS.

With this expertise brought in, we can tell them how this can be done for the Olympics.

TVTechnology:Tell me a little more about training the four South Korean sound engineers for immersive audio.

SM: We brought them over to Germany and trained them in the different trackings and technologies and how to set up the microphones and how to prepare the mixes—the basic ideas behind it so the people who are working as freelancers in Korea can be trained onsite by them.

However, I am not sure that you are aware of the big strike that has been going on at KBS and MBC since the beginning of September. That is slowing down the whole thing a little bit at the moment.

TVTechnology:At this early stage, is it difficult to find the audio production technology that will be needed for the immersive mix?

SM: We have the technology available to make this happen. We have developed with Linear Acoustic and Junger Audio the audio monitoring units to generate MPEG-H and they have all the capability to monitor and to render audio to the immersive set top.

MBC [Munwha Broadcasting Corp.], for example, already has an OB van for UHD transmission, which has an immersive setup.

TVTechnology:Often the concept of personalized audio falls under the immersive audio umbrella. Will personalization be supported? For instance, bringing up or pushing down the commentators or crowd noise?

SM: That is certainly under discussion—not only to raise or lower it but also about creating a service to provide coverage of the Olympics in more languages.

That way the games will be covered in different languages even if you only watch Korean TV. They would have different commentators.

TVTechnology:You’ve mentioned MBC. What about the involvement of Korean Broadcasting System, KBS, and Seoul Broadcasting System, SBS?

SM: They are working together on the Olympics. There is a kind of consortium involving the three main broadcasters for Olympics coverage.

SBS is kind of the lead broadcaster in the discussion with OBS.

TVTechnology:Production of the Olympics is a unique endeavor compared to other events. Will the lessons learned here help in other live production situations where immersive audio is desired?

SM: For sure. I think that every production we do today, whether it’s a live production or post production, gives us the opportunity to learn more and more about immersive audio and improve for the future. Especially since we have outdoor events and indoor events at the Olympics.

TVTechnology:I’ve seen Fraunhofer’s MPEG-H immersive audio sound bar technology demoed at NAB and IBC. Has any CE company begun offering a commercially available sound bar with that technology for South Korean viewers to use during the Olympics?

SM: I am not allowed to talk about any concrete products, but I think we will see something at CES in a few months.

TVTechnology:Would you like to add anything else?

SM: At IBC, the Korean broadcasters had their own booth and showed what they plan to do in the future.

At the Olympics, they would like to have a prototype of mobile TV using ATSC 3.0. So they showed at the booth a little speaker connected to a tablet where they used an ATSC 3.0 receiver, which decoded the physical layer and the rest of the decoding was done at the tablet for mobile TV.

Korea is one of the few countries where mobile TV is popular. They currently have a mobile TV service, which will be replaced by an ATSC 3.0 mobile service.

That is another reason they want to use MPEG-H for this. They want to enable personalization so the viewer can adapt to the listening environment—whether it’s at a quiet park or a noisy airport—so that viewer can adjust the audio component accordingly.

INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.—Did you hear the one about a bunch of broadcasters walking into a golf resort full of Hollywood production types?

“If you bring it,” they said, referring to content, “We will come. With ATSC 3.0.”

The preceding anecdote was based on the true story of this week’s ATSC seminar at the Hollywood Post Alliance Retreat, held annually in Coachella Valley. ATSC 3.0, colloquially known as the “next-generation” broadcast transmission standard, is rounding the final corner of development and could be completed as soon as the second quarter of this year, according to Madeleine Noland of LG. Noland, whose work on 3.0 earned her the Bernard J. Lechner Award, highest accolade of the Advanced Television Systems Committee, said the standard is 80 to 85 percent complete. The seminar came just four days before the Federal Communications Commission is set to vote on voluntary deployment of the standard at the Feb. 23 open meeting. (See the component standards comprising ATSC 3.0 in the pop-out sidebar below.)

OTA+OTT
Noland opened the Monday afternoon seminar with a litany of characteristics—Ultra HD support, name your frame rate up to 120 fps, high dynamic range, wide color gamut, object audio, personalization and scalabilitya la one person gets 24 Mbps or a million. It makes no difference. ATSC 3.0, she and several panelists emphasized, redefines broadcasting the way jet propulsion redefined travel.

