In a competitive broadcast landscape sports broadcast needs to draw audiences right in, to create engaging, exciting, unforgettable moments.
Sport broadcast need to be just like, or even better than, being there in person. It’s not only the brilliance or resolution of the picture.
Audio is even more important to create memorable experiences, immersing you into the scene: the sound of every ball kick, the chants, singing and the roar of the crowd when the ball crosses the line.
Every sport has its unique signature broadcast sound, much of which can be inaudible to the crowd at the event itself, which helps to deliver the narrative of the event to viewers and can be almost cinematic in its sound design.
All this is captured today by dozens of microphones around the field, behind the goals and under stadium roofs. And it needs to be mixed – not statically but dynamically, without any predictability, for multiple delivery formats from stereo and 5.1 to next-generation object-based audio formats, and even for VR and gaming environments. A highly challenging task for even the best sound mixers.
Fifteen years ago, when the term “AI” was not yet hyped, Ben Shirley and Rob Oldfield from the Acoustics Research Centre at University of Salford, recognised the potential of various techniques to detect salient sounds, and to analyse auditory scenes in real-time, so that the data generated could be used to automate optimal mixing of such scenes.
So in 2017, for spicing-up audio mixes, they founded Salsa Sound. Salsa Sound’s machine learning and AI techniques have been refined and expanded over the intervening years to assist in many aspects of production including mix automation and enhancement, and automated audio quality control for broadcast across multiple platforms and genres.
Ben Shirley (Salsa Sound, UK) will explain about the principles and techniques of SALSA’s approach to “AI” mixing and production for an ultimate audio sports experience and where the same techniques can be applied to other genres of broadcast.
Speakers/panelists:
- Ben Shirley (Co-founder & Director, Salsa Sound LTD)
- Werner Bleisteiner (BR)
- Daniele Airola (Rai)
