
NHL, NBA Resurrect Augmented Crowd Sound for Canadian Venues Some teams opt for empty seats as provinces mandate capacity limits By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Thursday, January 27, 2022 - 9:57 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Several Canadian NHL teams, including the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators, and the NBA's Toronto Raptors will be playing in front of no crowds or much smaller audiences at home for the foreseeable future. That has put the COVID-engendered audio category of augmented crowd sound back in play, at least in the Great White North.
The restrictions are based on province-mandated COVID policies. At the end of December, the Ontario government announced a limit on the number of people allowed in an arena: 1,000 or 50% of capacity, whichever is less. The Leafs and Raptors, owned by the same company, quickly responded, announcing that no fans would be admitted to any of its teams' venues.
This has prompted the resurrection of augmented-crowd-sound audio, innovative systems that were rushed into service by a number of companies after the onset of the pandemic but had been silent for most of 2021 as venues once again allowed fans into games.
The NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs are among the Canadian teams that will be playing in empty or capacity-limited venues.
Firehouse Productions, which was one of the first with such solutions in the market in 2020 and notably developed the crowd-sound systems used in the NBA's bubble in Orlando during that year's disrupted season, says it has shipped seven of its crowd-sound systems to Canadian professional sports teams, including the Maple Leafs and Raptors (the latter are allowed to play in their home arena this season, having spent the previous season in Florida) and the Montreal Canadiens. However, not all of those teams have deployed the systems for their game broadcasts.
Although the audience restrictions at games are based on local-government regulations, the request for crowd-sound systems came from the league, according to Firehouse Productions VP Mark Dittmar, who designed the system.
[The league] reached out to us about a month ago and said, We think this is coming,' and asked if we could put the systems together, he says. We worked on getting them up to the teams so that, if it happened, we weren't frantically overnighting things. And we did some training with various [operators] to get them back up to speed on it.
The Need for Speed The system, the same one Firehouse Productions developed for the NHL last season, is designed to be operated by a single user working a pair of Novation Launchpad controllers, whose individual touchpads activate prerecorded crowd sounds ranging in intensity from background murmurs to loud reactions to on-ice moments, such as scores and near-misses. The sound is played through each arena's installed PA system and picked up on-air through the broadcast's ambient and crowd microphones.
The NHL's system is distinct from the one the company devised for the NBA two years ago. That one had two mixers on the Launchpad devices as well as another mixer controlling the overall levels of games and a DJ playing music cues from an iPad at key moments.
We were using the template from the NBA but realized that hockey is a significantly faster game [than basketball] and the audience responds at a significantly faster pace, Dittmar explains. We had to do a lot of editing to get things to pop at the speed they needed to, as well as come up with new sounds with a lot of it.
The NHL crowd-sound system takes into account the very specific crowd dynamics of hockey, whose reactions he says tend to wax and wane en masse. The NBA system, on the other hand, has more nuances built in, such as effects like air balls and thundersticks, and call-and-response interplay between the stands and the DJ or the arena announcer. It also has the ability to hear the occasional individual voice, something the higher-decibel ambience of a hockey rink rarely allows.
Dittmar notes that the NHL system also doesn't have as much baseline-customization per team as the NBA's, partly due to its streamlined operation for the sport's speed. However, he adds, once the initial two weeks of system implementation and operator training are finished, teams can send requests for specific crowd sounds, such as chants and reactions, which Firehouse Productions' staff will develop into an audio file that can be emailed back to the system operator.
On average, [the NHL system] has to react faster, so we designed it for a single operator, he says. But we've taken all of our experience on this type of system and refined it even further. When they need it, it'll be ready.
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...
16/06/2026
Thomson's highly regarded expert-led online learning courses are now easier to access on the go via our new App.
Available now on Google Play Store, the J...
16/06/2026
Neumann.Berlin has released firmware version 2.0 for the MT 48 audio interface, adding plugin compatibility, expanded Dante networking options, broadcast encode...
16/06/2026
TVNewsCheck has announced that nominations are now open for its 2027 Women in Technology Awards, to be presented at NAB Show 2027 on Tuesday, April 6 in the Med...
16/06/2026
Clear-Com has announced Avalon, a 1RU IP intercom platform for broadcast, live events, and production environments. Designed for IP-only workflows, Avalon suppo...
16/06/2026
SNS has published a guide to remote video editing workflows using its EVO shared storage platform and companion tools, covering use cases ranging from home edit...
16/06/2026
Grass Valley has announced that the Richmond Flying Squirrels, a Minor League Baseball affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, have deployed five Grass Valley LD...