“Today’s system is designed with certain planning factors,” said Winston Caldwell, vice president of spectrum engineering in the Fox Networks Advanced Engineering Group. “The expectation was that people put Yagis on their rooftops, and the network’s designed to hit that antenna. Now, it doesn’t have to be like that. You can simply configure the system to deploy that network and give people an experience unlike they’ve had before with broadcast television. Think about the reliability of the cellular network. I tend to get frustrated with that. This is megawatts of power. The network can be configured to give you something no one has given you before.”

3.0’s capabilities leapfrog previous methodologies in that it supports interactivity versus push transmission only, but perhaps more radically, ATSC 3.0 combines broadcasting and broadband. Among other implications, that means channel surfers can move between over-the-air and over-the-top platforms like Netflix without jumping through a bunch of interface hoops.

RECEIVERS
That type of functionality—as well as ATSC 3.0 itself—requires a new generation of receivers, since the standard is not backward compatible with the one currently feeding TVs and cable headends across the country. This presents the old chicken-and-egg dilemma that HDTV had to get over, which is; what comes first, the content or the receivers? After HDTV finally drove a massive wave of new TV sales, a similar expectation for 3DTV hit the ground like a bag of wet cement.

TV manufacturers are taking a different approach with 3.0, which also supports mobile reception. LG, for example, introduced a gateway device at last year’s NAB Show that decodes ATSC 3.0 signals and redistributes them via Wi-Fi through an app. LG also introduced its first ATSC 3.0 4KTV at CES earlier this year in preparation for the deployment of 3.0 in South Korea this year. (South Korea officially adopted ATSC 3.0 last July, according to the Yonhap News agency.)

Noland and Caldwell were joined by Dave Siegler of Cox Media Group, Nandhu Nandhakumar of LG and Steve Koenig of the Consumer Technology Association for the first panel of the day on ATSC 3.0 distribution and display.

Siegler said Cox is “really interested in better pictures, immersive audio, dynamic ad insertion and advanced emergency alerting.”

Nandhakumar said LG is focused on “important consumer-facing features,” such as 3.0’s ability to reach further into buildings and support mobile reception. With regard to creating consumer awareness, his response was simple: side-by-side demos with 1.0 transmissions.

Koenig noted that “TV is something very different today… [it ’s] diffusion of content engagement across screens.” TV viewing on what old-timers call “TV” is decreasing, he said, from 61 percent in 2011 to 51 percent today.

SINGLE FREQUENCY NETWORKS
Caldwell took an audience question on single frequency networks and whether or not broadcasters would be willing to invest in multiple towers the way cellular service providers have. Single frequency networks, or “SFNs,” comprise multiple transmitter sites simultaneously slinging a signal over a single frequency. SFNs allow for greater signal saturation in a coverage area.

“When you put in another tower site, you expand the [bit] pipe,” Caldwell said. “It’s a real key to the efficiency of the system.”

“With regard to cost, we see the key to that just cooperation, as we move into the future, hopefully the broadcast industry can cooperate more. A single tower can host several broadcasters at once a key way to offset costs... with regard to SFNs, we’re talking about four towers, maybe 10, not hundreds of towers,” he said.

INTERACTIVY
Mark Corl of Triveni Digital led a second panel on interactivity featuring Guy Hadland of UniSoft Corp. Joe Winograd of Verance Azita Manson of OpenZnet and Pete Van Peenen of Pearl TV.

Hadland described how Unisoft provided data delivery and interactive applications for the OCAP cable standard, which is still in use in 14 million Charter homes. He said Unisoft now has a working data delivery system for ATSC 3.0.

Manson, whose company led an ATSC 3.0 app authoring project for the National Association of Broadcasters, said some new apps will appear at the upcoming 2017 NAB Show, including one for interactive advertising opt-in.

Hadland noted that, “Comcast Spotlight has been selling enhanced interactive ads for about three years. It’s one of the first things broadcasters can do.”

Van Peenen noted that the opt-in structure isn’t part of the 3.0 standard, “but from Pearl’s perspective, it would be opt-in,” to keep from peeving viewers, “but we don’t want people to have to opt in every time they change the channel.”

LIKE HbbTV
Winograd talked about HbbTV as an object lesson. HbbTV is a hybrid broadcast-broadband service in Europe. He said by “layering on top of OTA services an entry point into OTT, the broadcaster doesn’t lose a viewer when they change channels.”

