NBA Returns: New Category of A1 Makes Fan-Free Stands Come Alive Thanks to audio sweeteners,' faux crowd sounds reflect the emotion of the game By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Thursday, September 3, 2020 - 11:55 am
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As sports restart under the COVID-19 pandemic, they're doing so largely without any fans in the stands. But there is still plenty of cheering and other sound from home-team boosters, virtual as it may be, and that's thanks to an elaborate concatenation of technologies and fingers emulating the noises that would have been supplied by those missing crowds.
At the center of this novel arrangement are the audio sweeteners, teams of audio mixers who interpret the range of game emotions encapsulated in hundreds of audio files and folders containing digital samples of home-arena crowd sounds, provided by a combination of the teams themselves and sports' videogame versions.
These audio sweeteners - a generic term for sound mixers who add prerecorded sounds in film and television postproduction - are new in broadcast sports production, a response to the COVID-19 shutdown. However, they've dubbed themselves the weathermen, according to lead weatherman David Crawford, senior audio designer, Firehouse Productions, which the NBA hired to develop and run the crowd-sound operation. One of eight operators, divided into four two-person teams ensconced in the NBA's bubble in the Wide World of Sports (WWoS) complex in Orlando for the season, he explains that the term reflects the fact that nothing in the game - and thus its sonic response - is predictable.
Firehouse Productions' Nathan Allers is one of the audio sweeteners for the NBA games at the Wide World of Sports complex.
We're like the weatherman, he says. We have the best tools, but we still can't always predict how anything is going to turn out.
Crawford works with fellow mixers Nathan Allers, Erik Sandburg, Nick Bechard, Monty Curry, Brent Healy, Anthony Lalumia, and Chris Prinzivalli. Like the athletes, all are confined within the NBA bubble until the season ends in mid October.
Tools of the Trade Their tools are a pair of Novation Launchpad controllers (otherwise used most often in conjunction with Ableton Live music-production software) and an Apple MacBook Pro running QLab 4.6 software, connected to the DiGiCo SD7 front-of-house consoles via Dante networking. Each of the three basketball courts in the WWoS complex has its own weather room - an aerie from which two A1s assigned to the audio-sweetening tasks look down on the court to keep a close eye on the action.
Using the Launchpad's 64 buttons, which correlate to a range of crowd sounds and their volume and intensity, the A1s create a realistic audience that's blasted through an L-Acoustics PA system focused on the court and through a second JBL PA system focused on the seats. (Fans in the stands are virtual as well, using Microsoft Teams software to let several dozen populate flat-panel displays, although NBA players will be allowed to have up to four guests inside after the first round of the playoffs.)
In addition to the two weather stations upstairs at each court, there is a third on the main floor at the front-of-house mix position for the PA systems. It, like the extra Launchpad at each weather station, reflects the broadcast level of redundancy built into this novel system architecture.
The duties of the two QLab operators are divided according to the types of sounds. One focuses on the base layer - a near-constant thrum of collective noise that comes naturally from hundreds or thousands of fans in the seats, referred to as murmur tracks. They're surprisingly sonically protean, able to swell and recede with the action on the boards, and, if the QLab's randomizer function is constantly engaged, the same samples are not retriggered.
The 64 buttons on the Novation Launchpad enable control of a range of crowd sounds and their volume and intensity for NBA games without fans in the stands.
It's like mixing sound to picture, notes Ellen Fitton, a content editor for the crowd sounds, who has worked as a recording and mastering engineer in New York recording studios on rock and classical-music productions. There's a narrative to the games, and we're reflecting that, using the colors in the sound palette we have to work with. We have eight to 10 base layers that we can vary the energy levels on as the narrative changes.
The other QLab operator handles crowd reactions, the aahs and oohs in particular moments. Even those have their own taxonomy, a simple but critical one the weathermen have gleaned from watching the hours of game video provided by the NBA as rehearsal materials.
If he makes the shot, it's an aah!' and if he misses it, it's an ooh,' says Dan Gerhard, a conservatory-trained flutist who found that he preferred the technical side of music production since becoming a freelance audio engineer three decades ago and is serving as an audio sweetener.
Two more roles are assigned to each court: a game director, appointed by the NBA, controls specific team sounds, such as cheers and chants, and a DJ, a fixture at regular NBA games. In addition to the music played, the DJ triggers the rafter stomps that accompany audience calls for De-Fense! In the COVID universe, the DJ also will trigger that prerecorded chant, with both sound effects sequenced in the QLab system.
Each court's game director is also in charge of any boo calls, reflecting understandable sensitivity around negative emotions.
We discussed it and decided we didn't want to be in charge of any of the more negative crowd-sound aspects, says Nathan Allers, senior design engineer, Firehouse Productions. We felt the game directors, a
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NBA Returns: New Category of A1 Makes Fan-Free Stands Come Alive Thanks to audio sweeteners,' faux crowd sounds reflect the emotion of the game By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
