Paris 2024: Immersive Sound Makes for Intimate Storytelling

Paris 2024: Immersive Sound Makes for Intimate Storytelling NBC Sports is providing 10-channel audio mixes in 5.1.4 Atmos By Dan Daley, Audio Editor

Thursday, August 8, 2024 - 10:26 am

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Film director John Krasinski may have been able to build the Quiet Place movie franchise on a premise of silence, but that's the exact opposite of what broadcast sports wants to hear. After the relative quiet of the pandemic-plagued previous Summer Olympics, having the noise of the crowds back is the kind of sonic challenge that audio professionals love.

The biggest challenge for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris is a good one to have: the return of crowds to events, observes Karl Malone, senior director, audio engineering, NBC Sports and Olympics. The crowd did not disappoint. Thousands are turning out for all sports, and, if French athletes are competing, the decibel level goes up. It's great to have the crowd bring passion and emotion back to the Olympics. The opening-day football game, with a crowd of 76,000, was a sign of crowds to come. Of course, it's also harder now to hear the runners run and the arrows fly.

One of 16 audio-control rooms in NBC Sports' main control center in Stamford

The return of crowds is facilitating greater use of immersive mixing techniques and allows audio teams to take full advantage of Dolby Atmos' overhead channels. Mixing all those events with 10-channel mixes [in the 5.1.4 Atmos format] has allowed us to spread that crowd out in the immersive soundscape, he explains. As immersive sound systems become more common in homes, more people get to appreciate the sounds we are capturing and mixing.

Immersive 5.1.4 NBC Sports' 5.1.4 immersive audio mixes were enhanced when the broadcaster's parent company, Comcast, requested several months ahead of the Games that cable channel USA Network also be in Dolby Atmos for the Olympics, says Malone.

We had already built out all incoming audio from OBS and NBC feeds to be 5.1.4, so we were prepared to get it through the facility and out to distribution, he says. Having the Stamford [CT] facility run on an ST 2110 infrastructure helped with routing 2110-30 audio around the building and offered us the flexibility that we did not have a couple of years earlier. NBC A1s in Stamford mixed all sports live on USA in 5.1.4, and our edit teams, who were planning to cut across 16 channels for the primetime show, decided to do so for all venues.

NBC mixes a 5.1-surround mix in remote trucks onsite in Paris, with a pair of iso tracks on channels 7 and 8, and passes through OBS-placed height microphones on channels 9-12 and NBC-placed height microphones on channels 9-16 for a total of eight tracks purely for overhead effects. Those eight tracks are mixed down to four that make up the .4 of the 5.1.4-channel array. Says Malone, That allows those with Dolby Atmos setups to appreciate these mixes, which immerse the listener in what it's really like to be at the event in Paris.

The facility last year upgraded its immersive-mixing capability with three new studios. Audio Control Room (ACR) Submix 1 houses a 128-fader Calrec Apollo console; both ACR 12 and ACR Submix 2 have 64-fader Calrec Artemis desks. In addition, two Calrec ImPulse core routing and processing engines are part of the new suite of studios, with one assigned to the Apollo console and the other shared by the two Artemis desks.

Big Sound, Close In As big as the sound has been for the Olympics this year, though, there is equal emphasis on sonic intimacy, in pursuit of storytelling.

The audio-control room for the Gold Zone show

We have continued to bring the families and friends of athletes into the broadcast and have miked many of them for live integration into the show, Malone says. Athletes cannot be wired on the Olympic field of play, but working with the host broadcaster, Olympic Broadcast Services, during both of the COVID-era [Summer and Winter] Games has brought broadcast organizations closer to athletes with mic positioning. We are always trying to get as close to an athlete and alongside their apparatus [as possible], whether they are a gymnast or a high jumper. The camera can zoom in close for an athlete clapping their hands, but, with audio, we have to get the mic to the right place, no matter where the athlete ends up.

With sports like swimming, we know where that is, he continues. The start and the finish are where we pick up the emotions of the athlete, the slap of the water, the yell of the swimmer at the finish, and the actual swim race itself. Particularly in Paris, the crowd has been all about telling the story of what is happening in the pool. We try to follow this action by capturing the stroke of the swimmer and the sound of the turns with underwater cameras and microphones.

NBC Sports A1s - led by NBC Senior A1 and Audio Design Engineer Mike DiCrescenzo, working with team members Brian DiCrescenzo, Eric Paige, Joe Vercesi, and Rick Bernier - were crucial in building the audio infrastructure for all 16 audio-control rooms in NBC's main control center in Stamford, CT. Mike DiCrescenzo and the audio team designed, tested, and trained audio operator pilots for the 28 off-tube booths, which are run off Calrec headless consoles on dual ImPulse IP cores. The booths give NBC the ability to deliver every venue live with NBC announcers. Every booth outputs a 5.1.4 mix, ready for integration into a production-control room or direct-to-air transmission. Each booth has a producer section attached for communication with the reporter/talent in Paris, as well as the ability to insert basic graphics.

Twenty-eight announce booths are managed by two audio pilots controlling the Calrec headless console, providing 5.1.4 mixes out of each booth.

Additionally, the producers have the ability (and

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