He gave some examples of widely deployed HbbTV features, including real-time, customized content such as live, in-play soccer league stats, or viewer participation events. An addressable advertising feature “has gained a lot of traction in Germany,” he said, where 320 million “switch-in” ads per month are to delivered 26 million viewers over 10 million sets. These are overlays that occur during the program segment just when a viewer tunes into that program, hence, “switch-in.”

CONTENT PRODUCTION
A third and final panel featuring NAB’s Skip Pizzi; Steve Bartkowicz of NBCU, Thad Beier of Dolby Labs, Howard Lukk of SMPTE, and David McElhatten of Fox Networks Group, addressed ATSC 3.0 content production, for which Siegler earlier urged producers in the audience to have “an open mind.”

Pizzi addressed some key differences in producing audio for ATSC 3.0, which supports the type of technology that make it sound like raindrops are falling all around a listener. This object, or immersive audio technology, can place discrete sounds throughout a defined three-dimensional space. Immersive audio involves 12-plus channels, or “N”objects,” he said. Among other things, Pizzi recommended producing in immersive and downmixing to 5.1 or stereo.

Lukk talked about the advanced video features enabled by ATSC 3.0—multiple frame rates, aspect rations, resolutions, 10-bit color for high dynamic range, and how some of these lend themselves more readily to episodic TV versus live broadcasting. High frame rate, he noted, tanked in traditional cinematic story-telling, and might be more effective as a plot device much the way black-and-white and color were used in “The Wizard of Oz.”

Beier addressed high dynamic range, and said the first order of doing it is to “shoot well, first of all.” He noted HDR is not just for brightness, but for blacks as well.

“We think doing HDR first makes the best product. Mapping from HDR to SDR is better than an SDR version done by hand,” he said.

Finally, McElhatten said the killer 3.0 app is personalization, particularly for sports.

“At Fox, we do more than 11,000 sporting events a year, more than 8,000, highly regional. I’ve tried to do enhancement on drama, but it’s very hard,” he said. McElhatten showed screengrabs of “live biometrics,” analytical data and other information on drive Dale Earnhardt in a NASCAR event.

He also showed an example of a live multiscreen portal using the multiple content channels NBC employed in the 2012 London Olympics.

“There were eight channels that NBC owned that were running Olympic content,” he said. The idea of the portal is that a broadcaster can show all of their channels in small windows on a single screen, so a viewer could pick and choose among ongoing live events.


Also see where ATSC 3.0 was last year during HPA…
Feb. 16, 2016
“HPA 2016: ATSC 3.0 Update”
Over-the-air TV is on its way to resembling a more robust version of the Internet with the realization of ATSC 3.0.

And then go ahead and check out our ATSC 3.0 silo for more TV Technology coverage, and please feel free to drop us a line with any questions you may have about the standard.

LONDON—IBC has upgraded its Big Screen Auditorium for IBC 2016, announcing a new installation that features HDR and HFR 4K 3D laser projection and immersive audio. Home to the IBC Big Screen experience, the new features will help share more than 300 speakers during the conference.

The auditorium will feature a pair of Dolby Vision HDR 6P laser-illuminated 4K projectors capable of 31 fL in 2D and 14 fL in 3D with a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1 and the ability to support all DCI frame rates. A pair of Christie Mirage D4KLH60 HFR 6P laser-illuminated 4K projectors offering 4096x2160, 120 fps, 3D, will also make up part of the auditorium’s equipment. The 7th Sense Design Delta Media Server, which can play content at 120 fps, 4K, 3D, has been added for a special presentation of clips from Ang Lee’s new film “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.” Harkness Screens has also been tapped to provide a 17mx16.69m Matt Plus screen with a 4K Digital Perforation pattern.

The audio setup for this year’s conference will be Dolby Atmos immersive audio, powered by QSC. The QSC stage system is in L-C-R configuration but uses a double center channel array for more headroom. The time-aligned surround channels are augmented for Dolby Atmos with overhead speaker arrays, extra ‘wide channels’ for smooth continuation from the screen o the room, and bass-management to two additional rear twin 18-inch subwoofer systems. Dolby CP750 and Dolby DMA8+ processors patched into a Cadac CDC8 digital console help provide surround sound 5.1 and 7.1 sources. The Dolby Atmos signal is controlled by the Dolby CP850 processor and routed via AES67 to the Q-SYS digital network system and DSP technology with a Core 500i central controller and DPA networked amplifiers.

In total, the Big Screen Auditorium will feature five projectors, 46 loudspeakers, and 128 mixing console channels.

