Sports broadcasting is undergoing a profound transformation. Evolving audience expectations and technological advancements are making immersive, accessible, and personalized audio the new benchmark for fan experiences. Unlike several other iterations of early broadcast innovation, like the emergence of HD, 4K, and HDR, the technology that enables audiences to experience Next Generation Audio (NGA) is already in the hands of billions.

More than 3 billion devices, in fact, from laptops and smartphones to tablets, headphones, and home entertainment systems, are NGA-ready. Technologies like Dolby Atmos are widely available across consumer devices, yet in many cases, their full potential remains untapped by broadcasters.

Early Adopters are Pushing Audio Frontiers
Several recent deployments of NGA have demonstrated its real-world impact in live broadcast environments. Landmark trials with Serial ADM (S-ADM) and the emerging SMPTE 2110-41 standard during the Paris Games enabled France TV to deliver Dolby Atmos audio with personalized language options, all within a single bitstream.

That service remains on air today, delivering deftly personalized audio and setting an example for other broadcasters (not just in sports) eager to implement similar NGA workflows for deeper immersion and customization. Similar deployments are starting to take off in Brazil, which is rapidly adopting the ATSC 3.0 standard as a de facto broadcast delivery method.

These aren’t just technical enhancements, they’re foundational shifts enabling a range of exciting new features that enrich the viewer experience. Multilanguage support breaks down barriers, making sports accessible to a global audience. Meanwhile, enhanced accessibility via more nuanced audio description (AD) features ensures that everyone, regardless of visual impairment, can fully engage with the action without being forced to listen in mono or stereo. This means that some of the audiences set to benefit the most from NGA may be those who rely primarily, or even exclusively, on their sense of hearing.

Evolving Standards, Real-World Implications
SMPTE 2110-41 introduces a flexible way to send audio-related data, like metadata or subtitles, alongside audio and video in live IP workflows, which enables NGA to be in environments where low delay and accurate timing are crucial. Meanwhile, S-ADM, which is an open, standardized metadata format, leaps one of the final hurdles in personalized audio delivery.

Now, broadcasters can dynamically adapt the audio on a program-by-program basis. For example, a soccer match can be produced with a 5.1.4 immersive bed mix, often referred to as the “international” or “clean” feed, with multiple individual dialogs in different languages. Commercials, meanwhile, can be delivered as a standard 5.1 mix. Thanks to metadata carried with the stream, downstream receivers or decoders automatically interpret the viewer’s preferences and render the audio accordingly, ensuring a seamless and personalized listening experience.

The industry win here isn’t just technical. For the first time, major players who provide the final emission codecs have aligned behind a single, open metadata standard versus relying on proprietary solutions. This moment of convergence unlocks enormous value for broadcasters, producers, and audiences alike.

Putting Viewers in Control
Audiences now expect experiences that reflect their preferences, needs, and identities. Sports audio is beginning to lead the charge in offering choice and inclusion, setting a benchmark for other producers in live events and entertainment broadcasting. NGA-driven innovation is enabling viewers to select commentary (and even the individual commentators) in their preferred language without compromising the immersive or surround sound experience.

Alongside a host of accessibility benefits delivering better dialogue intelligibility and AD services with full surround or immersive audio, broadcasters deepen connection and elevate overall quality with more sophisticated audio that brings fans closer to the action.

Crucially, object-based audio makes this flexibility possible. Traditional 5.1 or stereo workflows constrained the number of available channels, forcing broadcasters to make hard decisions about which elements of the audio experience to prioritize. With the ongoing advancements in Next Generation Audio, content creators should be motivated to deliver multiple language tracks within the same stream, allowing for personalization at scale without compromising the artistic intent of the mix.

This freedom will power richer, more engaging, and more inclusive experiences that reflect the diversity of today’s audiences. Broadcasters who want to win the future of sports audio have it all to play for — the technology is there, it’s time to give the viewers what they deserve.

There have been a series of significant milestones in the evolution of Olympic broadcast sound culminating in the greatest audio production of an Olympics ever. Clearly NBC has led and dominated the soundwaves for more than four decades and 2024 is the pinnacle of their persistence.

Host Broadcasters
Basically, live television sound was mono until the 1980s with the first Olympics stereo broadcast in 1988. Under the direction of sound designer Bob Dixon, NBC placed a shotgun microphone alongside the host broadcaster’s single shotgun microphone to capture XY stereo. This was no easy feat politically or technically since the Host Broadcaster Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) was only obligated to delivered mono sound to the rightsholders, including NBC.

The Host Broadcaster was traditionally the national broadcaster of the host country, but after 2008, Olympic Broadcast Services (OBS) became the permanent Host Broadcaster, fully under the direction of the International Olympic Committee.

The Host Broadcaster for the 1992 Games in Barcelona was TVE, Spain’s national broadcaster, where they produced the Opening and Closing Ceremonies in stereo, but sports were captured and produced in mono. The year 1996 was the first Olympics that the Host Broadcaster, Atlanta Olympic Broadcaster (AOB), captured and produced all events in stereo sound.

After 1996, Dixon encouraged Mike Edwards and Ken Reichel of Audio Technica to manufacture a stereo shotgun. In fact, Edwards initiated and supervised the development of three stereo microphones and two mono shotgun microphones, which were still heard on all Olympic sports and ceremonies in Paris.

Signal Management
In addition to the extensive development of suitable microphones, there was considerable work to be done with signal management and distribution. Broadcasters had to solve the problem of multichannel audio over a stereo infrastructure. Various schemes were developed to get more than two channels of sound to the home viewer/listener, but it was not until the sound was digitized that a credible surround sound was possible for distribution and transmission.

In 2006, after consulting with his audio director, Olympic Broadcast Services chief Manolo Romero determined that producing surround sound with unprocessed, discrete audio channels was the best way to satisfy the needs of all the rights holders at the Olympics—including NBC.

With 2008 came the implementation of surround sound at the Summer Olympics with the host broadcaster delivering six discrete channels of sound for the 5.1 sound format.

The sound of the 2008 Games was a significant challenge for NBC because so much of the viewing/listening audience was still listening in stereo since soundbars had only recently entered the marketplace in early 2000s.

NBC continued to develop surround sound with various Dolby analog schemes, but it was NBC’s adoption of ATSC 1.0 with Dolby AC3, along with a market full of affordable soundbars that multichannel sound would take off.

Immersive Sound
NBC polished its surround sound coverage but was persistent with the goal of true immersion. For the 2012 Games in Russia, NBC Sports Sound Designer and Olympic Supervisor, Karl Malone vigorously pursued immersive sound, beginning in Rio where NBC mixed Opening and Closing Ceremonies in immersive sound.

Pyeongchang and Tokyo followed, and immersive sound was heard in both Opening and Closing Ceremonies as well as big venues. For Beijing, all primetime coverage was produced in immersive sound. Finally in Paris, all primetime, USA Network and all Olympic sports received the immersive sonic enhancements.

By the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games, immersive sound was also captured and delivered by the permanent Host Broadcaster OBS. Nuno Duarte, the OBS sound designer and supervisor, was dealt a surprise—no audience! And the same for Beijing. The magic of sports and particularly the Olympics is seeing and hearing the arenas and stadiums full of spectators.

The games were delayed a year and everyone had time to prepare a design without spectators. The actual sound signal capture and production of immersive sound is not difficult particularly if you have a sonic layer of ambiance and atmosphere.

Malone had to make some difficult decisions about the sound design.

“Tokyo gave us the ability to focus on the details of the sports and the athletes,” he said. “The sound of the hands on the gymnastics apparatus and the creak of the wood on the parallel bars; the actual physical exertion of the athlete, the breath, the sighs, the joy all there to be captured without the masking by the crowd. We knew we were missing the passion of the crowd as much as the athletes were, but adding any fake crowd was unthinkable, even for a company like NBC, which is largely an entertainment one.”

A Milestone
The 2024 Summer Games in Paris were also a milestone as they were the first summer games where immersive sound was produced with the return of the audiences, the third dimension that was missing in Tokyo.

NBC seamlessly creates a production mix that includes “stems” of the host broadcaster’s 5.1.4 mix, plus any microphone splits, any additional crowd capture, any camera microphones, plus commentators, replays and music. Along with NBC’s branding and personal touch, it makes it look like NBC did the entire production.

“The absence of the crowd in an event of the magnitude of the greatest sporting contest in the world is almost unthinkable, and Paris is a return to what an event of this scope requires for the greatest athletes, the biggest crowds and the loudest cheers,” Malone said.

I anxiously tweaked up my Yamaha, Dolby Atmos-equipped soundbar and paid my subscription to Peacock over my Roku streamer and noticed a significant improvement with the sonic quality of the broadcasts.