16/06/2026
The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) has announced the launch of the Official IPMX Training Series, a free online program covering the design, configurati...
16/06/2026
Swerve TV has announced distribution agreements with Fubo, Plex, Amazon Fire TV,...
16/06/2026
ATP and TikTok have announced an expansion of their global content partnership, extending the ATP's TikTok hub powered by TikTok GamePlan to cover all nine ...
16/06/2026
Network's LA facility serves as the heart of a sprawling operation built to ...
16/06/2026
At Pico, the network's media-management team is supporting a flood of HBS fe...
16/06/2026
The NHL will no longer air on CBC after the pulic broadcasters and national rights-holder Rogers Sportsnet were unable to come to agreement.
After a successfu...
16/06/2026
As live sports broadcasters continue to seek new ways to make complex action mor...
16/06/2026
Built with the 2026 FIFA World Cup in mind, these small but mighty IP-based tran...
16/06/2026
Boasts individual synths for each band
UVI's latest synth takes an interesting approach to synthesis, offering a trio of synth engines that each operate...
16/06/2026
New intelligent auto-fader plug-in unveiled
PSPaudioware's latest release offers automatic level adjustment and provides more detailed control than many...
16/06/2026
New performance-focused library announced
Crystal Pads is the latest addition to The Crow Hill Company's ever-growing product range, and according to th...
16/06/2026
Developed in partnership with Sequential
In recent years, GForce Software have branched into official emulations of classic hardware synths, delivering a ha...
16/06/2026
Designed specifically for live performance monitoring
beyerdynamic's latest announcement sees the company introduce an affordable in-ear monitoring syst...
16/06/2026
Official emulation celebrates iconic synth's 40th anniversary
Cherry Audio have just introduced Ensoniq ESQ-1, an official recreation of the 1986 polyph...
16/06/2026
Australians place growing trust in SBS News
16 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has been recognised as one of Australia's most trusted news providers, ran...
16/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz achieves highest number of GCF validated 3GPP NR NTN test cases ...
16/06/2026
Bydgoszcz to Become a Local Centre of Excellence for Advanced Rail Technologies....
16/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/06/2026
87 Percent of Creators Who Use Creative AI Say It Is Growing Their Business and ...
16/06/2026
Historic Zhuque-3 Reusable Rocket Test Mission Captured with URSA Cine Immersive
Brie Clayton June 16, 2026
0 Comments
Apple Immersive Video puts view...
16/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/06/2026
Rise WIB, the award-winning advocacy group championing gender diversity and career progression across the broadcast and media technology industry, today announc...
16/06/2026
Limecraft today announced the availability of Limecraft 2026.4, the fourth of eight planned platform releases this year. The update introduces Team-Based Access...
16/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/06/2026
Free Program Supports IPMX Education from Foundational Concepts Through System and Network Design
The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) today announced t...
16/06/2026
Share your views on Screen Australia and the future of the industry 15 June 2026
Your feedback matters.
Following the instrumental insights provided in 2025,...
16/06/2026
Techtel Supports T-Motion RCCP-2A Controller Upgrade for Major Australian Broadc...
16/06/2026
Tuesday 16 June 2026
Record audiences tune in for opening weekend of ICC Women&...
16/06/2026
Every breakthrough AI model starts the same way: with a training run. The infrastructure running those training jobs shapes everything: how fast teams can itera...
15/06/2026
One of the more exciting internal video production divisions within a college at...
15/06/2026
The deal valued at $22 Billion is expected to close in the first half of 2027...
15/06/2026
Golf Channel and the Arnold Palmer Cup have announced a partnership to livestream the 2026 Arnold Palmer Cup on Golf Channel Mobile and GolfChannel.com. The tou...
15/06/2026
TikTok and Panini have announced a partnership to bring a digital collectible ca...
15/06/2026
Cosm and Monster Energy have announced the debut of the first full-dome immersiv...
15/06/2026
Real American Freestyle (RAF) and Fox Nation have announced an exclusive streaming agreement for three RAF international events, beginning with RAF Georgia on J...
15/06/2026
FanConnect has announced a partnership with Extreme Networks integrating FanConn...
15/06/2026
Ten Emerging Filmmakers Ages 18 to 25 Will Start Fellowship Year at Ignite Lab from June 14-19
LOS ANGELES, CA, June 15, 2026 - The nonprofit Sundance Institut...
15/06/2026
Innovative three-band soft synth introduced
UVI's latest synth takes an interesting approach to synthesis, offering a trio of synth engines that each op...
15/06/2026
Applications now open for 2026
The Oram Awards have returned for 2026 to celebrate the unusual, unique and unfiltered creative worlds of women and gender-di...