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS—With immersive audio knocking on the door of broadcast television, it seems like a good time to investigate some ways to create content for the format. According to some in the industry, a look at the future of immersive audio requires us to charge up the flux capacitor, hop in the DeLorean, and travel back to 1975.

At the 2015 NAB Show, Pro Sound Effects demonstrated an Ambisonics sound effects library of London ambiences. Initially I was skeptical about the utility of these sounds, but, after previewing them and realizing the amount of control available, I walked away intrigued by the prospect of creating and using sound effects that were immersive all the way from capture to consumer.

Testing was done with the SurroundZone 2 software provided with the sound effects library to decode the B-format audio and recreate the captured sound field.

Considered by some to be a dead format, Ambisonics has resurfaced as a possible immersive format, especially since it was created to capture and reproduce 3D audio from the outset. While it’s important to look at how Ambisonics works as an immersive format, we also need to see how it holds up when listening is non-immersive. Though the London sounds previewed at the NAB Show are not yet available, a library of New York City Ambisonic sounds was released and used as test material for this column, along with some B-format recordings I made several years ago.

While we will look specifically at Ambisonics technology in this column, there are other methods of capturing multichannel sound.

COINCIDENT PAIRS
All microphones designed for capturing sound fields and ambiences are composed of some array of capsules, either spaced at a calculated distance or based on some form of coincident pair, where two microphones are placed nearly touching, facing the sound source, with their capsules angled 90 degrees (typically) to each other. X/Y, Mid-Side (M-S), and Blumlein Stereo are coincident pairs, and it, in fact, was Alan Blumlein, the famed English electronics engineer who developed this technique in the 1930s.

The benefit of coincident pairs is that timing and phase errors are eliminated because the source sound arrives at both capsules at the same time with equal amplitude if the source is directly in front and slightly early/late with differing amplitude if the sound is to either side. The elimination of timing and phase errors also means that the sound captured with coincident pairs does an excellent job of folding down to a single channel.

SoundField microphones, designed specifically for Ambisonics, are based on the coincident pair technique, with four capsules close together as opposed to two, in order to provide height to supplement front/back and side to side. Microphones from other manufacturers are available with different coincident pair implementations, essentially some expansion of M-S, including the Schoeps Double M-S and the Sanken WMS-5.

Researchers are experimenting with other microphones and placement options for capturing 3D sound fields, but all recordings tested here were made with the SoundField ST450 microphone system.

SoundField microphones capture raw audio (A-Format) from the four capsules (Lb, Lf, Rf, Rb) in their array, which then go into a processor that converts them to B-format signals for recording. B-format matrixes the raw audio into a more or less 360-degree sound field by recombining channel content to create one omnidirectional channel and three bidirectional channels.

The omni channel, W, combines audio from the four capsules (Lb+Lf+Rf+Rb) and acts as a sound pressure channel. Of the bidirectional channels, X supplies front/rear imaging (–Lb+Lf+Rf–Rb); Y provides side-to-side imaging (Lb+Lf-Rf-Rb); and Z gives us up and down imaging for the all-important height dimension (–Lb+Lf–Rf+Rb).

TESTING SOFTWARE
Hardware processors or software can be used to decode the B-format audio and recreate the captured sound field. My testing was all done with the SurroundZone 2 software provided with the sound effects library. Since B-format recordings consist of four channels of audio (BWF), it seems natural to place them on a four channel-wide track, but they actually need to be placed on a 5.1 track in order to get a 5.1 output (the software currently supports up to 7.1).

Once the decoding software is inserted onto the multichannel track, you have the ability to steer the decoded channels around in the mix as well as change microphone orientation, tilt, width and other parameters. The amount of control you have as the mixer is actually quite substantial, which gives you the ability to create some very dramatic shifts in the image. The most dramatic of all for mixers may be that, despite the fact we are working with a captured 3D sound field, it collapses perfectly to stereo and mono.

There are certainly some issues with the SoundField system if the goal is to use it for truly immersive projects. First of all is the fact that the decoding hardware and software only support 7.1 and there are no current provisions for audio object placement. For post work there is already plenty of overhead involved in creating immersive audio mixes with not many workstations equipped to handle the workflow out of the box.

Even though three dimensions of audio are captured in the B-format recording, I was unable to locate any currently available tools that give us the ability to recreate those dimensions in an immersive production environment.

