Live from Paris 2024: OBS’ sound guru Nuno Duarte on how sound design has created better than real life audio for Olympic broadcasters

OBS has used meticulous sound design to create sound that is better than real life for viewers

Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) is providing rights-holding broadcasters for Paris 2024 with discreet audio through meticulous sound design. This concept, which uses immersive audio created within the design, brings every sound of the Games to viewers, from the whip of a ribbon on a rhythmic gymnastic mat to the gasps of the fans watching taekwondo in the echoing atmosphere of the Grand Palais.

Speaking to SVG Europe from the IBC in Paris, OBS sound design and audio manager, Nuno Duarte, says: “This is a concept that we have been pushing for a long time to do the sound like this. All the hard work for the sound of this Olympics has been done before, all in the planning.”

Duarte says the goal is to make the sound of the Olympics better than real life. While in Stade de France the PA system is hard to understand as it reverbs amongst the sound of the fans cheering for multiple sports going on simultaneously, and music, and the athletes themselves, on TV it is a different story.

“I want to make the sound better than [in the stadium]. What I’m trying to do is if I have a spot microphone there, all the reverbs that you had, everything was picked up. So what have now is around 20 microphones around [the stadium], so I don’t get that reverb because each microphone only gets the main frequency, the main sound, all the reverbs are below the level of understanding.”

OBS sound design and audio manager, Nuno Duarte, at the IBC in Paris

Designing the sound

On how OBS creates that ambience, it is all in the placement of the mics says Duarte. Highly accurate sound design means there is no requirement for A1s to mix the sound from high to low and vice versa; indeed, if they did it would create technical issues on the overall mix. Duarte explains: “Depending on the venue, we know what we want. That’s why we have 8.0 microphones, 4.0 microphones. So we place microphones to generate these high levels of ambiance. We have to understand we are creating immersive on the capture, on the sound design. We are not processing anything.

“That means that there are no sub-mixes – some points probably have, but we should not down mix or down fall the highs with a low layer, an up layer with low layer. That’s something that we don’t allow our A1s to do because it’s a technical error. Many people like to do it but that creates a technical problem because we are mixing the same sound source with a difference on time and when they get together, everything is going to be out. We are very clear that what is high is high, what is lower layer is lower layer.”

The placement of the microphones is key to preventing echoing sound on screen as different mics pick up the same sound. Duarte says that, for instance, on table tennis there is only one mic on the table; with two mics on the table, one ‘ping’ on the table from the ball would sound like ‘ping ping’ as the impact sound was picked up by two mics. That concept is repeated in every venue, from golf to the Stade de France with its powerful PA, so no mics overlap on the sounds they are tasked with picking up.

Says Duarte: “If you have one microphone that picks up the same sound source from different distances, it is going to get diffused because you have the same sound with the different levels, different times, you can’t understand what’s being said. So we separate the microphones so the same microphone never picks the same sound from the other microphone. It’s like if we open two microphones at the same level, we cannot understand what [is being said] because your voice is getting in the camera microphone and your separate microphone and it gets diffused.”

On particularly troublesome venues – such as the Grand Palais with its highly reflective glass and steel construction – the mics are less sensitive and there are more of them, so each picks up specific sound and none overlap.

For the sound design for the Grand Palais, Duarte adds: “We use more microphones, so if you have more reflections, what you need is your microphones be more sensitive so they capture less sound. If you have a lot of reflections, the way to go against it is to have more microphones open with less level.

“We call it sound alignment.”

The Grand Palais with its highly reflective glass and steel construction requires skill to mic so viewers at home can clearly hear the fighters and the ambiance for taekwondo

Trusting the experts

Duarte does not hire the production teams. They come with the production teams, who are experts in their sports. Comments Duarte: “The mixers come with a production team that brings the directors [and the entire crew for a sport]. So part of my job is I’m not a specialist for example in golf, but I know what I want from each sport and how to get it there. [The A1s] are the experts.

“All these guys are experts in their sports,” he continues. “Who am I to explain to the golf guy or table tennis, “this is the way that you need to do it, the microphone on the left, to the right”? No, I just say, can I help you, if we put microphones under the table but don’t put two microphones, just put one, because if you put two microphones then you’re going to have this problem [where we hear] ping pong a lot of times. Now if you want, we put microphones on the table, but just one to make sure that the ball is just one bounce, not [sounding like two] if we have two microphones.”

“We discuss and then I tell them for OBS, we want this and I give them guidelines on how I want the level, on the mixes where I want the field of play, where I want the ambience, where I want the immersive. So all of [the sports are] equal. And that merges to only one production. So when we change [channel] from table tennis to water polo, the ambience was the same. You don’t have ambience here and the ambience here, we change it from one sport to another sport and the ambience looks the same. [You can] mix it in a different console, mix it in a different track, not like for example World Cup where they try to do the [entire event using the] same one console [model]; here we cannot do that, otherwise I need to have too many consoles. So what we have to do is turn around and give them specific guidelines and then [use our quality controllers] to make sure that they hit the targets that we define.”

QC guidance

The audio quality of OBS compared to other premier sports is elevated because OBS uses a team of audio quality controllers to work with the A1s on the multitude of sports, to push the quality of the sound higher than ever before.

Says Duarte: “Our quality from [other key sports events] to OBS Olympics is much higher. The main reason is that we have our team here pushing for the guys; you need to correct this, you need to correct that, more EQ, more effects, more sound here, give more separation.

“The quality control is not just to verify,” he adds.

“It’s not to verify if [the A1s] are doing well or bad. It’s to help them to take them to the level that we want.”