EMG on the artistry of sound design for the 2024 PDC World Darts Championship
Inside EMG’s Nova 111 which will be one of the trucks used for the 2024 PDC World Darts Championship taking place in December 2023 through to January 2024
Television does not have to sound like real life, and in sports, it seldom does. What a sport sounds like plays a crucial role in how we connect with it, and it enables broadcasters to focus on specific parts of the story. The sound of sports has always been about exaggeration.
For many years UK outside broadcast company CTV – which became EMG UK in 2022 – has been driving home the sound of darts for Sky. As London’s Alexandra Palace gears up for the 2024 PDC World Darts Championship on 15 December 2023, television sound engineer Max Du Sautoy and EMG’s deputy head of audio Steve Halstead are preparing to step up to the oche.
Sound is all about storytelling, and sound design in sport not only enhances the viewers’ experience but it enables broadcasters to tell better stories. Whether it is the ferocious roar of Formula 1 engines, the thwack of a tennis racket at Wimbledon or the graceful sound of perfectly coordinated oars slicing through the water during the Boat Race, it is the audio that provides the ambience for viewers and puts them in the midst of the action. But how realistic it all is; well, that is a moot point.
Felix Krückels, Professor for Broadcast Production and System Design at University Darmstadt, touched on it at SVG Europe’s Immersive Audio Forum in April 2023 when he explained how the creation of an immersive audio experience goes beyond immersive formats. It encompasses any aspect of audio that brings the viewer closer to the game.
“Darts is like pantomime with its own set of heroes and villains, and the competition plays up to that with lots of interaction between the crowd and the players; everyone’s dressed up, they’re all having a good time. The audience don’t go just for the sport. It’s a big party, it’s a big singsong”
Meanwhile, Du Sautoy is a television sound engineer who has been helping bring the viewer closer to the action since the mid-1990’s. More recently he spent 12 years working with EMG UK as an audio guarantee on Sky’s international darts presentation alongside sound supervisor Adam Brewer, before taking on full mixing duties in 2022.
He has been subtlety tweaking Brewer’s existing sound design as sound supervisor for the last two years so he knows better than most how it can be manipulated to create atmosphere and tell a better story.
At the PDC World Darts Championship in December, Du Sautoy is aiming for a double, as the audio doesn’t just enhance the viewer’s experience at home; it also builds the atmosphere for thousands of people at the venue.
The 2024 PDC World Darts Championship requires a complex line up of mics to capture the sound of the darts hitting the board, as well as the atmosphere of the highly excitable crowd. Pictured here, a backstage rig
Game On!
“Sometimes the real sound at a venue can be disappointing, especially when it’s just a dart going into soft fabric,” says Du Sautoy. “You need to bump it up a little bit. You want to feel the excitement of it.
“At the PDC World Championship all of the field-of-play mics are centred on the board. We drill holes directly into the set and we embed Sony ECM lavalier condenser mics just behind the board. We have four mics evenly distributed and suspended in foam, which both keeps them in place and provides shock absorption.
“If you look very closely you can see the capsule of another mic poking out above the 20 between the bezel and the top of the board. This is called the flight mic and it captures the sound of the darts hitting the wires and each other. That gives us all the top end of the board, whereas the mics behind the board gives you all the kick and the energy of the thud when they land.
“When all these are combined, they create that familiar sound. We heavily EQ and gate them to get the most punch when they hit the board, while on replays we also isolate that sound from any other noises.”
Targeting the crowd
But that’s only part of the story. With all the action focused on a 451mm-wide disc at the front of Alexandra Palace’s Great Hall, EMG’s broadcast feeds also help the venue’s PA build the tension for the thousands of onsite darts fans.
The venue uses a Yamaha QL5 to mix the PA, where Lee Kelly of the PDC takes his own microphone feed from behind the board. This is mixed with splits of the referee, MC and presentation mics, as well as music and VT feeds, which Du Sautoy is producing for the live broadcast.
In this way the crowd can experience most of the broadcast content in-venue, and the boost in atmosphere feeds back into the live coverage.
“When you have 3,000 people watching two distant people throwing something at the wall it’s important to give them an experience,” says Du Sautoy. “There is a raucous atmosphere on darts and it should always feel like a party; the more we can tell that story, the more it builds in the Matchplay.
“As with the broadcast sound, it’s our job to help enhance the key elements of the play to better create those scenes. It not only feeds back into the television coverage, but because the sound of the dart mic is placed high in the PA it also helps round out the broadcast sound by giving everything some natural reverb.”
It’s behind you!
Without the audience coverage is simply not the same, such as when coverage used augmented crowd noise in 2021 to make up for the lack of people (and atmosphere) due to COVID restrictions.
Since 2018 live audiences have been mixed in Dolby Atmos, built around a Soundfield microphone with additional spot mics attached to a truss, although Du Sautoy admits he also has a masking loop of crowd noise on standby to cover any NSFW content.
“Darts is like pantomime with its own set of heroes and villains, and the competition plays up to that with lots of interaction between the crowd and the players; everyone’s dressed up, they’re all having a good time. The audience don’t go just for the sport. It’s a big party, it’s a big singsong.”
Players even have their own walk-on music, creating another audio job for Du Sautoy to tick off the list. “As well as playing all the walk on music over the PA, I edit every tune in advance to ensure it comes in at the right time and there are no lulls to keep the energy up for the crowd,” he says. “I’ll also find some recognisable bars which I can loop to sit underneath the MC when they are introducing a player, so when he says their name, it ramps into the full tune for the crowd to react to. It’s all designed to keep the energy up and it all adds to the show.”
Calrec Apollo inside EMG’s Nova 111 truck, which will be used at the 2024 PDC World Darts Championship that starts on 15 December 2023
Who spots the spotter?
Unlike many televised sports, darts is one that Sky still produces on-site, and EMG’s Halstead believes there is a good reason for this is. Halstead works alongside Du Sautoy as audio guarantee and this year’s tournament marks his 10th anniversary working on World Championship darts.
“Although graphics are now produced remotely, from a production perspective the sheer pace of it all is phenomenal,” he says. “It is so fast that the director has to cuts the shots personally because there is not enough time for a separate vision mixer to take instructions.”
Unlike many other sports where cameras follow the ball and the audio follows suit the action is all is one spot, but there can be up to eight cameras on the board at any one time; some are trained on closeup shots of the triple 20, others are taking up half the board, but they all require efficient comms to lay up what the player is going to do next.
“There is a spotter who sits at the back of the gallery and makes a call as to what the player is going to aim for next,” says Halstead. “The spotter has a lip mic which is fed to everyone who needs to make a split second decision on where the play is going.
“With the potential of a different finish after every throw, spotters tend to be ex-players and the current spotter is a former world champion. They know the sport, they know the players, they know all the calculated finishes. They know the best three dart finish from any number, and if the player doesn’t get what they need, they need to recalculate on the fly.”
It is a lot, and despite all the broadcast, PA, and music editing which goes into a darts production, it is the one element that Du Sautoy is grateful he does not have to worry about it.
“I’m very thankful that sound wise, it makes no difference to me and wherever it is on the board it still makes a sound! All I have to do is make sure that as soon as that final dart goes in, I play the music…”