If there was ever a technology begging to be used for immersive audio, this is it. In a 1990 AES paper on Ambisonics, author Roger Furness stated that, “The original sound field, whether it was a live sound or one created at the mixing console, has an infinite number of possible sound directions.” That sounds more like the immersive technology coming with ATSC 3.0 than one already 40 years old.

More testing and development of Ambisonics are certainly in order, especially when incorporating the technology into immersive workflows, but downmix compatibility is already there. Expanded decoding tools are needed and despite the fact 3D audio can be captured with other microphone configurations, many of those setups are not portable, making them useful only in controlled indoor settings and unsuitable for live events, which are increasingly important as broadcasters seek to differentiate themselves from OTT services.

Jay Yeary is a broadcast engineer and consultant specializing in audio. He is an AES Fellow and a member of SBE and SMPTE. He can be contacted through TV Technology magazine or attransientaudiolabs.com.

NEW YORK—Audio systems are being required to handle many more channels than 5.1 plus stereo. In the consumer world, Blu-ray with Dolby Atmos can support multiple channels for an immersive audio listening experience. For those who can’t add more loudspeakers to their listening rooms, solutions such as Yamaha Sound Bar, can provide a 3D-like sound field without the bulk. And major MSO Comcast will be supporting Dolby Atmos in its Xfinity X1 platform starting in 2016.

At the broadcast, production or origination end of the spectrum, we’ll need to rethink our audio systems to accommodate the growing requirements of next-generation audio, an umbrella term Tim Carroll, Linear Acoustic founder and Telos Alliance chief technology officer, prefers to use. This covers object-oriented audio, which can provide immersive audio, personalized audio, visual descriptions, multiple languages, headphone rendering and more.

MORE CHANNELS 

One of the big changes is the multitude of audio channels that will be required. Instead of BNC or XLR connections, multiple channels of audio will be carried on an RJ45 connector and interconnected through an AES67-based network using computer network switches. This will obviate the need for another audio system mainstay, the crosspoint-based routing switcher. No more determining matrix configurations or what sources need to be available to what destinations.

And maybe even more radical, now that most of us have gotten used to SDI where audio is carried along with the video, audio and video will need to once again go their separate—although synchronized—ways.

If you’re thinking of upgrading your plant or creating new, build in an AES67 network. Carroll said, “No matter what happens with audio, an [AES67 network] will be able to handle it. It will be more expensive to go SDI and SDI will probably not be able to handle it.”

The audio network shouldn’t be the same as that used for business computers and devices like printers, Carroll advised, but digital telephony could be carried on an audio network, and can have some advantages in tying in phone calls to an audio production system or server.

Certain off-the-shelf network switches can be used. Carroll said that Telos has tested and certified switches that they stand behind for broadcast-grade networks. The list can be found on the Telos Alliance website.

Reliability for an audio network is key. It must run 24/7 with no signal delays. This may not be something a business IT department is used to, and must be considered when determining who will maintain and monitor the system. Education on all sides can help the transition.

The audio network will need to be synchronized with video and other technical networks, but that has been made easier with the passage of two recent SMPTE standards, ST 2059-1 “Generation and Alignment of Interface Signals to the SMPTE Epoch,” and SMPTE ST 2059-2 “SMPTE Profile for Use of IEEE-1588 Precision Time Protocol in Professional Broadcast Applications.”

These standards are based on the IEEE 1588-2008 standard for Precision Time Protocol (PTP) and written to address sync requirements for professional audio and video systems.

Manufacturers of master sync generators are starting to make PTP available. An example is the Evertz 5601MSC, where PTP is an option.

While it looks like over-the-air broadcast of next-gen audio will need to wait until ATSC 3.0 is completed, streaming is an option today. Broadcasters don’t necessarily have to wait before upgrading their audio systems.

“AES67 can handle multiple audio channels in a single RJ45 connection using network cable,” said Ken Tankel, platform manager, TV Processing at Linear Acoustic. “This is much easier, more space-efficient and likely less expensive than placing multiple BNC connectors on the rear panel of a device. A user should consider what AES67 can offer. This includes audio contribution, audio monitoring, metering, and the ability to control source/destination connections anywhere an IP network can reach. All of these things can be done without needing a dedicated hardware audio router. We think that there are many places to start.”

One of them is the on-air chain. For example: “Linear Acoustic has the SDI x.Node that interfaces two HD/SD SDI I/O to 16 pairs of AES67 I/O. We also have separate audio processing and loudness control with AES67 I/O,” Tankel said.