The return of the spectator and the abundance of “open-air” stadiums has created a rich gumbo of sound succulence! I applaud Nuno Duarte and Karl Malone and thoroughly enjoyed listening.

LIÈGE, Belgium— WNM is a Belgian company specializing in audio and multicamera distribution as well as ENG activities and intercom provisioning. It also provides technical services for global sporting events and consultancy for broadcast infrastructure projects.

For top-tier events like the recent UEFA European Football Championship, where nothing must go wrong, focusing on the split-second delivery of the highest-quality content is obviously important, although the final result also depends on the tools you have at your disposal. Audio is a core ingredient of any TV production and getting this part right essentially hinges on the flexibility afforded by the mixing system.

Championship Mix
The ability of Lawo’s mc² consoles to function in an open-standards IP infrastructure makes it easy to distribute the required signals to the right destinations. This networking aspect is critical in large venues with a distributed pool of audio stageboxes. IP allows me to easily send audio essences to other sites where they can be reshuffled and embedded as necessary.

This is the kind of audio and video flexibility I needed for the European soccer championship in Germany, for instance. I love the ability to reliably patch audio streams directly on my mc² console, because speed is of the essence when the world is watching.

The A__UHD Core provides a stellar density of fully-featured DSP channels in a compact footprint. While 1024 DSP channels may seem overblown, I quite like having one channel per signal with no need to compromise on the number of inputs and outputs. End-to-end redundancy is another big plus. At the Euros in Germany, for instance, the ability to quickly select all relevant audio channels made my mixing job a lot easier.

I often use the Remote Desktop functionality to tweak parameters in a software application running on a remote computer right from the mc²’s screens. Whether management software, playout apps or external effects—remaining in the sweet spot without the need for a KVM system allows me to stay in the flow.

The Right Dynamic Range
I’m also able to conveniently handle 5.1(.4) productions and other delivery formats in parallel. Then there is the sound quality: the dynamic range of Lawo’s preamps is just perfect for sporting events where levels tend to span the gamut. Basically, you can throw any signal at the A__stage I/O boxes and still get a natural and crisp sound from a mix of on-camera, referee, field-of-play and ambience microphones.

The mc²’s physical and graphic user interfaces have a clear structure, with consistent color-coding for easy identification, and a layout that plays to my muscle memory. I can access the functions fast and intuitively, so that I can tweak settings without even looking at the controls in question.

Did I already mention that I just love the fact that I can assign any parameter to a fader? This is a major timesaver for my typical workflow. During the championship match in Germany on July 14th, for instance, I used this functionality to manage the stereo width and digital gain of my ambience bus as well as to fine-tune the delay settings. These General-Purpose Controllers (GPC) can also be linked to the Audio-follows-Video function in order to tweak a resource’s settings by means of a video event.

So, there you have it: I am extremely fond of Lawo’s mc² consoles, the A__UHD Core and the A__stage I/O boxes. They allow me to focus on the mix and deliver world-class audio content.

More information is available at https://lawo.com.

STAMFORD, Conn.—NBC Sports will use a variety of microphones, headsets and headphones from Audio-Technica for its production of the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics, July 24-August 11, and August 28-Sept. 8, respectively.

NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 will feature multi-platform offerings across NBC, Peacock, USA Network, E!, CNBC, GOLF Channel, Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Universo, and NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app. NBC will provide at least nine hours of daytime coverage of the Summer Games’ most exciting events, including live finals coverage.

“We’re delighted once again to have Audio-Technica provide more than 600 microphones, headsets, and headphones for our Olympics and Paralympics production,” said Karl Malone, Sr Director Audio Engineering, NBC Sports. “The quality and reliability of Audio-Technica hardware, as well as the tonal quality of the products, allow us to be consistently creative in our audio production. Whether using a mono or stereo shotgun microphone or an immersive 8.0 microphone, Audio-Technica's products will ensure exceptional sound quality for NBC Sports production in Paris and Stamford.”

Audio-Technica has worked with NBC Sports for 24 years, assisting NBC Sports’ production efforts at previous Olympics and other major international sports events in North America, Europe and Asia.

“It is always a pleasure to work with the audio team at NBC Sports, from the meticulous planning through to the on-site delivery,” states Rodrigo Thomaz, Project Manager – Broadcast Partnerships at Audio-Technica with technical responsibility for the collaboration. “The concepts that we work on together are always pushing the barriers of what can be achieved with exceptional audio capture at the numerous sporting venues.”

The fidelity and quality of live programing has certainly improved over the last couple of decades; however, inconsistencies exist between events and broadcasters.

Through the efforts of many sound designers and mixers, sonically boring sports such as baseball and football have been transformed into consistent aural master pieces. Fox Sports audio mixer Fred Aldous changed the sound of football with the application of wireless microphones on the players, which is only growing in scope and popularity.

My proposal for wireless microphones in the bases at the 1996 Summer Olympics was shut down by the Cuban delegation fearing that the athletes could communicate to the outside world through my base microphone. Enough cannot be said about Joe Carpenter, audio engineer at Fox Sports, and his impact on baseball sound. He has put wireless microphones in all the bases plus on the homeplate umpire for years.

Soccer Coming Up Short
There’s no doubt that the power of persuasion from John Madden and the Fox production staff swayed the powers at the National Football League to recognize that this is what the public and viewers want. Clearly gaming sound, particularly on John Madden’s Football video game opened the ears of the consumer who began to ask, “Why can’t I hear that on TV?” Well, you can.

Wireless microphones on just about everybody now has piqued viewers’ interest and increased viewership for the struggling United Football League (UFL).

I commented in a previous article that I thought sound coverage of the FIFA World Cup had evolved to the best ever. This was basically accomplished with super-fast computing and some very clever algorithms assisting the mix. However, recently I watched/listened to the international production of UEFA Champions League football (soccer) finals between Dortmund and Real Madrid, and to politely state—it sounded very average and boring. I don’t understand­—virtually every sport has upped the game with pictures and sound except soccer.

Basic audio-follow-video was absent, when on multiple occasions I saw handheld cameras with no “close perspective” sound. Basic audio-follow-video is nothing new and was used as far back as 40 years ago where certain microphones, such as microphones on handheld cameras, were controlled by the switching of the camera. Audio-follow-video — basic sound for football/soccer has to include all corner kicks—no exception. Once again, the microphone is only a few feet from the corner and a basic camera switch would never miss a corner kick sound.

We are beyond the basics and once upon a time, sonically deficient audio coverage in sports was acceptable, but not anymore.

Some Immediate Improvements
I have expressed my opinion about AI and super computers completely taking over a live news or sports production. I still have faith in my prophecy but believe there are some immediate improvements that can be achieved with audio and the general production with AI supercomputing.

For example, Lawo’s HOME app platform with its use in the Rugby World Cup, has proven itself able to control the natural field effects. But one level further is available where you can automate the effects portion of the mix with subtle augmentation of field sounds. This powerful and disruptive technology has been developed by the English company SalsaSound and their MixAiR technology. AI can not only execute simple intelligent audio follow, but it can easily improve speech intelligibility through filtering and sampling.

With the 2024 Summer Olympics coming up, I would expect the sound to be significantly better than the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics just because the spectators are back. But with immersive sound it is easy to bury the sports effect with too much atmosphere and ambiance. My hope is that they are advancing their microphone coverage using some innovative sound technique like I have outlined in my book “Immersive Sound Production, a Practical Guide.”

High-quality audio production has trickled down from the production of large events like the Olympics, National Football League and Major League Baseball to where quality production of audio and video is common at all events, from bowling to darts. Take a listen to ESPN’s college softball coverage.

Cinematic sound is not hard—just hard work. Grow with the technology. There is an abundance of affordable sound enhancements that, with digital mixing consoles and audio plug-ins, can help dial in and create your sound. Learn. Last year I went to a Mix Magazine-sponsored event in Nashville about immersive sound and there were more than 100 people who were interested in immersive sound for music production as well as broadcast. The next generation of sound designers must diversify their skills, be persistent and be open minded about how to best entertain their audience.

Dennis Baxter has contributed to hundreds of live events including sound design for nine Olympic Games. He has earned multiple Emmy Awards and is the author of “A Practical Guide to Television Sound Engineering” and “Immersive Sound Production – A Practical Guide on Focal Press.”

He can be reached at dbaxter@dennisbaxtersound.com or at dennisbaxtersound.com

This year we have heard the terms "artificial intelligence," "machine learning" and "deep fakes" tossed around frequently, particularly since Wall Street forecasters have discovered AI as a financial evaluation metric for a tech company’s future performance. Companies that are known to support broadcasting and media applications such as Microsoft (ChatGPT), Adobe, IBM (Watson), NVIDIA and Soundhound AI, all promote possibilities with the continued development of this technology.

