Monday, December 16, 2024
Location: Concourse A, Concourse Level
Time: 1:30 – 5:30 p.m. ET
Adapting Audio for an Emerging Direct-to-Consumer Paradigm
Direct-to-consumer distribution of sports television is rapidly displacing legacy linear broadcasting. The implications of this shift for audio are significant. On the distribution side, streaming removes the constraints of terrestrial television systems and smooths the path to next-generation services for enhanced personalization, accessibility, and immersive formats. In production, streaming translates to more hours of coverage, requiring new efficiencies, like centralized hubbing, and distributed virtual production to cost-effectively provide many concurrent enhanced experiences for multiple streams at the same time. As the direct-to-consumer-only tech giants enter the field, the pressure to scale internationally further adds to these demands. Meanwhile sports content also increasingly sits on premium services alongside Hollywood-derived 4K immersive HDR content, simultaneously demanding a step-up in production quality. Outside of the specialized worlds of television and film, the accelerating growth of immersive experiences in music, gaming, and VR put demands on live television to catch up. Looking ahead, there is no question that emerging technologies of IP connectivity, production virtualization, and expanded use of AI enabled cloud services will play an important part in improving quality while increasing efficiency and scalability at the same time. Please join SVG and the DTVAG for an examination of how some of our members are innovating to meet the challenges of a rapidly evolving sports television audio landscape.
| 1:30 - 1:45 p.m. | Opening Remarks Presented by: Roger Charlesworth, SVG Audio, Executive Director Jim Starzynski, NBC Universal, Director and Principal Audio Engineer; SVG Audio, Chairman |
| 1:45 - 2:00 p.m. | Direct to Consumer Services and Expanding Immersive Experiences As live sports increasingly migrate to premium streaming platforms, sharing these distribution channels with higher quality cinematically-derived and premium-episodic content, the bar on quality and immersive formats is raised. At the same time multiple live streams and full-game VODs, allow broadcasters to aggregate much larger audiences and more efficiently exploit broadcast rights. Speakers: Cherylene McKinney, Dolby Laboratories, Director, Commercial Partnerships |
| 2:00 - 2:30 p.m. | Audio for Cloud-Based Distributed Production Cloud-based production infrastructure built in super scaler data centers and leveraging their connectivity backbone is poised to radically change live production by allowing entire teams to collaborate remotely and for concurrent program streams to be independently produced for one event from common sources. What are the implications of this effort for audio and will senior A1s soon be “working from home”? Join us for an exploration of this subject Speakers: Tom Knowles, Solid State Logic, Director of Project Management |
| 2:30 - 3:00 p.m. | IP Audio Routing and Flows for 2110 Infrastructure: Are We Getting it Right? The ST 2110 family of standards allows for greatly increased audio capabilities. While some broadcasters are taking advantage of these to support NGA features with greatly expanded channel counts and reliable SADM metadata transport, others are simply locking in the limitations of legacy SDI. Further, there are a range of radically different approaches to audio-only routing, inside and out of 2110 networks. Can we arrive at a consistent best practice? How many program channels are enough, and how do should we architect to efficiently manage individual audio-only sources and destination in this environment? Speakers: James Cowdery, Dolby Laboratories, Senior Staff Architect Tony Staires, Lawo North America, Sales Director for Audio Production Pete Walker, Calrec, Senior Product Manager Will Waters, Audinate, Principal Product Manager |
| 3:00 - 3:45 p.m. | Networking Break in Exhibits |
| 3:45 - 4:00 p.m. | IP-Enabled Digital Microphones Native-IP digital microphones have been slowly emerging from the lab and escaping from installed-sound conference rooms to play a greater role in live sports production. Now dedicated designs leveraging multi-capsule and MEMS arrays, real-time DSP, and efficient IP multichannel connectivity are starting to follow them. Speakers: Brent Chamberlin, Audio-Technica, Sales Engineer, Professional Broadcast |
| 4:00 - 4:30 p.m. | Production Hubbing and the Changing Topology of Audio Internationally, centralized production hubs have played an important role for major sports leagues, individual broadcasters, and a number of global events. In the states we have been slow to adopt this model. Is this starting to change and what are the implications for audio? Speakers: Brian Rio, BVR Consultancy, Principal Tom Sahara, Quintar, SVP, Production Technology Glenn Stilwell, AppleTV Friday Night Baseball, Sound Supervisor; Dolby Laboratories, "Live" Mixing Consultant; NBC Olympics, Senior Audio Maintenance Engineer Melissa Terry, Warner Bros. Discovery, Manager, Creative Services |
| 4:30 - 4:45 p.m. | New Live Audio Jobs for AI Expanding beyond autonomous and assisted mixing, AI is starting to play an increasingly important role in versioning multiple concurrent live streams for distribution. Importantly, AI is also quickly learning to accurately efficiently QC and correct large numbers of audio programs and discern subtle difference in intelligibility and mix attributes. Speaker: Rob Oldfield, Salsa Sound, Co-Founder and CEO |
| 4:45 - 5:30 p.m. | Perspectives on Live Audio Production and Distribution Our panel will share their perspectives on live audio production and distribution, including the role of direct-to-consumer models in opening up premium immersive and NGA formats, while expanding the volume of content production required. Speakers: Zach Bayer, Prime Video Live Sports, Audio and Intercom Systems Manager Florian Brown, ESPN, Senior Audio Engineer and Audio Production Consultant Karl Malone, NBC Sports and Olympics, Senior Director of Audio Engineering Neal Roberts, Warner Bros. Discovery, Senior Director of Live Experiences |
| 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. | Opening Night Reception in Exhibits |