Fig. 1 shows an example of how AES67-networked equipment can be incorporated in an on-air signal chain.

Fig. 1: An example of how AES67-networked equipment can be incorporated in an on-air signal chain

THE ADVANTAGES OF AES67

Production is a big area that can take advantage of AES67, not only for a single control room/studio complex, but especially across multiple studios and control rooms, as different control surfaces, stage boxes, IP servers and audio processing can all be easily linked, as well as the on-air devices. The same could be said of mobile trucks.

While audio over IP has been in use in radio facilities for over a decade, now that AES67 has been standardized, it should see more use for audio for TV or video. Production audio console systems from such manufacturers as Lawo, Studer, and Wheatstone offer AES67 capability, and Calrec has announced AES67 support with products out in the future.

“It is an ideal time to look at the equipment and manufacturers that you want to use and find out if AES67 interfaces are already available or planned for,” Tankel said. “The industry is in a transition and designing with AES67 in mind will become easier, and more common, as more manufacturers choose to include it in their products. Audio consoles, intercom, audio DAWs video editors, telephone, ISDN and IP-based audio transport, audio processors, loudness controllers and playout systems are just a few of the places that AES67 can find immediate application in the television facility.”

There could be an argument to wait a bit until AES67 becomes a feature in equipment you are interested in. And there are some things in flux. Still to be standardized are such functions as audio naming conventions, advertising and discovery, as well as carrying GPI control, and there is ongoing work in that direction.

No matter what one chooses to do now, it’s important to start becoming familiar with AES67 and networks in general.

Mary C. Gruszka is a systems design engineer, project manager, consultant and writer based in the New York metro area. She can be reached via TV Technology.

LOS ANGELES—Hollywood Blvd. is lined with the names of TV and film stars, but from Oct. 26-29 the stars that occupied the famous street were those who attended SMPTE 2015. Broadcast industry professionals were on hand to discuss many of the biggest trends in the industry, and TVT was on hand to gauge what caught attendees’ attention. Here are the top five trends from SMPTE 2015.

Immersive Audio
Also known as object audio, immersive audio is designed to put the listener into the middle of the action. Multiple panels were held on this emerging technology, but perhaps the big buzz about it was the ITU’s recent approval of object-audio broadcast standards, new standards designed to facilitate the production and exchange of advanced audio files. This allows immersive audio to be paired with UHDTV.

Enhanced TV
This is not your old version of “enhanced TV.” What was talked about at SMPTE deals with UHDTV, 4K, 8K and beyond, including factors like high dynamic range, high frame rate and wider color gamut. A number of panels discussed how it takes more than just more pixels or a higher frame rate to achieve a superior look.

IP Transition
A lot of experimenting and trials are still occurring in regards to the IP transition. Just prior to SMPTE 2015 getting underway, the Video Services Forum, whose membership overlaps with SMPTE’s, released its Technical Recommendation for Studio Video over IP; it is expected to go to a SMPTE committee for standardization. SMPTE 2015 talked about IP in detail during its two part panel “IP and Networking of the Media Facility.”

ATSC 3.0
Should it really come as any surprise? ATSC 3.0 seeks to dramatically change the broadcast industry as we know it, so anytime it is talked about it will draw a large number of eyes and ears. The final day of the conference provided an overview of the next-gen standard and its advantages over legendary TV delivery systems, as well as an update on its development status.

Virtual and Augmented Reality
Could this be the next content revolution? SMPTE certainly had a number of demonstrations of what virtual reality and augmented reality can do, including a VR short from the Reese Witherspoon movie ‘Wild,’ and apps from the designers in the department of Film & Digital Media at Baylor University. You can check out some of videos here.

GENEVA—ITU has announced that its members have unanimously approved Recommendation ITU-R BS.2088-0, open standards aimed to deliver advanced sound for broadcasting services. Based on existing RIFF/WAV file formats, the new standards are said to facilitate the production and exchange of advanced audio files by allowing a single file to carry a complete audio program containing audio samples as well as metadata for any combination of object-, channel- and scene-based audio.

The “Recommendation contains the specification of the BW64—Broadcast Wave 64 Bit—audio file format, including the new chunks, and which enable the file to carry large multichannel files and metadata, including the Audio Definition Model specified in Recommendation ITU-R BS.2076,” the document, entitled, “Long-form file format for the international exchange of audio programme materials with metadata,” states.

It goes on to say that the BW64 format is based on the WAVE audio file format specified in the Resource Interchange File Format, or RIFF. These WAVE files contain audio data.