After some research, I am still trying to understand what seems to be an evolving definition of AI, but I have no doubt that smart/fast computers will significantly impact broadcasters and media companies.

AI seems to encompass a bundle of operations like machine learning and computer-created deep fakes, dependent upon analyzing vast amounts of data to predict, create and deliver a desirable outcome. Content companies such as Netflix have benefitted from AI with computer-generated programing recommendations based on accumulated information of a person’s search and viewing habits.

Music, Hollywood Scripts
Computer jocks have used AI to develop complex algorithms to create art, music, even dialog for movie and TV scripts, (music, for instance, is pretty repetitive—you can only imagine how many hit songs are based on three chords/notes and a rhyming dictionary). I also think that there is no reason not to believe that ChatGPT could write a Hollywood script. Remember, the last Hollywood writers strike gave us “unscripted” reality TV—often a waste of electronic transmission time and electricity.

Since machine learning is data-driven, it is dependent on the accumulation of more and more data samples to improve the results. Constant sampling only improves the outcome and has been particularly effective with the AI sub-field of “deep fakes.” We think of deep fakes as replicating a person or object’s face or voice onto another, but deep fakes are as old as TV itself—background sound effects such as laugh and clap tracks, even coconuts used for horse hooves were intended to imitate reality and fool the gullible listener with the magic of radio and television.

Clearly machine learning has applications in broadcasting. 

There is no question that HBS—Host Broadcast Services, the production company for World Cup Football—used fast computers to make possible accurate microphone selection and mixing possible. Lawo worked with HBS to develop a mixing system that takes data of the ball position and translates that into an algorithm that captures the best possible sound from the best microphone or combination of microphones, plus determines the level to mix and blend the microphones together. Tracking the ball is done optically and in a sport like football, the focus of the game is the ball; basically, you tell the computer to follow the ball. 

Is this artificial intelligence? I would say more “deep learning.” Another sophisticated automated mixing algorithm, “Spatial Automated Live Sports Audio” or SALSA, was developed by my friends Rob Oldfield and Ben Shirley.

“In our case we are primarily using deep learning to automatically recognize sound events in broadcast microphones so we can automate and enhance the on-field mixing,” Oldfield said. “We are increasing what we are doing with AI beyond this though, and are now looking at crowd and commentary sentiment analysis so we can generate metadata for other parts of the broadcast chain, for example, automatic highlight generation. 

“It occurs to me that there is a lot of data from the microphones at an event (not just sound capture),” he added. “I think this has been overlooked in the past, but with the increased power of deep learning and AI we are in a better place to fully use the microphones as ‘data gatherers’ and audio can add value to all parts of the broadcast and fan experience.”

AI-Assisted Audio
Now let’s follow the flow for typical sport coverage and look at the advanced possibilities of AI—machine learning for sports coverage. Camera robotics has been around for a while and there is no reason the cameras and audio cannot follow the electronic commands of a computer that is following play action.

AI comes into play when a computer analyzes the switching patterns and compares the director’s commands to the position of the ball within the field of view of the broadcast cameras. The computer archives the director’s selection and patterns for future progressive learning and within a short period of time, repetitions will be detected, examined and programmed into event cycles to take over the direction of the cameras and audio. 

AI-assisted audio coverage/production could include speech interpretation and synthesis such as AI-driven subtitles, but could AI mimic a play-by-play or color commentator? 

Consider this: The computer can learn styles from “real life” commentators and further learn how to filter information from the cameras to match the visual action and build a reference library of players or actors. The “speech” computer can ingest all the data and artificially create the commentary track and even mimic certain styles and accents.

Speech synthesis has been around awhile and with the addition of faster computers and machine learning it becomes conceivable that you can create droid commentators that interpret/present the play-by-play action and side stories to complete the entire experience.

Sound analysis has been common practice, however artificial intelligence would be good at evaluating patterns and picking the best choice(s) for a replay from a set of indicators. For example, a very loud, sudden burst of crowd (sharp attack) with a long sustain is probably a good indication of a goal. 

The vocal inflections of the crowd—sustained screaming as opposed to a sigh of dismay that dies out quickly is another valuable and identifiable metric. From these simple learning indicators, the computer within a dozen repetitions will be able to accurately predict a good highlight moment. 

Clearly media production will benefit from computer augmentation and machine learning simply because of the amount of content that needs to be generated. Media entertainment cuts across a variety of viewing and listening options including small or large screens, even goggles with anything from immersive sound to earbuds and an adaptive learning algorithm such as AI can only contribute to the elevated experience.

It all impacts TV technology, particularly since we work in a deeply computerized world. Where do you fit in this brave new world.

After months of listening to games of American football, I once again wonder why audio sounds differently across the networks—CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN/ABC—for basically the same event. There seem to be several noteworthy variables that significantly shape the sound of a telecast including the venue, the broadcaster/network and finally a sound mixer’s tone, processing and mixing style.

Stadium Sound
When football first went on the air there were no indoor stadiums and they played in the rain, snow and occasionally in sunny conditions on grass. Audio coverage was mono and basic with various parabolic receptor designs, but the sound was adequate for the moment. My sound impression memory is that there is a sound to a snow-covered icy stadium with hard surfaces, a crispness that carries the sound. But broadcast sound changed with the addition of roofs, artificial surfaces and PA craziness. 

A little physics tells us that an “open stadium” lets the sound/noise escape from a confined space. Sound energy builds and the cumulative effect is destructive to a clean capture for television purposes. 

Jonathan Freed, mixer for ESPN/ABC, stated the obvious: “Open air stadiums sound different because the PA and crowd don’t echo off the roof and walls when there aren’t any.” 

Additionally, Freed has presented his theories about “air inversions” for years. “In a really cold outdoor stadium the warm crowd and heaters by the team benches cause a layer of warmer air to rise and when it gets to a certain height it collides with the colder air forming an atmospheric inversion layer over the stadium. Sound from the field of play will actually reflect off of this layer back towards the sidelines and in some cases create a noticeably fuller sound for the parabs to pick up.”

The venue acoustics clearly are a factor, but Fred Aldous of Fox Sports told me that “the PA systems have gotten bigger and louder, and, significantly, the PA usage has crept into play action," Aldous said, “Music is being played over kickoffs and at the end of play, which interferes with useable field of play sound.” To make things worse, several years ago Atlanta was fined for pumping crowd sound back through the PA.

Acoustics impact the tone of the sound that the microphones capture, but the mixers control the balance of the sound elements—announcer, effects, crowd and music. With most major sporting events there is a significant effort to capture the sound from the field of play. Microphones and their placement are not a secret and there is fair consistency across the different mixers and networks particularly today, but clearly this did not happen by accident. 

My sound observation is that Fox Sports mixes in more field presence. David Hill was chairman of Fox Sports for almost two decades and was instrumental in advancing the sound of football with his persuasion of the NFL to allow wireless microphones, first, on officials, and later, on players

Sound Variables
Even though football has had a powerful advocate with Hill, the NFL still controls where and when microphones can be placed and opened. 

For example the NFL does not permit microphones near the benches and regulates the use of the microphone on the sky cam and even controls opening the player microphones before the networks receive a feed. The sound obstacles and variables
are well entrenched in the Sunday sound and there are guidelines, but there are differences in NFL crews. I have been told that some NFL sound personnel are better than others.

Of the number of games telecast on a Sunday afternoon, it seems that there would be a desire for a network to have consistency between the multiple games that are broadcast. Phil Adler,  who did audio mixing for CBS Sports for more than two decades, told me that the network only has a mandate that the announcers’ volume level be between 4 and 6 dB louder than the field sound, but everything else is subjective to the mixer.

Aldous believes that Fox’s consistency endures because of weekly phone meetings, adding that while the meetings are not mandated, they do offer a forum to share ideas, philosophies and give “ownership” to the mixers.

Given that the sound variables, which include microphones, venue characteristics and technical facilities are somewhat equal, then the real difference is that the sound is the artistic and subjective interpretation of a sound mixer. You can not underestimate the range of subjective interpretation of a single sport from a group of audio practitioners that bring the consumer 16 consecutive Sundays of NFL football. 

Experience Counts
As with everything in life, experience is the difference. It is hard to understand how unpredictable live sports can be, and how much of a challenge it is for the mixer to control, manage and tame the sound. 

An inexperienced mixer tends to use too much compression to control the wide swings in the sound. Under compression/limiting can lead to the sound distorting through the signal chain while over-compression can be equally unpleasant with the audio pumping up and down.

An inexperienced mixer may not understand why the transmission signal flow was problematic when the networks went from mono to stereo and then to surround. What about immersive? Even though there is little talk of football in immersive sound, it is going to happen, and the learning curve will impact the sound of the show. 

