Sports Audio Summit 2022: Immersive sound and cloud workflows take centre stage during London event By Kevin Emmott
Friday, December 9, 2022 - 09:31
Print This Story
A lot has changed in the last two years, but SVG Europe's Sports Audio Summit wasn't about being stuck in the past. If anything, it was about how to better embrace the changes, and where those changes might take us.
The event at Kings Place in London was the first time SVG Europe's audio community has been able to meet in person after two years of online meetings and seminars. In that time the audio landscape has changed beyond recognition. Consumers expect more immersive content and the sports broadcast community industry has been delivering it; lots of it. More content, in more formats, across more networks and from more places.
The packed schedule reflected all of that, tackling immersive audio, personalised audio and virtualisation, while the cloud cast its huge shadow over everyone.
This changing landscape was illustrated in Alex Rybalko's opening talk about Riot Games' Project Stryker project. As Projects Stryker's lead engineer, Rybalko outlined the esports giant's Follow-the-Sun production model, which orchestrates media flow between three remote broadcast centres to enable 24/7 production facilities for any event, wherever it is.
Trucks which provide facilities for remote mixing are one thing, but it would be crazy to build a new broadcast truck which didn't include immersive monitoring.
Its Dublin facility went online in the summer and now serves as a central broadcasting hub for both regional and global live esports across all Riot Games' esports titles. With a minimum of 128 channels of audio for every broadcast and 17 language feeds to cater for, its centralised model provides support for its partners wherever they are.
The goal is to add value, said Rybalko. Whether that is in the cloud, on-prem or a hybrid doesn't matter. FPGA hardware isn't going away anytime soon, but for regional growth, the cloud is the easiest way to go.
With immersive audio in sport becoming more commonplace and consumer access to immersive content growing, the Summit had three sessions on immersive audio.
In the first, NEP deputy head of sound Neville Hooper spoke with Genelec regional business development manager Andy Bensley about the practicalities of working with Atmos in enclosed spaces and, with the shift to more remote working environments, the importance of having consistency of monitoring wherever you are mixing.
We are having more and more discussions with clients about how to provide immersive audio, concluded Hooper. Trucks which provide facilities for remote mixing are one thing, but it would be crazy to build a new broadcast truck which didn't include immersive monitoring.
In the next session, the conversation returned to the cloud and in particular sports production virtualisation. Companies across the broadcast community are embracing cloud microservices in a bid to streamline workflows and to encourage flexibility, but audio has always been thought of as a cloud-shaped thorn in the side of widespread adoption.
That's not the case. Both Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, senior sound manager Pete Mercer (above, left) and Harry Brown, Sky Sports sound supervisor (above, right), spoke candidly about ways both broadcasters were utilising cloud services to streamline the way they work, with both acknowledging that complete solutions are not there yet.
Greg Kopchinski, Waves' product manager for live and install, and Tom Knowles, SSL product manager, representing the manufacturing community that is looking to provide parts of the solution, agreed, that the route isn't clear.
Cloud services have helped Sky provide live programming, such as netball and Cop26 coverage, but Discovery's Pete Mercer also noted that solutions for full cloud adaptation are not there yet. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and what options do exist are completely dependent on the application.
On the manufacturing side, the same problem exists, and the approach is different from every company. It's vital that manufacturers work hand in hand with broadcasters and the direction should come from them, because what they want to do will help define what is on manufacturer's product roadmaps.
Back on immersive audio, Nuno Duarte (pictured, above), sound design and audio manager at Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), took a fascinating deep dive into the concepts and technologies behind the immersive audio output at the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.
With both events taking place within six months of each other, it was a challenge, but providing immersive coverage for more than 100 different events was also an enormous opportunity. OBS first experimented with immersive coverage back at Sochi in 2014, creating an immersive mix in parallel to the main output, and by the Tokyo Games everything was fully immersive.
The talk was generous, with insights into planning, implementation, quality control and delivery, and included some of the challenges they needed to overcome along the way, such as how to deliver content to dozens of rights holders to they could encode it across multiple formats, or how to design consistent immersive coverage across so many events in completely different environments and train 300 audio engineers to maintain that level of coverage across the board.
Duarte concluded with the thought that delivering a brand new and unique product to rights-holding broadcasters, with no real financial impact on the cost of production, was a success that broadcasters can build on.
The day's final look at immersive audio was a heavyweight panel which invited Duarte and NEP's Neville Hooper back to the stage alongside NBC Sports and Olym
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Sports Audio Summit 2022: Immersive sound and cloud workflows take centre stage during London event By Kevin Emmott 