“The basic building block of the RIFF file format, called a ‘chunk,’ contains a group of tightly related pieces of information. It consists of a chunk identifier, an integer value representing the length in bytes and the information carried. A RIFF file is made up of a collection of chunks.”

This BW64 format is said to use the core elements of the format as described in EBU Tech 3306. The BWF file format described in an earlier recommendation, Rec. BS.1352, had a number of limitations, incuding a maximum file size of less than 4 Gb, no support for advanced multichannel audio and inadequate support for technical metadata. The BW64 format described in BS.2088-0 aims to overcome those limitations while preserving as much compatibility as possible with BS.1352.

The aim of all of this is immersive audio and being able to pair it with UHDTV for a more life-like television experience. With the technical capabilities of these standards, viewers will be able to adjust the level of immersive audio. This is made possible by object-based coding, which allows viewers to personalize the viewing and listening experience at the point of consumption, including setting language and dialogue levels and selecting different aspects or sections of programming.

ITU is the United Nations agency for information and communications technology.

Also see...
August 12, 2015
“Do We Need More Audio? A Primer on Immersive (3D) Sound”
Immersive audio goes beyond 5.1 surround sound and uses more channels to create the sensation of height (sound above). Where this gets interesting is—how many more channels?

June 29, 2015
“ATSC Sounds Out 3.0 Audio Proposals”
The field of competitors for the next broadcast—and therefore production—audio standard which once included Dolby Labs, DTS, Fraunhofer IIS, NBCUniversal, Samsung, Technicolor and Qualcomm, has been whittled down to two contenders: Dolby, with its AC-4 technology, and the MPEG-H Alliance represented by Fraunhofer on behalf of its partners, Qualcomm and Technicolor.

May 12, 2015
“AES69-2015: Key to Immersive Audio”
Depending on many variables—including where our head is in the soundfield in relation to the source—sound is likely to arrive at each ear at a slightly different time, at a different intensity and with a somewhat different frequency response depending on the shape of our head and ears, and reflections/cancelations from our body.

March 10, 2015
“ATSC to Review Audio Proposals for 3.0 Standard”
The three audio proposals were submitted by Dolby, DTA and an alliance consisting of Fraunhofer, Qaulcomm and Technicolor.

February 20, 2015
“AES Conference to Target Immersive Audio”
Immersive sound is on the forefront of audio technologies gaining ground in cinema and television. Unlike mono, stereo or even 5.1 surround sound, immersive audio is not dictated by the number of channels feeding a likewise number of speakers.

January 26, 2015
“All-Around Sound: Mark Richer on ATSC 3.0 Audio”
Immersive audio for ATSC 3.0 is composed of two different sound enhancements over the current ATSC 1.0 system; first, personalization and the ability to customize the audio program based on the viewer’s unique needs, environment or device and second, enhanced surround sound, bringing a much more enveloping experience to both the home theater and headphone listener.

BERLIN - Jünger Audio is set to reveal new quality control tools for immersive multichannel 3D audio at the upcoming 2015 IBC Show. On display will be a prototype audio monitoring platform that will allow broadcasters to check the quality of all immersive audio transmission, regardless of format.

The audio monitoring system is a hardware-based product that will serve as a future platform to host immersive 3D audio encoding formats from different vendors, including MPEG-H TV audio system and Dolby’s immersive audio system. The hardware contains a combination of I/O, decoding stage, monitoring functionality, audio control software, and an advanced user interface. The platform allows monitoring and auditioning of up to 16 channels of audio. SDI, MADI and AoIP input and output formats will also be included. For object based encoded content, the graphical interface allows the user to perform 3D panning for audio objects to move and pan them around the screen.

At IBC, Jünger will demonstrate its audio monitoring technology with the Fraunhofer IIS MPEG-H TV audio system. The integration of Jünger loudness control features into MPEG-H enables broadcasters to identify content that has already been processed or leveled for loudness control or not.

Jünger Audio will be located at booth 10.A49. The 2015 IBC Show will take place in Amsterdam from Sept. 11-15.

The current buzz in the television industry is all about the promise of 4K, yet most of the talk is centered on video quality, with very little being said about the audio that supports the image.

