
SVG Sit-Down: Diversified's Justo Gutierrez Explores the Evolution of Sound for Sports Venues Stadiums and arenas are moving beyond PA to high-performance systems By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Wednesday, May 15, 2024 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Until virtuality completely overtakes reality, sports will always need a place to play. Those places - the stadiums and arenas - will continue to evolve along with the sports they host. (Pitch clocks, anyone?) In addition, venues have significantly improved sound quality in recent years, in part to accommodate more kinds of events, such as music concerts, and reproduce LFE more effectively. AV systems integrators like Diversified make the magic for that to happen, finding ways to make scoreboards bigger and PA systems louder. Sitting down with SVG, Diversified Director, Engineering for Sports, Faith, and Performance, Justo Gutierrez talks about a future that will emphasize features like immersiveness and more infrastructure.
Diversified's Justo Gutierrez: Immersive technology invites new possibilities, like directing the apparent sound source toward particular screens.
What challenges are the next generation of venue sound systems going to face? Noise abatement and control, etc.? And do sound-system designs have to change to address that, such as with more-flexible speaker placements?
The next generation of venue sound systems will trend toward immersive solutions that focus on sound-object positioning, room-acoustics emulation, or both, depending on the application. The biggest challenges come with the additional infrastructure required to support it, namely more loudspeakers and/or additional cabling to support the granular control needed to make immersive systems work. That said, as loudspeaker technology improves, hyper-focused control of sound may create opportunities for more-efficient loudspeaker topologies.
Ballparks seem to have been laggards when it comes to LFE; on the other hand, they've developed interesting subspecialties, such as small sound systems dedicated to walk-up music. How are baseball stadiums, such as San Francisco's Oracle Park, which Diversified recently worked on, changing their sound?
Many teams have provided dedicated sound systems that cover the batter's box to home plate for walk-up music or the pitcher's mound for warm-up. Within the last few years, baseball parks have started to add subs for low-frequency impact, and Oracle Park is the most recent example of that. Diversified took a consultative, analytics-based approach as it worked to lay out the mission, detail the operational goals, identify technical challenges, leverage as much of the existing infrastructure as it could, and issue a request-for-proposal seeking vendors that could solve the project's unique challenges. The local Diversified team used its network to identify the best contractors in the area and achieve results three months ahead of schedule. The Giants upgraded all public-area sound systems as well as the exclusive Gotham Club, executive meeting rooms, and various other private spaces, enhancing the acoustic experience throughout Oracle Park.
To what extent are sound systems and visual media in venues, such as large-scale displays and ribbon boards, interacting?
Currently, sound systems work in tandem with visual media for the overall game presentation. Immersive technology invites new possibilities, like, for example, directing the apparent sound source toward particular screens or areas of the venue.
What has surprised you most about sports-venue sound? What do you hope happens in this vertical?
It has been fun to watch the evolution of sound in sports venues move from simply public address to high-performance systems. As a technology-solutions provider, we look forward to working with audio manufacturers to continue to innovate and stretch the boundaries of sound-system technology, further enhancing the in-venue fan experience.
More from Sports Video Group
03/04/2026
Michigan's Fab Five will reunite for an alternate presentation of the Mich...
03/04/2026
Avid will exhibit at NAB Show 2026 (April 18-22, Booth N2226, Las Vegas Convention Center), demonstrating its Content Core platform and new AI-driven workflow c...
03/04/2026
Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has announced the appointment of Nick Barthee as Chief Operating Officer.
The announcement follows MRMC's transition fro...
03/04/2026
Interra Systems has announced that Elite Media Technologies has selected its BATON file-based QC solution for media workflows. Elite Media Technologies speciali...
03/04/2026
Ateme has announced that Moldtelecom has deployed Ateme technologies across its streaming workflow, covering encoding, delivery, operations, and analytics.
Mol...
03/04/2026
Grass Valley will demonstrate Framelight X, its content management platform, at NAB Show 2026. The platform connects capture, ingest, editing, and publishing in...
03/04/2026
Encompass Digital Media and Techex have announced a cloud-native Master Control ...
03/04/2026
Live Vertical Video automatically track the action on the court via AI technology and delivers a fully optimized, 9 16 live feed for viewers...
03/04/2026
As the Illini make their first trip to college basketball's biggest stage si...
03/04/2026
After last summer's Softball National Championship victory and last week'...
03/04/2026
The University of Arizona's Men's Basketball team has only loss twice th...
03/04/2026
Eight games across four tournaments will be played in three venues; accommodatio...
03/04/2026
The Ottawa Senators and Bell Media have announced a long-term rights extension for regional Ottawa Senators games on TSN and RDS. TSN Radio 1200 remains the exc...
