Augmented Crowd Sound Gears Up for New Sports Seasons Fledgling audio-industry sector ponders relevance in a post-COVID landscape By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Tuesday, January 12, 2021 - 10:48 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Last year, enhanced-crowd-sound systems helped make sports during COVID seem almost normal. This year, they're poised to do the same - and, perhaps, more.
Having provided the NBA's 2020 season what was widely regarded as a highly authentic-sounding augmented crowd-sound experience, Firehouse Productions is reprising that role for basketball in the 2021 season, which began in December, and is doing the same for the NHL's new season, scheduled to tip off on Jan. 13.
Last year, both leagues played their seasons in so-called bubbles: the NBA in a multi-court venue in Orlando and the NHL in two venues, in Ottawa and Winnipeg. This year, their games will be played in the teams' home venues, and that has brought about a change in deployment and operation of Firehouse Productions' crowd-sound systems. Instead of three or four operators working a pair of iPads and two Launchpads, a crowd-sound mixer at each venue will be working solo on two Launchpad system controllers.
This year, all NBA teams are pumping the crowd audio through the venue PA systems, with some acquiring -through either purchase or rental - additional PA boxes focused on the arena's courts, to energize the athletes. Among other changes this season is that use and operation of augmented crowd sounds are being left to individual teams' discretion, versus being under the control of the league last season.
Working remotely at Fox Studios' Los Angeles facility, Sonofans mixers handle augmented crowd sound for a USC game at United Airlines Field at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
The NHL, which last year used a crowd-sound system developed by EA Sports and other partners, will use the same Launchpad-based controller as the NBA, with audio sources coming from Firehouse Productions' own vault of venue- and team-specific recordings. That sound will be played through the hockey arenas' existing PA systems, which will not use additional PA components to augment the venue sound.
Both leagues have mandated that the virtualized crowd sound be played as part of game-broadcast audio.
According to Firehouse Productions VP Mark Dittmar, about half of NBA teams have augmented their PA systems with court-facing speakers, in some cases with high-end concert-level systems.
You're trying to get the sound up to around 105 dB from 150 ft. away, he says, so you need a pretty powerful system. The NHL crowd sound will be played just from the arena's existing center-cluster PA systems facing out onto the stands from below the scoreboards.
He adds that the main challenge this season is less about applying its crowd-sound solution to an entirely new sport - hockey - than about readying the system for both leagues' playing in a combined 60-plus arenas and curating the appropriate sounds for each of them in a highly compressed time span.
We had three months to put together the systems for the NBA [bubble] last year; we had more like two weeks to get ready for everyone playing at home this year, he says. We had to train more mixers and provide technical support for them, too. And we had to develop more content, because the teams wanted more team-specific content, like chants and songs, and the sound design for the NBA and NHL is very different. The teams want to be able to try different things with the crowd sounds, so we're giving them options.
Streamlining the System Unlike Firehouse Productions, which existed before COVID-19, Los Angeles-based Sonofans was largely a product of the pandemic, founded by Fred Vogler, a multiple-Grammy Award-winning audio engineer and mixer who had been working as principal sound designer and FOH mixer for the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall, among other roles. For him, fanless sports presented an opportunity, one that he quickly leveraged into producing the virtualized crowd sound for much of the MLB's postseason, including the World Series, and for most of Fox Sports' main NFL games during the past season, as well as some collegiate football, professional bowling, and the Mike Tyson-Roy Jones Jr. eight-round exhibition match in late November at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
Sonofans' crowd-sound platform uses Ableton Live as the software engine; Akai triggering pads let two-person audio teams access team-, league- and venue-specific content from Apple Mac Mini computers and an array of hard drives. Vogler has also found ways to streamline the platform and make it more productive and efficient as it enters its second set of sports seasons. That includes adding pedals to the triggering pads, essentially letting a single operator have an additional hand or two to keep the audio tightly responsive to the action on the field or court.
We've been looking at how we can reduce the number of operators needed and other system requirements, to make it more cost-effective, he explains. How we can make one person be able to do more, as long as the randomizing feature in the software keeps it from sounding the same.
vCROWD Meets AI UK-based Salsa Sound - which began life as a developer of automated audio mixing and augmented field-sound effects for broadcasters and such sports teams as the Premier League's Manchester City - has extended its portfolio to include providing crowd sounds for U.S. sports teams and leagues -MLS and USL soccer, the NWSL (for which the company supplied crowd sound for CBS's Challenge Cup broadcasts) - as well as for the Big Ten Network's hockey, football, and men's and women's basketball. According to Rob Oldfield, co-founder/CEO, Salsa Soun
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
13/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
YES Network and The Gotham Sports App will air seven Athletes Unlimited Softball...
