Lawo on the ball with new sports-oriented auto-mixing technology

Hot on the heels of Philipp Lawo’s contribution to an SVG Europe Sport Production Summit panel yesterday (10 September) about immersive sound and the steps being taken by broadcasters and vendors to enhance the audio experience for the sports viewer, the company that bears his name today announced a new technology to deliver automated control for close-ball mixing, entitled KICK.

When interfaced with modern image analysis and tracking systems, KICK delivers fully-automated, close-ball audio mix for sports such as soccer, rugby and American football. KICK’s intuitive GUI allows adjustment of various parameters, including the placement of microphones, their polar patterns and microphone prioritisation.

The system ensures transparent sound pickup with its ‘noise-to-kick’ ratio, significantly reducing crowd noise. It also ensures a consistent audio level without noticeable fades for seamless inclusion in a broadcast mix, and delivers a mix that is 100% repeatable from match to match.

KICK is available as a software-only solution for productions using Lawo mc² mixing consoles, as well as a hardware-bundled solution for productions using consoles from other manufacturers. It requires a standard host PC (running Windows 7 or Windows 8) for the host application, and an HTML5 capable browser for the user interface. An optional Lawo mc² Micro Core hardware processing engine is available for interfacing micro core to third-party consoles via MADI and RAVENNA/AES67.

The mc² Micro Core can be controlled by a variety of external studio control systems, as well as Lawo’s touchscreen mxGUI software, making it perfect for smaller automated applications such as automated newsrooms. Other applications include small routing applications with DSP processing, like installed sound applications.

Lawo is also showcasing the new sapphire compact radio console and V__remote4 bidirectional Video/Audio-to-IP interface, among other products, at IBC 2015.