Finally, sound reproduction to the consumer is a moving target as well. Stereo, surround, immersive, soundbars, headphones, TV speakers—my head hurts. Sound has been equal parts evolution and innovation and maybe a little sound voodoo. What draws viewers’ attention to a game, even if they are half asleep? The sound! What can carry an entire show without pictures? The sound! 

The audience can finally hear a difference and sound is a differentiating factor with broadcast brands. Some of my interviewees commented that some of the broadcast sound today is difficult to listen to. 

BALTIMORE—As the worldwide COVID-19 shutdown moves towards the one-year mark, Scott Pray recalled what was happening in March 2020 in the sports world, and in particular, sports audio.

“Last April, the lead audio representatives of all of the networks were really against doing anything artificial,” said Pray, audio director for ESPN. “We’ve since changed our views. Our goal has always been to bring a good viewing and listening experience to the viewers; that now means they want the broadcast they saw pre-pandemic.

“So our approach,” he added, “has been to try to replicate that experience as best we can.”

Of late, that’s usually meant accentuating the broadcast with crowd noise and reactions that became complex enough that NFL Films created an audio setup that ESPN, CBS, NBC and Fox Sports used during 2020 NFL broadcasts.

STREAM IT

At the start of the pandemic, Pray said that he and his colleagues “initially forgot” that adding crowd sounds meant they were “simply doing their jobs.”

“That’s what happened when we were in the ‘NBA bubble’ for 95 days, [working in] the three [smaller than average NBA) arenas” at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex just outside of Orlando.

Notably, since no fans were on hand, the actual sounds of the game reached the air—including the colorful language. “We went to a five-second delay to deal with that issue, but otherwise we tried not to vary our approach too much,” Pray said. “When we used crowd noise, it was incorporated from each team’s regular arena into the broadcast, as the NFL does.”

However, Pray said while the NBA and NFL have both added sound, each league does so in different ways. For the NBA, the home arena sound is delivered into the arena, “but ESPN also takes a second feed to add to the broadcast mix,” he said.

That’s different for NFL broadcasts. "In that case, there is a crowd murmur from the stadium feed,” Pray said. “Then the NFL takes a second stream with audio from the home team stadium, which is a separate feed. On ‘Monday Night Football,’ we had our A1 mixer executing commands for the different crowd sounds and adjusting levels for various game action,” such as touchdowns or penalty calls.

NFL Films “provided the systems for most playbacks and we accepted it in 5.1 format and mixed it into the MNF broadcast,” said Pray, “but in the NBA bubble, Firehouse Productions provided six teams of two mixers each, one for the home team and one for the visitor, and would feed the sound to us in 5.1. We also had an in-house disc jockey to enhance our presentation and make it more familiar” for the fans.

AHEAD OF THE GAME

The concept of adding crowd noise to a broadcast was initially broached several years ago to Fox Sports by an audio mixer from Southern California, but wasn’t implemented until it suddenly became a need, not an option.

The man behind the idea was Fred Vogler, president of Los Angeles-based Sonofans, who finally found his opportunity due to the pandemic.

“Given the fanless sporting events, we thought that good crowd audio could enhance productions, so we proceeded with Fred, the NFL and NFL Films, which had also considered this approach,” said Michael Davies, senior vice president, field and tech operations for Fox Sports.

Overall, said Davies, “the response has been very positive, so we [previously] added it onsite to our MLB, boxing, soccer and NCAA football coverage, with Sonofans curating various sounds for each sport from our four or five mixing stations.”

For the “NFL on Fox,” the balance varies with each situation. “We score a game as you would a new movie with music, which takes special skills. Events on the field need a [manual] interpreter to find the correct response,” he said. “That’s taken some getting used to, but folks have gotten very, very good at this.”

As for actual crowds, which have been as high as 25% capacity, the fans “can become pretty vocal and make up for the 75% who are missing,” said Davies. “Still, we need to figure out the right balance, because we didn’t want to mow over the real sounds in favor of what’s curated.”

Like ESPN, Fox also incorporated the crowd murmur, or “walla” sound effect. “When the ‘walla’ was not as notable as it normally is,” he said, “we filled in the dead spots with the curated sounds.”

There are two levels to the mix. “One is from the A1 mixer in the truck, who handles the usual field effects, announcers and music; then we feed the crowd in at very low latency from our L.A. broadcast center so [the mixer] can implement what they deem necessary—such as when a penalty call goes against the home team,” said Davies, adding, “That can be odd, however, if the opposing team has a large number of fans in the seats. That happens fairly often during NCAA football telecasts.”

NEW EVOLUTION

Although Davies characterized mixing sounds in the current environment as “complex,” he’s already seen an evolution.

“We’re constantly hunting out new sounds and tools in the tool box, so our mixers can get the most authentic reaction,” he said. “There was even some thought of going all virtual with the sound, with a kind of noise floor during the baseball postseason, even to the point of pumping it into the stadium.”

And as Pray pointed out, “with no crowd, you can hear the field effects more [to the degree that it resembles] almost a studio environment,” Davies said, “but while the mic distribution plan didn’t really change, how we mix did. For instance, during the latter games of the World Series and in working with NFL Films, we relied on NFL Films to mic certain players—not so much for people talking, but for the effects.”

Sometimes, that hasn’t been necessary. “The one thing we leaned into in the second half of the NFL season was the sound coming off the field,” said Fred Gaudelli, executive producer of “NBC Sunday Night Football.” “Because there’s [virtually] no one in the stadium, those sounds were heard in a way that came through loud and clear. We were hearing things that you would have never, ever heard before.”

Mike Francis, vice president of remote engineering for CBS Sports, said that sound accents of a game come not only from the fans and players, but from other influences, too. “The 32 [NFL] venues are all different animals in relation to acoustics, which the crowd can generally equalize,” he said.

With NFL Films providing a home crowd mix for all of the networks, Francis said the balance of mixing the live and artificial crowds “has been educational and challenging, partially because it masks the acoustic issues in a given stadium. That’s hard to handle on an architectural level.”

That issue even extends to announcers, who he said “feed off the crowd.”

“Early on, we were tentative in how much stadium sound we gave [the talent], but many of them wanted as much as they could get to provide energy for their call,” Francis said. “Each has their own preferences for the decibel level and just how much crowd they want to hear in their headset.”

On the technology side, CBS broadcast up to eight NFL games a day, with Calrec the audio console of choice. Microphone acquisition is a combination of the Calrec Hydra II, Dante audio-over-IP “and some good, old-fashioned analog copper, in case something goes wrong,” Francis said.

“The technical interfaces are between CBS’s main mixer in its truck and its audio quality control team in its broadcast center in New York, which interacts with the NFL Films crowd mixer to ensure that the audio matches the events on the field,” he added. “They’re able to note the subtleties that come from football intelligence.”

What CBS did during the NFL playoffs depended on the venue. “That’s because 15,000 people in Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City may sound like 30,000 in another stadium,” Francis said. And repeating venues in the playoffs is helpful to keep everyone on the same page.”

Changes CBS, which is broadcasting Super Bowl LV, made for the postseason included repositioning parabolic mics on the field “due to the expansion of the benches for social distancing, which has made them harder to fit in the right spot; the sounds can be pretty shocking,” said Francis. “It’s audio you might not have heard before.”

These are interesting times for live sports broadcast production. Just as many people prefer to hear laughter from a real audience while watching a sitcom, many sports fans favor a noisy, live crowd over the “fake” crowd noise in the stands during a professional game. Most writers and web events have used sensationalist journalism terms like “fake” to create a very negative description. Using the term “fake sound” has nefarious overtones and I believe sound manipulation for malicious interference has ethical implications. But sound supplementation for the sake of enhancing the entertainment value has always been fair game to me.

SPORTS SOUND SUPPLEMENTATION

Sports sound supplementation is the art of live foley, which can include crowd, sport and venue-specific sound.

Real-time sound supplementation was controversial long before I began using a crowd loop in the early 1980s at NASCAR races. There were always rumors of “birdie” loops at golf events, but there was not much of an urgency to “sweeten” golf sound because major networks had the budget to adequately capture the event live. I spent a decade as a freelancer covering IndyCar racing and was unhappy that the network crew (who only covered one race, by the way) had microphones mounted on the pit wall at every pit zone while I depended on the sound from two handheld cameras to cover up to 30 pit areas. Why? It costs extra money for extra sound.

Motorsports present unique sound challenges because of the excessive noise and compact design of the track and grandstands. For me, sound enhancement began at Bristol Motor Speedway where the sound was so intense your head would hurt. Frustrated with the inability to pull much crowd reaction sound, I built several crowd “loops” to enhance the sound of the start, restart and finish of the race. I knew the real-time sounds were there, but the laws of physics prevailed. It is called “masking.”