12/06/2026
The United Football League will host its FAST Innovation Suite at the 2026 United Bowl presented by Credit One Bank on Saturday, June 13 at 3:00 p.m. ET at Audi...
12/06/2026
PTZOptics and LayerJot will present live demonstrations at InfoComm 2026 showing how natural-language AI prompting, robotic camera control, and on-device comput...
12/06/2026
MultiDyne Video and Fiber Optic Systems will exhibit at InfoComm 2026, featuring...
12/06/2026
Ateme has announced that Eurovision Services is using Ateme's software-based frame-rate conversion technology for international live event workflows. The de...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin and Simplestream have announced a partnership with Xperi to simplify the launch of OTT streaming services on TiVo OS smart TVs and devices. The collabo...
12/06/2026
Net Insight has announced that a multinational technology company is deploying a...
12/06/2026
MLB Players Inc., the business arm of the MLB Players Association, has announced a partnership with Athletes First to develop and sell brand partnerships across...
12/06/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D) and VuWall have announced the CommandKeyboard-Advanc...
12/06/2026
Comcast Smart Solutions announces a new smart technology deployment with Major L...
12/06/2026
Elevation Worship completed the initial leg of its Elevation Nights 2026 tour ...
12/06/2026
AJA Video Systems has announced KONA IP25 support for Colorfront Transkoder and ...
12/06/2026
Audinate Group Limited (ASX: AD8) will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth C7321, Ce...
12/06/2026
Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould has announced the appointment of Scott Adametz as Chief Technology Officer. The Pac-12 describes the hire as the first CTO appo...
12/06/2026
Grass Valley has announced AMPP Edge Live, a production system combining Grass Valley hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell GPU acceleration, and AMPP OS in a single platf...
12/06/2026
At one time a trailblazer with the launch of the Longhorn Network, the Universit...
12/06/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
12/06/2026
Chyron has announced PAINT 10.4, an update to its illustrated replay and sports ...
12/06/2026
SVP, Production Mark Gross: With the new schedule, with not having every Sunday night, it's given us an opportunity to take a step back and reimagine what ...
12/06/2026
For Televisa Technical Engineering Manager Roberto N nez Ibarra and the small team of 12 technicians and two production personnel at the IBC things are already ...
12/06/2026
Simple Steps to Better Acoustics - Taming The Small Room
Most of us mix in spare rooms and small spaces, where the acoustics fight us at every turn. At Gear...
12/06/2026
Latest addition expands vintage-inspired effects palette
Meris' Ottobit pedal range draws its inspiration from vintage gaming consoles, and the latest a...
12/06/2026
Soundbox-based chamber strings series expanded
Sonora Cinematic have just announced the launch of the second instalment in their Soundbox-based chamber stri...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
AJA Announces KONA IP25 Integration with Colorfront Software
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Collaboration enables uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110 I/O ...
12/06/2026
URSA Cine 12K LF Used to Create Visuals for STUTS' K-Arena Concert
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Organic visuals projected on a giant scre...
12/06/2026
MTI FILM Acquires Mango New Edit, Expanding its Global Post-Production Services ...
12/06/2026
AI Point Tracking Speeds Up Complex VFX Tracks in Mocha Pro
Jessie Electa Petrov June 12, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic point trac...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, has partnered with Simplestream, a provider of OTT and broadcast solutions, and technology provider Xperi, to...
12/06/2026
Leostream Corporation, creator of the world-leading Leostream Remote Desktop Access Platform, today announced Jigsaw24, a leading B2B IT solutions provider wit...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
How Aussie indie games and screen are levelling up with IP 11 June 2026
Ari Harrison, Pro Jank Footy
Head of Games Joey Egger and Ari Harrison of Umbrella sha...
12/06/2026
AgentPerf from Artificial Analysis, the industry's first agentic AI benchmark, gives developers, enterprises and infrastructure providers a clear way to com...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils First-Look Images from Villaflor, Santiago Mitre's New Film
Entertainment
12 June 2026
GlobalArgentina
Link copied to ...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Cross the Boundaries of the Real World into the Spirit Realm i...
12/06/2026
With John Daro, DI Colourist at Warner Bros. Water Tower Color Tuesday 23 June, 10am-1pm or 3-6pm
Restar Corporation
Tokyo
Register here
John Daro is the ...
12/06/2026
Meet The Grumpy Onion Ireland's newest online sensation, all he wants is to ...
12/06/2026
RT stays Up All Night with brand new daily 2026 FIFA World Cup Vodcast
Adding to the fun around 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament, RT has launched a brand new d...
Augmented Crowd Sound Gears Up for New Sports Seasons Fledgling audio-industry sector ponders relevance in a post-COVID landscape By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