The reason so little is being said about audio for 4K television is because it is an area that’s still in its infancy. No standards currently exist that define exactly what audio for 4K is, but organizations like ATSC and SMPTE are now tackling the technical requirements while Dolby, DTS, Fraunhofer, and other manufacturers are sorting out the creation and consumer ends of the chain. The part that is crystal clear is that the efforts of all the standards organizations and manufacturers are aimed at making the 4K audio experience both immersive and personalized, and that these goals are centered around object-based audio.

DOLBY ATMOS
Object-based (also called object-oriented) audio has been used in video games for years, but it made significant media industry news with the introduction of Dolby Atmos. This format, developed for cinema but destined for homes, was designed to create a completely enveloping audio experience for the filmgoer by placing speakers in the ceiling in addition to the front, side, and rear walls. The base 9.1 channel surround bed covers the front of the cinema while 118 individual audio objects are placed or panned everywhere else in the room. The audio objects can consist of fully mixed audio channels but are more likely to be individual or specifically grouped sounds, depending on what needs to be heard in any of the (up to) 64 addressable speakers at any given point in the film. While this creates a memorable experience in the theater, the move is now underway to bring this immersive audio experience to the home listener by adopting and implementing the NHK-developed 22.2 surround platform.

Home speaker placement for a potential “Immersive audio” experience Delivering 24 channels of audio to the home could prove to be a challenge, but not nearly as insurmountable a challenge as putting 24 speakers in a living room. The recently released HDMI 2.0 specification may solve the consumer end of the delivery chain with its support of 32 channels of audio, along with the specification for enough bandwidth in the pipe that each of those channels can pass audio at 48 kHz. Speaker-count, however, is something that all of the groups pushing immersive audio recognize to be a problem, so they’ve put forth a variety of solutions to achieve the same result without turning living rooms into speaker demo rooms. Those solutions run the gamut, from hanging speakers at ceiling height in the room’s corners, to sound bars under and sound frames around television screens, to surround headphones for personal listening. Oddly, after all of the effort that goes into making the audio immersive the end result is still expected to be downmixed to be compatible for playback on 5.1, stereo, and even mono systems.

CUSTOMIZED AUDIO
Personalization may actually be the most interesting, and most likely to deliver, promise of audio objects for television. Because an object can be any piece of audio in the program, the home listener can have as much control of the program audio as the content creator allows. Turning announce channels into audio objects means that listeners can swap the main broadcast announcers for local language or home team announcers without changing anything else in the mix. The listener can raise voice track volume over background sounds if they are having trouble distinguishing the voice, or mute the voices if they want to experience the event without commentary. Descriptive video service or special commentary programs could be delivered easily using this same method. Of course all of this customizability requires new equipment for content creators and consumers as well as some method of control, most likely to be extended metadata, which will require proper authoring and delivery to the home for the system to function.

The Traumpalast in Backnang, Germany contracted with Kinoton to install a Dolby Atmos audio system earlier this year. The system includes a total of 57 speakers. The introduction of audio objects into the production process certainly means workflow changes, with additional audio sources and new metadata to manage, but that’s not the only area where their impact will be felt. Audio rooms will need to have the physical space to hold the additional speakers required by this format and also for proper imaging from so many sound sources. This means that broadcasters and production houses will need to allot more facility space for audio rooms at a time when many audio production room footprints are shrinking. Post-production systems may require more powerful workstations, with additional DSP and output busses in order to process and deliver the large number of objects that a production may produce. We may even see the return of audio consoles to television audio post rooms just to handle the complex routing and panning of audio objects.

Creating immersion during live event production will require a completely reimagined workflow and could mean that, due to the physical limitations of mobile unit mix spaces, the onsite mixer will send a surround mix plus other audio sources to a production facility with better listening environments where the final immersive mix is actually assembled. To get all of these channels from site to production facility will likely double the number of transmission paths needed. For in-studio show productions it may be difficult to create an immersive environment without the placement of additional microphones or the introduction of pre-produced atmospheres into the program.

With television industry heavyweights pushing immersion and personalization to the forefront, audio objects seem like a technology we’ll all be getting to know better over the next few years, but how widely and to what extent it gets implemented will depend on how far creators and broadcasters are willing to go to produce content with this new technology. It also remains to be seen whether consumers will embrace immersion or personalization of the audio that comes along with their video. That decision may ultimately hinge on whether existing problems and complexities are solved or made worse by this new technology.

Jay Yeary is an audio engineer currently working with the engineering department of a large media company. He finds the concept of audio objects fascinating and dreams of some day panning sounds around 64 speakers, just for fun. He can be reached via TV Technology.