Tape loops of sound effects were the shortcomings of sound supplementation because of the inevitable repetition of sounds, but when the music industry introduced electronic samplers that could store real sound and could be played back with a keyboard, everything changed. With instantaneous triggering and access to multiple samples at the same time, the possibility of realistically playing back a complete pit stop from any pit without additional microphones became a reality. What was really cool was adding sounds that were really there but that you never heard before because of masking—such as the air jacks lifting the car and two gear shifts out of the pit.

I am not trying to persuade anyone of anything. I am only trying to enhance the entertainment value of the content. The sound of air wrenches and engines revving is really happening. I even had different samples of motor sounds for different engine manufacturers.

Let’s examine some of the arguments:

Q: Are we documenting an event vs. presenting a game for the sake of entertainment?

A: If the intent is to show the negative impact of the COVID-19 virus on sporting events, then quiet empty venues may be appropriate. But if the goal is entertainment for the listening/viewing audience, then sound supplementation is an applicable solution.

Q: Does sound supplementation enhance the entertainment experience or is the sound a distraction?

A: To my ears, poor sound supplementation is a distraction. I spent from July to October 2020 listening to Premier League Football, MLB, NBA, NHL, NASCAR and WNBA, produced by ESPN. Some sound production is a distraction. For example, my opinion of the sound enhancements for Premier League Football was a half-hearted attempt at sound enhancement with virtually no dynamic articulation.

At the other extreme was baseball, which worked with Sony Entertainment in San Diego to deliver not only a very believable, but entertaining soundscape for the game.

I talked with Kurt Kellenberger, head sound designer and supervisor at Sony in San Diego. Kellenberger is a meticulous and innovative sound designer, and when he undertook the design for a baseball game for Sony, Kurt studied the broadcasters and picked the best aspects of the game as the baseline for his game sound design. A decade later he provided the sound effects components for the primetime presentation for the MLB’s COVID-19 comeback from San Diego. Sony provided approximately 70 different sound samples and Abelton Live software to construct a 4.0 sports sound bed for the game. What I heard was not only convincing, but if you closed your eyes, the soundtrack was close to a perfect presentation of the sound—not too much, but interestingly complete.

THERE’S A DIFFERENCE

Faking the sound as opposed to enhancing the sound for entertainment purposes are completely different sound design concepts. There are technical and financial reasons that make it impossible or impractical to capture the desired sounds in a venue or at an event. Capturing the pit sound was a financial decision and only the largest IndyCar event of the year warranted the additional cost. Even though the budget cuts were made clear to the director and producer, they clearly remembered the sound of the Indianapolis 500 and the experience of hearing the sound from every single pit.

To amplify, enhance and even recreate the sound that already exists is obviously different than creating a soundtrack from scratch, which is what a sound designer does with a film or game soundtrack. For example, when the roof camera shoots a pit stop there is a great distance between the camera’s microphone and the sound. Even though the sound of the pit stop still exists, the microphones on the roof camera cannot capture the sound. This scenario results in no pit-specific sound even though the listener knows and expects to hear the pit sounds from a distant camera shot.

Baseball deals with more subtle sound plus the concept of home and away teams. Not every team or player is popular and not all the crowd reaction is positive, but what if artificial sound is used for reprehensible reasons such as real-time mood manipulation? As you can imagine, a relentless crowd booing or heckling could result in increasing tension on the field.

Kellenberger also reminded me of the writings of the cultural theorist, Dr. Jean Baudrillard, who wrote about how media affects our perception of reality. Baudrillard believed that people often live in the realm of hyper-reality as they are connected deeper and deeper to their television, movies, games and virtual reality. Personally, I suspect that numbness sets in and listeners tune out.

Sound supplementation is nothing new, particularly in certain sports. For example, the Swiss and Fins have used samplers for years to cover ski sounds for downhill and cross-country events. Samplers not only fill in the gaps when there are very long camera lenses and few microphones, but when well-executed, the additional sound brings the viewing listener closer into the sport and event.

FAKING OR SHAPING?

I narrated a BBC radio documentary that was produced by Peregrine Andrews, titled “The Sound of Sports.” One comment I made that became sensationalized was about using samplers to augment the sound at the Olympics. Somehow that comment got twisted to imply that I was using samplers to fake the sound of most sports at the Olympics. This interpretation of sound supplementation escalated in 2012 when I was accused of “faking” the sound of the London Olympics and was even spoofed by late night comedian Stephen Colbert, about the possibility of extremes. You can find it on the web.

Entertainment vs. documentation. These are also interesting times for live sound designers, mixers and producers. Spectatorless stadiums are a first and there have been novel ways to compensate for the visuals with goofy looking cutouts. But usually in sports the sound is supposed to support the picture and what if you are documenting an empty venue? What should the sound be? Clearly, spectatorless venues are a different paradigm that broadcasters and listeners were expecting.

But I have to ask this question: Are we faking the sound or shaping the sound? The sound samples used in baseball are pristine, probably better than real capture. Is this fake sound? I think some journalists and wordmongers who write about audio and know little about sound use these types of words to stoke emotions on one side or the other on the use of extra sound. I was accused once of cheating, but argued that if I did not deliver a high level of entertainment to my listeners, the only person I was cheating was the listener.

Ed Stoltis (A1 CBS Golf) commented that listeners will adapt to a new norm, particularly when it is a pleasant and appropriate soundtrack. I think the sound of CBS golf is wonderful with little crowds and no ice machines. ESPN’s production of the WNBA was appropriate for the picture. The space was compressed with no space for spectators and the soundtrack was the coach, players and commentators. The production was engaging and entertaining. I really like quarter-full college stadiums and always thought too many drunk fans ruined the TV sound of college football.

ESPN was able to come up with a clever presentation, but large venues used by sports like baseball, football and professional basketball have noticeably vacant space and seating for spectators who are obviously not there. Directors will adjust with tighter camera perspectives, but the venues are obviously empty. Who is faking whom?

Perhaps after the stadiums and venues fill back up and the broadcast world has time to ponder the sound extremes, sports sound designers and mixers may have an open mind about massaging the sound with a little sound supplementation. At the end of the day, it’s all about entertainment.

Dennis Baxter has spent over 35 years in live broadcasting contributing to hundreds of live events including sound design for nine Olympic Games. He has earned multiple Emmy Awards and is the author of “A Practical Guide to Television Sound Engineering,” published in both English and Chinese. He is currently working on a book about immersive sound practices and production. He can be reached at dbaxter@dennisbaxtersound.com or at www.dennisbaxtersound.com.

There are sounds associated with sports—like the crack of the bat and the swish of the net—that are expected by the casual television listener. Unfortunately, in the last decade, the crack of the bat became more difficult to capture after the parabolic microphone behind home plate was displaced by the fan seating that got even closer to the field of play.

New venue designs, changes on the field of play and challenging venue and team management have always forced clever audio practitioners to adapt different technologies, ingenious packaging and some audio adventurism to capture that Emmy-winning sound.

MADE FOR TV SOUND

Good sound requires a major effort to capture and an unwillingness to accept any compromise. After Truist Park (formerly Suntrust Park), home of the Atlanta Braves, changed the seating behind home plate that ousted the parabolic microphone, then Turner Sports Senior Audio Specialist Jim Budka convinced management to let him build “houses” to permanently place the parabolic microphones on both sides of home plate where there was more room. Typically, there was only one parabolic microphone, but Jim adventurously added another parabolic microphone. Now there are two microphones symmetrically on the left and right of home plate. The additional microphone resulted in a clear left-right spatial imaging to his mix.

Television is the best seat in the house at any sporting event. How can you beat different camera angles, replays and the sound? It is capturing and delivering unique event-specific sounds that bring the listener into the sport with complete immersion and belief.

There are a couple of givens in sports audio—you have to have a big crowd sound, and you have to hear and understand the announcers. After that, the sound is the imagination and drive of the audio team.

Film and television are unique because while the listener has some expectations, he/she is definitely willing to be entertained. You can hear the crack of the bat at the ball field, but the swish of the net? Just like the cup sound from the golf green, it is made-for-TV sound.

THE SWEET SPOT

There is no one that has pushed the sonic boundary of baseball more than Joe Carpenter, senior audio mixer and sound designer at Fox Sports. Joe and his team have put microphones in the bases, around the outfield, on the yellow poles and as close to the players as permitted.

Home plate is the “sweet spot” of action. During the 2019 MLB World Series, I noticed that the sound was more open and natural—almost like you were standing next to the batter. Looking around the field, I found that in addition to any microphones from the sides that were aimed at home plate, Joe had shotgun microphones suspended in the protective netting aimed at home plate. This simply was the best coverage of home plate that I have ever heard! (By the way, Joe’s sound design and microphone plan would easily translate into an impressive immersive sound mix.)

Placement of the microphones has always been problematic because a faction of directors and producers do not want to see the microphones, but premier events like the World Series accommodate advance and aggressive microphone plans and pave the way for better sound than from the weekly shows.

