Live from Paris 2024: Keeping it clean and real with live discreet audio from Olympic Broadcasting Services
OBS has given Paris 2024 the ultimate discreet audio mix
“This is live audio. Real-world live. Live straight from production to our AV system. No Adobe. Everything discrete, no encoding or decoding,” states Nuno Duarte, Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), sound design and audio manager, on the audio feeds that are being delivered to rights holders throughout Paris 204.
In conversation with SVG Europe at the Parisian broadcasting headquarters for OBS and rights-holding broadcasters, the IBC, he goes into more detail: “We don’t have a decrease of quality until right holders distribute to the homes. So for example, if I’m a rights holder, I receive discrete, I can manage that however I want. I don’t need to decode and then encode, so I can put the commentator on top, I can put the commentator aside, I can mix. It’s easy; I don’t need to encode and align with the video delays, latencies, and all these issues.
“The microphone layout is doing the immersive mix,” he continues on the immersive discreet sound. “So we don’t use processing. That doesn’t mean that sometimes we don’t need to get some help in some sports, but the concept is this one; that all the immersive and the highs and the 3D are on the sound design.
“Then I do everything discreet until [the audio is home with the rights-holding broadcasters]. Then if they want to encode it in Dolby Atmos or MPEG-H [or anything else], they can do it to arrive to the set top boxes, but [what they receive] is discreet, no processing, nothing.
“What they receive, what we are listening to here, is what the guy is mixing in the venue.”
While OBS created a discreet audio mix for the world feed in Tokyo, Paris 2024 marks the first time it has been offered with an audience present at the venues
First time with fans
While OBS created a discreet audio mix for the world feed in Tokyo, Paris 2024 marks the first time it has been offered with an audience present at the venues. Says Duarte: “We have used it for all sports, 100% top notch, since Tokyo. The big difference here [in Paris] is we have crowds; in Tokyo it was easier to control. It was the first experience [with crowds, using this sound design concept] for the mixers here. It was not the first time for them to do it in immersive, but it’s the first time with crowds.”
For Duarte, this has required an added level of creativity. “My concern was now that we have a crowd – because getting these sound effects when we don’t have crowd, it’s easy, very easy – but to do it when we have all these crowds, all these PAs, is hard. Because we have a lot of crowds, the PA has to be high; there is no other option. But as you see, we made it.”
Commenting on a demo of the audio while watching a rhythmic gymnastics athlete perform live on TV, Duarte comments: “You’re using the crowd, you’re using the instrument [being used by the gymnast], the PA is spilling 80 or 90 dbs, no problem. We have the public reaction everywhere; you can feel people talking. It’s not a round [ball] of sound; there is an atmosphere, and everything is in the space [it is meant to be in]. We can almost understand people talk or talking [in the crowd].”
Audio guru, OBS sound design and audio manager, Nuno Duarte
Enamoured by discreet audio
Duarte says the audio for Paris 2024 is going brilliantly, to the point where some broadcasters are so enamoured with the discreet audio, they are offering certain channels without commentary to give viewers an unadulterated, atmospheric experience. Says Duarte: “To be honest, the feedback has been fantastic from the broadcasters. When I speak to these broadcasters, one thing that I’m finding out is many people, many channels are offering the sports without commentators [on some channels]. HBO I think in Portugal, they have some channels without [commentary] and people go and select the sports without commentators, to listen.
“I’m not against the commentators,” he adds. “I think they are fundamental to explaining the sports. But it’s interesting that if someone is offering, if HBO and all these telcos are offering [content without commentary] it is because someone is looking for it.”
Elevated automix
OBS is using artificial intelligence (AI) in some sports in Paris, with a step forward that has taken months to achieve; an automix that follows the camera shots. Duarte explains: “We have started doing some things in some levels that normally we don’t have regarding artificial intelligence. The big difference is that our artificial intelligence is not blind.”
Automixes do not generally change the sound to suit the shot. While some formats do, for instance, follow a ball, they do not fine-tune the mix for a wide shot or a close-up. However, OBS worked with a tech provider for six months before the Games to bring the audio in step with the video.
“What that means is when we are meeting audio, we are watching the picture. If it’s a close shot, or a wide shot [the sound should travel] from left to right. Most of the automix [systems] out there I know are blind, they don’t follow the picture. For example in football when we have the kick of the ball from the goalkeeper, the sound should be different If he’s in a wide shot or if he’s in a close shot of the ball.”
The new enhanced automix is being used on the rowing here in Paris and experimentally in a few other sports. Duarte states: “The athlete speed, for example, we used in rowing is not the same sound from the beginning of the preliminaries to the finals; it’s almost a difference of 10 seconds or 50 seconds because the athletes are faster. So the sounds need to follow that difference according to the picture. So the big difference for us is the automix is more or less following what there is out there; it is not blind, it is reading the picture, reading the cuts.”
He adds: “The AI is a tool, it is important to say I’m not using artificial intelligence to replace the A1 or to do all the mix.”