Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Live From Tokyo Olympics: Karl Malone on the Move to Immersive Audio and Keeping Remote Commentators Connected

02/08/2021

Live From Tokyo Olympics: Karl Malone on the Move to Immersive Audio and Keeping Remote Commentators Connected By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Sunday, August 1, 2021 - 6:38 pm

Print This Story

Karl Malone, NBC Sports and NBC Olympics, director, sound design, says the 2020 Olympics is truly the audio Olympics. He jokes that he says that every Olympics, but it's hard to argue with that this time around: next-generation immersive audio, with 5.1.4 (think regular surround sound with four additional channels overhead to give height to the audio), is the norm at every venue. And remote commentary is more important than ever. Simply put, the efforts are impressive. He spoke with SVG in the NBC Olympics listening room at the Tokyo IBC.

I wanted to start with your sense of the sonic landscape of these Games. Does anything stand out to you?

Going into this, the focus was a lack of crowd and how things would sound, as well as coming in with the newer technologies of immersive audio, along with OBS providing 5.1.4 audio and a paintbrush to do all our venues in immersive audio. But the lack of crowd has tended not to be an issue because we've had quite a lot of crowds, especially in swimming and gymnastics, where the other teams come in, and that has been great. That's not to say that there are no empty-sounding venues, like badminton or weightlifting, but, certainly for the primary venues, it. has become sort of a non-issue.

Michael DiCrescenzo in the Olympics audio-control room at the IBC. Notice the trusses installed to fly the four speakers.

Michael DiCrescenzo, NBC senior A1 and audio design engineer, has been mixing the NBC Primetime show in Dolby Atmos and creating the immersive mixes to ensure consistency from sport to sport. Peter Puglisi has been mixing NBC golf coverage in Dolby Atmos but out of a truck in Stamford, CT. The technical complexity of this Games has been dizzying.

Sonically, it has been kind of the best of both worlds, where you have crowd and you can pick out the detail of the sport. This was always going to be the Games that was an audio Games, and you're going to hear these Games like you've never heard before. We can hear footfalls in athletics, and that's not in a silent stadium: there is the PA, and there are people cheering. Everything takes a day or two to tweak, but you're hearing things that you've never heard before, and that has been fantastic.

Athletics, golf, gymnastics, basketball, volleyball mixed from Sky in London and swimming and beach volleyball have all sounded fantastic. The specialty cameras have helped a lot. There's a cable cam that goes over the swimming, and that really helps to pick up the sound, the wet sound of swimming.

Micheal DiCrescenzo (background) and NBC Olympics A1 Fred Hedemark at the IBC

I loved the skateboarding where you could hear the board riding down the rail.

Yeah, skateboard is good, but we're sort of challenged a little bit by a couple of sports like BMX. The ramps are soft, and the rubber wheels are soft, so you're trying to reach for those sorts of sounds. In 3 3 basketball, the court is different from regular basketball courts, where you hear squeaks and ball bounces, so you need to try to pull those [sounds] out as well. With those new sports, you want to promote that sport to people audibly as well as visually.

It has been challenging, but that's the fun part: how can we get more out of this sport and bring it home to tell the story?

Any tips for someone who has not worked in immersive audio about what to expect and how to do it?

We've always talked about having a base layer of ambience for the heights. I think that has always been very successful with us, and that's what OBS has provided us with: a nice base layer to build on.

We've gone 16 channels wide with our edits and audio coming from the truck, and we came into this knowing that's our plan. Sixteen channels of audio gave us the first eight channels for our standard 5.1, plus we do dummy headsets and clean announcer tracks to help edits. The last eight channels are fully immersive: we take the four height channels, and we have a stereo mix for the last two pairs, which we've been able to place into certain areas of the stadiums to add to that base.

For example, we would use those pairs to isolate a certain section of fans in the crowd and put that into the heights with the base. That hasn't been borne out at these Olympics, but, technically and engineering-wise, we're getting that through the edits, and that has been very successful. Making that 16-channel workflow work and getting editors to edit across 16 channels is something we've never done before. And that has been very helpful to us.

That may be how everybody else will do it, but, for us, it is having the base layer and then building on that base layer by being able to add certain things to bring your ear up.

When someone is editing with 16 channels, are they hearing the height signals?

No, they are not hearing them in an immersive overhead configuration but rather as isolated tracks, which they can solo and QC. Ultimately, they're passing them through from the trucks or the venues. The editors are doing their normal 5.1, and everything's mixed live in the audio-control room for the final mix.