Setup time is always limited and there is little time to test something new, which validates learning from the big events like the World Series and from Joe Carpenter. You should build your sound design on the experience of those that came before you and adopt that knowledge for your situation.

The sound of sports has significantly improved over the last decade with more models and types of microphones than ever. Shotgun, lapel and wireless microphones have long been the primary tools for sports sound capture, but nonconventional transducers like the boundary and contact microphone have been useful in capturing close and interesting sounds.

The contact microphone attaches directly to a surface and captures the sonic resonances in the surface.

A few examples of audio adventurism: I first used contact microphones in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta on the wooden Velodrome track, in 2004 on the balance beam in gymnastics, and later in the ice for figure skating in 2006. My friend, Ron Scalese, used them on the skateboard and bicycle ramps at the X Games and even worked on improving the design from a cheap off-the-shelf transducer. Clearly, the best sound from the 2018 Olympics was the sound of figure skating, where a contact microphone was frozen in the ice of each corner creating a spectacular presence in the sound as the skater approached the cameras.

ATHLETE, COACH PERSPECTIVE

Sound design from the perspective of the athlete would include microphones in boxing corners, on players and coaches, under benches and in dugouts. But the ultimate is microphones on the competitors.

Sound designers for sports have long wanted microphones on the athletes and competitors and have made significant progress over the years. NASCAR, NFL and NBA have adopted protocol for these microphones and the fan appeal is high. Additionally, microphones on the athletes will capture closer field of play sounds like with the NFL, but wireless microphones for sports have always been controversial because of colorful language and the chance of the competition cheating in real time.

Sports professionals should consider TV friendly sound—why not? It is television that made these athletes and coaches multi-millionaires. ATSC 3.0 (aka NextGen TV) provides for interactive channels which provide income opportunities. For example, coaches from the NBA are often seen and rarely heard, but a real-time coach channel offers income opportunity to the broadcaster and the coach and skirts any language issues. Cheating can be curtailed with effort, encryption and enforcement.

AMBIANCE AND ATMOSPHERE

Sports venues tend to have poor acoustics and excessively loud PA systems, making it more challenging to capture atmosphere. Ambiance and atmosphere sounds are the foundation and glue to a sports mix. Efforts to place microphones off-axis of PA speakers are recommended. Additionally, plan on multiple microphone locations because there will be zones of activity like the band and student section or home and visitor areas, which should sonically overlay creating dimension and the perception of depth.

To create a convincing dimensional ambiance, multiple pairs of stereo microphones like the Audio Technica AT4025 and/or 1st Order ambisonic microphones like the Sennheiser Ambio should be placed at the zones of interest and off-axis of the PA as much as possible. Ambisonic microphones offer the advantage of plug-and-play dimensional sound than can be spatialized as desired in the OB van.

Immersive sound is in development and the big question is: What sounds do you put above the listener/viewer? More crowd? It is typical in baseball to hang microphones from the announcer booth over the crowd capturing a stereo perspective. Joe Carpenter added crowd microphones to the outfield and suspended microphones from under the seating decks. Perhaps creating zones of interest is a solution. (Personally, I would like to hear the vendors in baseball above me shouting, “Cold Beer!”)

Every event must have a fresh approach to sound design. Immersive crowd sound for sports will have to be more than just progressively distant microphones from the sound source, plus this effect can be created with reverb and acoustic room simulators.

Finally, capturing quality sound is difficult because of the polluters. Excessive PA, ice machines, generators, blimps, and drones, are roadblocks to perfecting the sound of the sport. When I tune into sporting events, I am shocked at how much extraneous and obnoxious sound there really is. My first broadcast golf tournament was “The Masters” on CBS and I learned that the “birdie” microphone was nowhere close to the clutter that surrounds the support of the golf course.

One thing that is obnoxious and unnecessary is excessive PA levels and chatter. In my decades of live television, I have fought the PA. But I still hear from all my colleagues that the volume of the PA is excessive, further making the sound mixers’ job more difficult. There has to be a balance between venue entertainment and quality broadcast which begins with a good relationship between venue management and the venue PA operators.

At the end of the day, good sound requires a major effort to capture the sound and an unwillingness to accept any compromise—then add the spirit of audio adventurism. My advice? Think creatively about the sound effects that you want to achieve and how that enhanced sound will entertain your listeners.

We all enjoy audio books, but have you ever tried watching your favorite television program muted?

Audio is a very important ingredient of any audio visual media. It is that one ingredient that brings the entire content to life; otherwise it would be lifeless motion jpegs. But many times audio doesn’t get the full attention it deserves in the media workflow because of the misconception that delivering a superior consumer experience is driven by video only. While visuals are captivating, audio is also vital. If audio quality isn’t good, then even the best quality video will lead to a negative experience. Poor quality audio shifts consumer attention to noises and other types of distractions, impacting the overall experience.

AUDIO IN SPORTS

Looking exclusively at sports, content is generously interspersed with commentary—it’s a way to provide otherwise inaccessible information to viewers in a timely manner, enhancing their viewing experience. Viewers are generally interested in knowing important information not covered by the live camera angle, such as how the injured player is recovering, and whether the crowd is friendly or not. There are many things commentators can see and tell the audience besides sharing interesting facts and trivia in order to make experiences more memorable.

Further, the ability to hear clear game sounds makes fans feel as if they are viewing the game right in the stadium. Just imagine hearing the sounds of skates grinding into the ice in hockey or figure skating, the crack of a baseball bat hitting a homerun and a ping pong ball hitting a paddle. Audio quality in these situations is paramount. Not to forget, the sports sector is a big business, worth tens of billions of dollars worldwide. Digitization is further driving the revenue for global broadcast rights, but today’s digital consumers are spoiled with so many choices and susceptible to clicking away at a moment’s notice. Any slack in audio quality can lead to a loss of viewership and revenue. So it’s important now more than ever to understand how to uphold audio quality and create an immersive sports experience.

THE CHALLENGES

Unspoken guidelines exist for good audio quality. For instance, audio should be in sync with video and captions. It should be free of any artifact like noise, dropout, jitter and echo. It should follow the appropriate loudness guideline for that region. Some broadcasters would also require removing profanity from the audio. In the case of multilingual global delivery, correct audio language order needs to be ensured. To some extent these guidelines are easy to maintain for offline content, but sports—with all its frenzy and excitement—is broadcast live. The content is produced and broadcast simultaneously, leaving little room for quality control and correction. Knowing this, there are many different issues that can impact sports audio.

AUDIO QUALITY

• Sports broadcast experiences, by their very nature, feature high-intensity events like scoring a goal in a soccer match, which momentarily changes the loudness level. As the next generation of sports broadcasting experiences is being defined, it is important to ensure that high-quality audio experiences conform to loudness regulations:
• • Regional guidelines: Broadcasters should ensure content loudness complies with various regional regulatory standards like CALM in the U.S., EBU in Europe and ARIB in Japan.
  • Ad switching: When broadcasters insert advertisements in content for monetization purposes, it changes the context of the content and likely changes the loudness level. The broadcaster should ensure that the switch is seamless to ensure a smooth listening experience.

• Any noise in audio can distract viewers, thus degrading the overall viewer experience. There could be multiple sources for such noises.
• • To enhance viewer experiences, broadcasters want to simulate the sports-arena-like environment with the predominant sound components containing audience voice, reverberation and stadium music. To capture all of the important components, broadcasters typically use multiple microphones strategically placed all over the stadium and mix them along with the running commentary. During the mixing process, it is very important to ensure that channel layout is followed properly. For example, if the center channel contains dialog, it should remain the same even after the mixing process. Any glitch here can severely impact the audio quality.
  • The biggest challenge during commentary is clear audio. This is the stage where different noises such as background and echo can be introduced into the content. The scene of action is generally an outdoor area. Weather, wind, cheers from the audience and many other subtle factors can also allow various noises to creep into the content. These noises need to be suppressed before content is sent upstream. Data transmission over a slow network also causes multiple issues such as audio dropout and jittering noise. The advent of OTT resolves most of these issues, as viewers automatically switch to a lower bandwidth in the case of a slow network.

Broadcasters should ensure that sports workflows are efficient to avoid the above kind of noises.

• During live broadcasting, some audio segments may contain strong language, which can offend viewers and is especially unsuitable for children. These audio portions should be bleeped out before broadcasting, depending on the regulations. Broadcasters are required to integrate automatic speech recognition-based solutions to handle this scenario in a real-time manner and keep broadcasting delay to minimum.
• As content goes global, overcoming the language barrier has become very important. To meet this requirement, OTT companies are now providing content in multiple languages. Different language variations of content are stored as a separate audio track. Broadcasters should ensure that the correct language order is maintained during encoding and transmission.
• The latest smart TVs and digital media players support next-gen audio tech, such as Dolby Atmos, and raise consumer expectations. Streaming platform companies are also beginning to appreciate the need to invest in resources to improve audio quality and provide near-real-word experiences to consumers by leveraging the latest technologies.

