SVG Audio Symposium Explores Issues From AD to NGA Detroit conclave celebrates Paris 2024, ponders lack of new generation of A1s By Dan Daley, Audio Editor Tuesday, October 1, 2024 - 7:00 am
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You have to be the smartest person in the room, because there's no one else there who can do it.
To that sentiment, some of the several dozen A1s and other audio professionals at last week's SVG Audio Symposium in Detroit added: because you're the only person in the room. That's literally the case in the claustrophobic, single-seat chamber that comprises a sports broadcast's audio world at the rear of remote-production trucks, even as a dense warren of video and graphics colleagues labor just feet away.
It's a small room and getting smaller, as additional immersive loudspeakers are wedged around and above the A1's seat. The job is complicated and becoming more so, with a slew of new and updated technical formats and protocols or software updates constantly arriving and needing to be quickly mastered. GUI fatigue is the term one A1 used to describe it, noting that A1s' attentions are increasingly pulled away from the console and toward banks of numerous displays.
SVG Audio Chairman Jim Starzynski welcomed attendees.
It's also a seat with a lot of voices aimed at the occupant - particularly, urgent calls from producers and directors shouting instructions and requests through speakers and headsets. And needing to be controlled from Calrec desk faders is increased noise from fields and gridirons and courts and pitches, along with miked athletes' own voices and the nat sounds that fans demand.
The only voices A1s are not hearing, it seems, are those of a generation of A1s coming up behind them, the ones the broadcast-sports industry keeps longing for but seems willing to pay only lip service for rather than intern stipends or student tuitions.
All these concerns - along with quiet recognition and acknowledgement of the turmoil that corporate broadcasters, leagues, and the college-sports sector generate around them and A1s can do little about but watch - made for a wide-ranging and robust all-day conclave. It was punctuated by sponsor presentations and peeks over the technical horizon at the new world of Next Gen Audio (NGA) that becomes more imminent, while nonetheless remaining somewhat hazy, every year.
Paris Was a Win The invitation-only event, managed by SVG Audio Executive Director Roger Charlesworth and SVG Audio Chairman Jim Starzynski, director/principal audio engineer, NBCUniversal, celebrated broadcast audio's successes - most notably the Paris 2024 Olympics, which produced new viewer and revenue records for NBC and new ways of working by its audio team. In particular, the focus was on the unprecedented scale of at-home/REMI-based immersive-audio production and IP audio-signal gathering.
It was pointed out the network's decision to make rapper Snoop Dogg a key personality of the production - his play-by-play of a badminton tournament is destined to become an Olympics-broadcast classic - and invest in having a number of social-media influencers onsite helped stimulate new viewer cohorts, as well as optimism that some of the new revenues will find their way to audio innovations.
NBC Sports' 5.1.4 immersive audio mixes were enhanced by having the network's Stamford, CT, facility run on an ST 2110 infrastructure, providing flexibility not available even a couple of years earlier. NBC A1s in Stamford mixed all sports live on the subsidiary USA network in 5.1.4, and NBC mixed a 5.1-surround mix in remote trucks onsite.
The overhead channels that define Atmos were complex. A pair of iso tracks on Channels 7 and 8 passed through OBS-placed height microphones on Channels 9-12 and NBC-placed height microphones on Channels 9-16, comprising a total of eight tracks purely for overhead effects. Those eight tracks were mixed down to four tracks that make up the .4 of the 5.1.4-channel array. As one attendee pointed out, it was a lot of steps to create the quartet of overhead ambient channels, but the additional emotional engagement it can engender makes it worth the effort.
Among the new systems for the Olympics were approximately 32 announce booths in the Off-Tube Factory at Stamford, where teams of NBC announcers and analysts provided commentary for newer Olympic events, such as fencing, handball, judo, and badminton. Up to 80 Dante commentary boxes, tied into a huge comms network, connected the announce booths to the respective venue reporters in Paris, as well as to producers and statisticians anywhere in the NBC global network.
(A couple of live showings of the Opening Ceremony in U.S. cinemas, including one in IMAX, revealed the challenges of doing the broadcast at that scale. The audio gain-structuring alone, said one attendee, was like a master class in dynamic range. )
Next Generation Audio New NGA and ATSC 3.0 frontiers include audio-description (AD) services for the sight-challenged and enhanced dialog intelligibility for everyone. According to the discussion, an AES working group on dialog is scheduled to look into the practical aspects of making both services better adapted to consumer television sets and user needs and into the very essence of hearing itself, with subject-matter experts examining the science of how we hear.
It's a work in progress, noted one principal. We're getting it across that [AD] is as important as the main soundtrack [of an event]. But it's not a science project: this can be done now.
Welcome news was presented in the context of another widely reported factoid: that television-set manufacturers may spend more on the shipping packages for their flat-screen products than on the speakers and other audio components in the sets. Wit