03/04/2026
Massive production in Phoenix running out of Flagship Mobile unit, Features 50+ ...
02/04/2026
HBO and NFL Films have announced Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Seattle Sea...
02/04/2026
Haivision has announced the Makito ONE, a single-blade video encoding and decoding platform, at NAB Show 2026. The platform combines dual-channel video encoding...
02/04/2026
Telestream has introduced UP.Lens, a cloud-based multiviewer and monitoring serv...
02/04/2026
Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) will exhibit at NAB Show 2026 (Booth C5220, April 19-22, Las Vegas Convention Center), marking the company's 60th anniver...
02/04/2026
Net Insight has introduced programmable Trust Boundaries, a feature integrated i...
02/04/2026
Bitmovin has announced support for SGAI (Server-Guided Ad Insertion) in its playback products, using HLS interstitials. SGAI combines elements of client-side an...
02/04/2026
Riedel Communications' SimplyLive RiMotion R12 replay system is supporting B...
02/04/2026
LTN, a managed IP video transport company, and Ateme, a video compression and de...
02/04/2026
Harmonic has announced that TDF, a broadcast infrastructure operator in France, has deployed Harmonic's XOS Advanced Media Processor and ProStream X Video S...
02/04/2026
Eluvio and the United Rugby Championship (URC) have announced first-year results...
02/04/2026
The Kansas City Current and Scripps Sports have announced that ION will broadcas...
02/04/2026
ESPN will debut Courtside at the Women's Final Four Presented by AT&T, an alt-cast airing Friday, April 3 at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2, and Sunday, A...
02/04/2026
The Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance (PAMA) and Shure Incorporated are ...
02/04/2026
ESPN's MegaCast Coverage of 2026 NCAA Women's Final Four Begins Friday, ...
02/04/2026
DAZN has announced the launch of DAZN Playmakers, a global influencer program designed to build a network of sports content creators. The programme will give cr...
02/04/2026
Tony Cole, Jessica Lee shift into new roles reporting to ESPN SVP/Content Operations Chris Calcinari....
02/04/2026
Michigan's Fab Five will reunite for an alternate presentation of the Mich...
02/04/2026
Real-time tracking, virtual production, and Pixar storytelling converge for Apri...
02/04/2026
NASA's long-awaited Artemis II mission has launched four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the moon, marking the first manned launch toward the moon sin...
01/04/2026
As sports media organization continue to seek out new ways to streamline their p...
01/04/2026
The SVG GFX Forum hit New York City earlier this month for a day packed with sessions focused on the creative strategy and technology behind today's cutting...
31/03/2026
MeyerPro delivered the LED production for the Microsoft Ignite 2025 keynote at Chase Center in San Francisco, using more than 2,700 ROE Visual panels across mul...
31/03/2026
The Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) is expanding membership outreach in 2026...
31/03/2026
ViewLift and MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) have announced the launch of ViewLift Conversational AI Search on the MyOutdoorTV platform. The feature enables natural language...
31/03/2026
The Atlanta Braves and Gray Media have announced a multi-year agreement to simul...
31/03/2026
Gravity Media has delivered broadcast services for TAB Golden Slipper Day at Rosehill Gardens on March 21 and will now cover The Star Championships at Royal Ran...
31/03/2026
Synamedia has announced that Mileto Tecnologia, a Brazilian pay-TV operator, has selected the Synamedia Go platform for its OTT expansion. Mileto is also deploy...
31/03/2026
KMH Integration will attend NAB Show in Las Vegas with a focus on what the company calls AV Casting - an approach built on the idea that professional AV and bro...
31/03/2026
Prime Video will carry live coverage of the first and second rounds of the 2026 Masters Tournament, beginning at 1:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, April 9 and Friday, A...
31/03/2026
The NHL and its U.S. and Canadian broadcast partners have announced a collaborat...
31/03/2026
Daktronics has partnered with Wake Forest to manufacture and install a new end z...
31/03/2026
The National Football League has announced that Las Vegas will host Super Bowl LXIII in 2029 at Allegiant Stadium. The announcement was made at the NFL Annual M...
31/03/2026
The NFL has announced a partnership with TMRW Sports to develop and operate a professional flag football league for women and men. The league will launch with i...
31/03/2026
Sennheiser's Spectera wideband bidirectional wireless system was used by bot...
31/03/2026
Sports Studio Inc., the company behind Free Live Sports, has announced the formation of an Advisory Board with five media and technology executives.
Each of o...
31/03/2026
PSSI and Appear have announced a new phase in their collaboration, with PSSI deploying Appear's X Platform to upgrade its mobile fleet and PSSI Internationa...