Final question on the immersive land. What does it mean to see spatial audio getting its due, even seeing commercials on TV from Apple about it?

I think anything that can add to the experiences is going to be worthwhile. I know I say this all the time, but immersive audio does make the picture look better. If you add spatial audio and the immersive audio to our production, it makes the production overall a much better and more enjoyable production. And it's not that the pictures don't look grea
LINK: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2021/08/01/live-from-the-olympics-karl-mal...
See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

10/06/2026

Microphone Maker Audix Adds Eric Reese as VP

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

09/06/2026

Kiswe Expands Partnership With ONE Championship To LaunchGlobal Subscription Platform

Kiswe announces an expanded long-term partnership with ONE Championship (ONE), t...

09/06/2026

SiriusXM to Carry All 104 FIFA World Cup 2026 Matches via FOX Sports Commentary

SiriusXM will broadcast FOX Sports' English-language commentary for all 104 FIFA World Cup 2026 matches from June 11 through July 19, available to subscribe...

09/06/2026

EVS Broadcast Equipment Rebrands as EVS

EVS has announced it is changing its corporate name from EVS Broadcast Equipment to EVS, reflecting the company's expanded portfolio beyond broadcast equipm...

09/06/2026

FOX and NFL Announce Multi-Year Agreement for NFL Coverage in Mexico Starting in 2026

Fox Corporation and the NFL have announced a multi-year agreement to bring NFL c...

09/06/2026

FOX Sports and ReachTV to Carry All 104 FIFA World Cup 2026 Matches Across U.S. Airports

FOX Sports and ReachTV, an airport media network, have announced an agreement to...

09/06/2026

Cosm Atlanta Opens with Private Preview, Public Opening Set for June 10

Cosm Atlanta, a 70,000-square-foot, three-level immersive entertainment venue located within Centennial Yards adjacent to State Farm Arena and Mercedes-Benz Sta...

09/06/2026

NESN Wins Five New England Emmy Awards

NESN captured five awards at the 2026 Boston/New England Emmy Awards, including four program honors and one individual award. These awards reflect the passion...

09/06/2026

Ateme Referenced by Apple at WWDC26 for Apple Immersive Video Workflow Support

Ateme has announced that its support for Apple Immersive Video workflows was referenced by Apple during its 2026 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC26). Atem...

09/06/2026

Axel Springer Deploys Bitmovin Player Web X for WELT Audio News Experience

Bitmovin has announced that Axel Springer SE has deployed Player Web X, Bitmovin's web video player, to power audio readouts of news articles and an audio-o...

09/06/2026

Grass Valley and Lawo Announce Technology Collaboration on AMPP and HOME Integration

Grass Valley and Lawo have announced a technology collaboration to validate orch...

09/06/2026

LiveU Deploys Remote VAR for Oceania Football Confederation, First in Pacific Islands

LiveU has announced a deployment with the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) t...

09/06/2026

Globecast Launches Content Exchange Platform Powered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Globecast has announced the launch of its Content Exchange platform, powered by ...

09/06/2026

OT7 Championship Weekend to Air on NBC and Peacock for First Time

NBC Sports will present live coverage of Overtime's OT7 football league Championship Weekend from Sullivan Field at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angel...

09/06/2026

UFC Freedom 250: Inside the One-in-a-Lifetime Production Behind the White House Fight Card

We're in three different locations, three different production teams. Coveri...

09/06/2026

Murray States Brandon Banks on Firing Up Racers Basketball Fans Through Creative Video

The intro video for Men's Basketball won Outstanding In-Venue Video in the C...

09/06/2026

SVG Sit-Down, Part 2: FIFA's Oscar Sanchez, HBS's Paul King Dive Deep Into IBC Operations, Commentary, and Ref Cam

Today is match day minus two for FIFA and HBS. On Thursday, there will be two ma...

09/06/2026

Designing the Modern Scorebug: How Broadcast Graphics Teams Are Rethinking the Most Important Element On Screen

Since their debut, the clock-and-score graphic has drawn the affinity and ire of...

09/06/2026

Watch LE SSERAFIM's PURE FLOWERS LIVE Performance Videos and Fan Q&A, Only on Spotify

Last month, Spotify hosted PURE FLOWERS LIVE, a special event celebrating the re...

09/06/2026

Watch RADAR UK Artist Skye Newman Perform Live in London for Her SE9' Album Launch

Last month, RADAR U.K. artist Skye Newman took the stage in East London for a sp...

09/06/2026

Announcement from Wayne Jones Audio

Company to cease operating on 30 June 2026 Australian loudspeaker and amplifier manufacturer Wayne Jones Audio have announced that after much consideration,...