AUDIO/VIDEO SYNCHRONIZATION

Synchronization is one of the most important aspects of the viewer experience. Imagine watching a basketball game, and the sound of the ball hitting the court arrives before the ball actually makes contact. This would be extremely annoying for the viewer and would detract from the overall consumer entertainment experience. Synchronization errors can happen because of video as well as multilingual audio tracks. Sync loss could be caused by the mixing/editing process, mic position or even signal processing delays between the mic and camera. To provide a seamless viewing experience, broadcasters should prevent these types of synchronization issues.

AUDIO AND CAPTION SYNCHRONIZATION

Captions are required by all major broadcasters and are legally regulated around the world. Captions need to be in sync with audio on all fronts. To meet regulations and assure a good consumer experience there is a four-point regulation from the Federal Communications Commission:

• Captions should be in perfect sync with audio (i.e., they should be displayed when the corresponding audio event occurs). Certain lag is allowed in real-time broadcast but if captions arrive too late they lose their merit and often become confusing to viewers.
• Captions should be free of spelling mistakes and other inaccuracies such as grammatical and syntactical mistakes. This requires captioners to be well versed with sports jargon, player names and have exceptionally good language and keyboard skills.
• Captions should be complete (i.e., complete audio needs to be captioned). This is very difficult, as with fast-paced sports sometimes the events take place at a speed that cannot be matched by captioners.
• While deciding screen placement for captions, care should be taken so that important statistics displayed on screen are not hidden.

Further, profanity might require some censorship. Some checks are required during encoding as well checking the correct language against the correct audio track and so on.

In a real-time sports broadcast there is a very small window between the words being spoken and relayed as captions. Audio needs to be transcribed, time stamped and screen positioned within this small window. Doing it manually may not lead to high quality. It calls for using the latest technology in speech recognition and burnt-in text recognition to aid captioners.

CONCLUSION

With huge global sporting events taking place in Tokyo and across Europe in the shape of the soccer championships in 2020, the choice for how and where viewers watch sports is going to be greater than ever. Broadcast rights are soaring and there is extensive competition among OTT services, so the pressure to retain viewers is monumental.

Much like the competition on the football pitch, the stakes are high for content producers and broadcasters to deliver exceptional quality—both visually and in terms of audio. A quality control system designed to address the challenges of real-time sports broadcasts can be a game-changer. One that enables service providers to perform comprehensive video and audio checks, including loudness, closed caption and subtitle checks, as well as audio language detection and AV sync, and one that features a flexible and scalable architecture that improves efficiencies and provides exceptional audio-video quality on every device.

Manik Gupta is associate director of engineering at Interra Systems.

LOS ANGELES—Whether over standardized network protocols such as SMPTE ST2110 and AES67 or formats like Wheatstone’s WheatNet, Calrec’s Hydra2, RAVENNA, Audinate’s Dante, and others, audio mixing consoles are supporting remote television broadcast audio productions as they move in new directions. In sports broadcasts, especially, consoles are leveraging networks to implement a variety of applications, from at-home production to ensuring consistent audio quality at every connected mixer, to enabling remote control of, and set-up through, distant desks.

Glen Stilwell, audio operations manager for the PAC-12 Networks, which handles more than 450 at-home productions in a nine-month period each season, observed that IP audio networking is introducing efficiencies for remote broadcast operations. He hopes that new technology from console manufacturers will help him lower costs as the number of productions inevitably increases.

“With our development partners like Calrec, and their new RP1, we’re going to start eliminating the need to carry around big, heavy copper,” said Stilwell, who noted that all the schools in the conference have installed 10-Gig networks. The RP1 unit offers local DSP and an IP connection back to the plant where the mixer has full control of the remote inputs.

“We’re still precabling venues with copper mic cable, per season,” said Stilwell. “As we become more efficient and reduce personnel, we can’t spend the time to do that.” With devices such as the RP1, “We can put down either fiber or, over the long-term, build network drops in the field and just leave them forever,” he said.

PLAYING TOGETHER

But even with networking infrastructures in place, setting up AES67 streams between devices from different manufacturers is not yet as easy as it could be. Even using a common discovery protocol like mDNS/Bonjour, it’s currently necessary to log into a device using one brand’s web UI and create an AES67 stream, then switch to another brand’s web UI, log in, find that stream, and register to receive it.

According to Pete Walker, senior product manager for Calrec several companies are working on the problem—indeed, there is already a solution in the works. “NMOS [Networked Media Open Specifications] is going to take it to the next level,” Walker said. “You can use a central piece of software to control all your devices.” The initial NMOS tool will be IS-04, managing device discovery.

Walker says the protocol is still developing and Calrec doesn’t want to have to wait for it. “Calrec and others are looking at implementing cross-platform control systems, software that discovers all the devices on the network,” he said.

Calrec’s solution, “Connect,” will identify media streams and devices on the network regardless of their registration or discovery protocol. “You can filter, search, then drag and drop devices and interconnect them,” he said. “It visually represents all your streams and workflows.”

At this year’s three-part U.S. Open (Women’s, Senior’s, and Men’s) for Fox Sports, Senior Audio Engineer Dana Kirkpatrick leveraged Calrec’s Hydra2 network to QC the very large number of audio channels coming from the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club course in Southampton, New York. “We were feeding the router and six Calrec Brio consoles in the iso, two digital feature groups, and feeding another Brio, as well as a submix console, a Calrec Apollo,” Kirkpatrick said. “And I was creating two MADI streams for the world.”

The huge network enabled Kirkpatrick to achieve consistency across the attached consoles, he said. “The idea was that I would take everything from the golf course into the Calrec Artemis [in Game Creek’s Maverick remote truck] and EQ and distribute it. When the wind kicked up, I could adjust EQ and it would globally pass to all the mixers, so that the final product had the same EQ and the same gain structure.”

DOLBY ATMOS

Although some features need to be beefed up or even added to meet new production demands, the current generation of mixing console technology has enabled broadcasters in Europe to regularly generate programming, specifically for premium customers, in the Dolby Atmos immersive audio format for the past year or so. In the U.K., for example, all live Premier League soccer matches on Sky Sports, including a double-or even tripleheader on Sundays, have been produced in Dolby Atmos, as well as 5.1, since the start of the season in August 2017.

At a recent month-long competition hosted at multiple sports venues, U.K.-based freelance sound supervisor Pete Mercer produced both a Dolby Atmos mix and a 5.1 mix in a control room at the International Broadcast Center. For each event, Mercer received discrete feeds from the mixer in the remote stadium, including the outputs from a Schoeps 3D microphone suspended above the field of play, created a Dolby Atmos 5.1.4 mix plus six objects on a Lawo mc²96 console, and returned that mix to the competition location for encoding. He and his colleague, Felix Krückels, Lawo’s director of business development, in a second control room on a second mc²96, each mixed one or two games per competition day, Mercer reported.

The two mc²96 consoles were on the same network as the Lawo mc²56 (for stereo production) and mc²36 (for multifeeds) consoles at the competition’s 12 venues. “We could connect via a PC and Lawo MXGui software to check settings, re-patch signals, and even line up by ourselves,” he said. All audio was sent between the venues in each city and the IBC via Lawo’s Commentary system using Ravenna, according to Mercer.

Any console that supports multiple 5.1 buses may be used for Dolby Atmos immersive mixing. In Mercer’s case, the height component had no LFE or center channel information, so was, in effect, a 4.0 bus.

Mercer could monitor the 5.1.4 mix for the UHD feed via Dolby’s DP590 unit. But loudness metering of immersive mixes is still a work in progress and not yet available in consoles. However, said Mercer, “Having a separate value for the 5.1 and the 4.0 height was extremely helpful to make sure the height detail wasn’t too prominent or distant in the mix, especially when mixing extra elements into the 5.1 that didn’t appear in the 4.0 height.”

NEW YORK—How difficult is it to mix audio for a major network sports event?

“Sit in front of your television,” said Phil Adler, a longtime broadcast mixer whose credits include five Olympics and a pair of Super Bowls. “Turn on your favorite show, then turn on a couple of radios and dial in two different talk radio stations; make sure to put them off to the left and right, or behind you, then bring both up in volume close to the TV show you’re watching. Oh, and turn on your laptop and start working on it at the same time! Now listen to what the director, standing on your right, has to say while the producer talking in your ear is making comments. Easy!”