09/06/2026

bigBASS from fedDSP

Increases low-end weight and character The latest plug-in release from Sheffield-based fedDSP aims to offer an all-in-one solution for users in search of mo...

09/06/2026

Fender Studio Pro 8.1 arrives

Introduces AI Studio Assistant, Moises Studio integration & more Fender Studio have just announced the launch a significant update that brings an array of n...

09/06/2026

Call for Sediba Scriptwriting Training Programme Bloemfontein, Free State

The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) is a statutory body mandated to spearhead the equitable growth and development of the South African film and video...

09/06/2026

BBC Casts Edward Bluemel As Poirot In Hercule,' As BritBox Boards Agatha Christie Remake In U.S.

The BBC has found its Hercule Poirot. After Deadline revealed last month that t...

09/06/2026

Nielsen launches Four-Screen Ad Deduplication measurement on YouTube campaigns in Italy

Media buyers and sellers can now compare YouTube reach from computer, mobile, an...

09/06/2026

Andrew Beaudet Joins Brompton as Head of Sales, Americas

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

09/06/2026

Mediaset Italia Deploys Mediagenix Platform To Modernize Scheduling

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

09/06/2026

Mediaset Italia Modernizes Content Supply Chain and Chann...

A project aimed at modernizing scheduling operations across Mediaset's channel portfolio Mediagenix, a global leader in smart content solutions to profitab...

09/06/2026

ACT Entertainment Debuts tvONE 4RU CALICO PRO at InfoComm...

tvONE, an ACT Entertainment brand, debuts its most powerful video processor ever built: the 4RU CALICO PRO (C7-PRO-4200), at InfoComm 2026 (Booth N6813). Engine...

09/06/2026

Composer and Conductor Eric Whitacre to Receive Honorary Doctorate at Berklee Valencia's 2026 Commencement

Composer and Conductor Eric Whitacre to Receive Honorary Doctorate at Berklee Va...

09/06/2026

Comcast Advertising Adds Purchasing Data from Affinity Solutions

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

09/06/2026

Midwich to Distribute Miri Technologies in North America

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

09/06/2026

Nielsen: North American Soccer Fans Jump to More Than 136 Million

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

09/06/2026

Grass Valley and Lawo Collaborate to Advance Open Dynamic...

Technology collaboration to validate AMPP and Lawo HOME orchestration integration, showcasing Dynamic Media Facility principles in practice. Grass Valley and ...

09/06/2026

Bitmovin Player Web X Powers Axel Springer New Audio News...

Bitmovin, a leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced that Axel Springer SE, international media and technology company, has deployed Playe...

09/06/2026

LiveU Delivers First Remote VAR Deployment Across the Pac...

LiveU, the global leader in live IP-video solutions, today announced a landmark deployment with the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) that has brought Video ...

09/06/2026

Sam Craig Joins Grass Valley as VP, Global Pre-Sales

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

09/06/2026

Arkansas TV Will Continue to Air PBS Programming

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

09/06/2026

Glensound to Show DARK22M Network Audio Interface at InfoComm 2026

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

09/06/2026

EVS Rebrands, Trims Its Name

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

09/06/2026

FCC Announces Tentative Agenda for June 25 Open Meeting

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

09/06/2026

Two Alumni Win Tony Awards

Two Alumni Win Tony Awards Mike Morris and Cedric Leiba Jr. won awards for Best Orchestrations and Best Play, respectively. June 8, 2026 By Tori Donahue ...

09/06/2026

NVIDIA Confidential Computing to Help Expand Apple's Private Cloud Compute

NVIDIA GPUs with Confidential Computing are now used for confidential inference in Apple's Private Cloud Compute (PCC), as it expands beyond Apple's dat...

09/06/2026

X-Rite Pantone Launches Offset360 to Modernize Color Control Across Existing Presses

X-Rite Pantone Launches Offset360 to Modernize Color Control Across Existing Pre...

09/06/2026

VEON Appoints Serkan Ozturk as Chief of Staff & Strategy Officer

09 Jun 2026 VEON Appoints Serkan Ozturk as Chief of Staff & Strategy Officer Dubai and New York, June 9, 2026 - VEON Ltd. (NASDAQ: VEON), a global digital oper...

09/06/2026

Katie Price: Nothing to Hide, a candid and unfiltered account of three decades in the spotlight, coming to Sky and NOW on 8 July

Tuesday 9 June 2026 Katie Price: Nothing to Hide, a candid and unfiltered accou...