TV Technology recently spoke with a panel of highly experienced sports audio broadcast engineers about the challenges they face and the developing trends in the industry. Joining Adler were Fred Aldous, senior mixer and audio consultant for Fox Sports, the recipient of 23 Emmy Awards and a recent inductee into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame; four-time Emmy-winner Dana Kirkpatrick; and Paul Zerang, audio engineer for the Chicago Blackhawks NHL team.

TV Technology:What kind of sports events are you working on these days?

Aldous: I currently mix the “A” NFL game for Fox Sports with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. As of late I have gotten involved with education. I consult with CRAS, an audio recording school in Arizona; I helped build the audio curriculum that is being taught today. Up until this past spring I mixed NASCAR on Fox for the past 15 years.

Phil AdlerAdler: I’ve been mixing live television sports events since 1988, for CBS, Fox and other networks. This will be my 21st year working with the NFL. I mix boxing for Showtime, have done five Olympics, and two Super Bowls. I work for CBS on one of their Sunday afternoon NFL games; they take about six months of my time. I also handle college basketball. I was a rock ’n roll mixer for 10 years before I got into sports audio.

Kirkpatrick: I freelance and work a variety of sports events, golf, mostly at ABC, and college football, plus figure skating, two Super Bowls, and the “Wide World of Sports.” I worked on golf for Fox this summer, and for the last four or five years had done a lot of work in London mixing gymnastics and ski events for the Olympics. This July I mixed the tennis Hall of Fame event in Newport, R.I.

TVT:What are the main issues confronting audio engineers who have to present both surround and stereo mixes in real time?

Kirkpatrick: The problem currently is that nobody has come up with the definitive way to do Surround Sound. All we’re told is that they want to broadcast in Surround Sound; we end up figuring out for ourselves how to get it done! Television trucks have to have a stereo program throughout. Monitoring in the truck is in stereo, since that’s still what the majority of people are listening to. Some audio mixers create a downmix by taking a 5.1 mix and running it through a Dolby DP563, and route that all around. I just create a stereo mix using a Calrec console by taking the output of the six groups and sending them to a stereo buss to create a pure stereo mix. Do these two approaches yield a different sound? That’s the rub, nobody really knows.

ESPN demands an upmix in circle sound. This fall in my studio I can—at the punch of a button—compare true stereo from stems with a Prologic-encoded stereo downmix; I’ll let you know what I find. Some mixers simply turn off the rears and that’s their “stereo” mix—the left and right speakers mix with the center. NBC is big on 3.0 upmixing. We use the left and right sides and keep the center channel discrete. No final standard is in place at this time.

Adler: Regarding mono to stereo, stereo to 5.1, and analog to digital, there are a number of painful transitions for live sports going on. Some things that work great in fi lm translate to television, but other things don’t. 3D, for example, can be very effective in fi lm, but it doesn’t work for sports. It’s been tried in football, without much success. Same thing applies to audio. In fi lm, a director is thinking about multichannel sound from the beginning, and has time in the post process to get things right. In the fast-paced world of live sports we don’t have that luxury. If you want surround audio, all you can do is slap on an algorithm.

Here’s what we face in live sports: Going from mono all the way up to 5.1, the challenge is to get as immersive as possible for the viewer while keeping the announcers and commentators clear and dominant. It’s a bigger challenge than ever now because of 5.1. With mono there’s not much the end user can do to muck up the sound. Some of these $300 receivers can do an automatic level adjust, but if you’ve got a small center speaker and larger left and right speakers, and an overcranked sub-woofer, the sound can be hideous! Viewers then call up the network and start bitching that they can’t hear the announcer; we have conference calls every week about this. There’s a 6 dB of separation between center channel [announcers] and everything else, but the way things are set up in a home the distinction can be lost.

How do I make the audio sound good? I do my homework, listen to a downmix, with commercials, listen at home, on a small desktop system in my office; it’s like listening to a record mix on a cassette and taking it into your car.

Fred AldousAldous: I do one mix; it is a 5.1 mix. The left/right downmix is created from the 5.1 stems. I have learned over the years by primarily listening to the downmix [of which most of the viewing audience does] what my 5.1 mix is doing. By having to listen to a director, producer, associate director, my comms panel and the mix, it becomes quite overwhelming to add a 5.1 mix to that; by listening to the left/right mix it helps eliminate some hearing fatigue.

TVT:Do different sports require different mixing techniques?

Aldous: Yes. I do two different types of mixes depending on the sport. For NFL I mix from a fan’s perspective sitting in the stadium, what I call the “observers mix;” I build a 360-degree sound bed of crowd (all Fox shows are in 5.1), in an effort to create the image of the fan sitting in the stadium. I do, though, take them to the field for the quarterback cadence, line hits and sideline camera angles. The field of play never leaves looking forward so all of my field effects are from that perspective.

For NASCAR I did what I called the “POV” or point of view perspective, taking the viewer to the cameras around the track. We [the audio team of submitters and A2’s] took the viewer trackside to the camera position and let the sound come through the room [front left to rear right]. Since most tracks are round or oval and the cars go counter-clockwise, the cars usually enter the frame from the left and leave the frame camera right. This creates a great effect.

Adler: Golf (which I don’t do much of) is very different from other sports. There will be a mixer who handles the microphones out on the golf course. He or she premixes and feeds them into the main mixer. The audio mix goes back and forth between what’s live and what’s been prerecorded. For example, the announcer will say, “Let’s go back to the 16th hole.” A submixer is sending the prerecorded audio back to the truck. The same thing goes for auto racing— sometimes there’s even a third guy who mixes in-car audio only.

Dana KirkpatrickKirkpatrick: I’ve experimented in gymnastics and figure skating; rather than using one or two upmixers, I’ve used four or five, so that I can mix crowd microphones, for example, and keep them separate from music. I create effects for each phantom center independently. What typically happens is that a gymnast will finish a routine and head off an apparatus, at which point the image collapses, because you’re crossfading from the microphones covering the station to the microphone on the handheld camera that’s following the athlete. The Audio-Technica BP4029 is able to maintain a 5.1 image while cross-fading from five or six crowd microphones to one handheld camera. Not many mixers are using this technique, but I find it to be very helpful in maintaining the surround image.

Gymnastics is one of my favorite sports to work on. Mixing audio for gymnastics is a game of managing the ambience levels so they’ll match when you go from a huge arena with a screaming crowd to a closeup of the gymnast walking off a piece of equipment. In football, the crowd noise is a constant, more or less, but to get the fine detail of a gymnast walking off an apparatus you have to close everything and only open the audio on the handheld camera, and that camera microphone has to have the same basic characteristics as the crowd mix or else the image will collapse. I handle that by using the stereo microphone on the Audio-Technica handheld and upmixing it and the crowd microphones separately. That way, I have control, and when I crossfade to the handheld camera microphone it’s matched in its characteristics with the crowd mics.

The same principle applies to figure skating. You’ll have a loud arena and the next moment you want to go to a coach and figure skater on the boards before the routine. To hear them you have to open up the handheld microphone and close down everything else, but you still need to maintain the wide image. I’ll EQ the handheld microphone so that I can crossfade and have the EQ and width sound very similar to my crowd microphone. This is what I’ve been doing for the past five years.

TVT:What tools do you rely on?

Paul ZerangZerang: I used Shure’s Axient Wireless System during the [NHL] Winter Classic and Stanley Cup Final for the Chicago Blackhawks, with the NHL’s great frequency coordination and Axient support. With these systems, we experienced full stadium coverage with no RF dropouts, even with all of the world’s media wireless crowding.

With Axient, the interference detection and avoidance is flawless, and its show link is also a very valuable tool. With its real-time remote control of the transmitter, the audio engineer can change frequencies from up in the booth instantly and monitor the battery level, gain control and RF muting.

The battery system is an advanced lithium-ion rechargeable battery that lasts much longer than anything I have ever used. Getting four hours in dual mode is pretty solid, as well as the charging stations if you want flawless wireless.

Kirkpatrick: I rely a lot on the A-T BP4029; I use it in the start house for ski racing, figure skating, gymnastics, and football. All of the Audio-Technica stereo microphones have the same characteristics, so it’s easy to blend between large diaphragm microphones and those on their handheld cameras.

I’m also a big fan of Calrec consoles. We use the extra headroom these boards have. I don’t even compress any more. With golf for example, there are certain things, like a driver hitting a ball, where you want every bit of level. I love everything about Calrec; the sound of their boards is excellent, they’ve got routing all figured out; the manufacturer is very easy to work with; and their software is constantly getting updated. The Artemis and Apollo are the two boards I work mostly with.

Adler: I use a lot of Audio-Technics stuff, depending on the sport. In football we use four to six parabolic wireless microphones that roam the sidelines, and microphones to pick up the crowd. Football is a bit more limited; I have used A-T stereo microphones for crowds. I have a variety of their stereo microphones. I use them for ring overheads in boxing, for example. Most of the time I’m mixing on a Calrec console.