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with Doug McClement – Part 2
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Talking Olympic Audio Quality Control

with Doug McClement – Part 2

Having previously worked at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia , Doug McClement of Toronto-based LiveWire Remote Recorders headed to Brazil for the 2016 Summer Olympics . He was one of the audio production quality control engineers for Olympic Broadcasting Services ( OBS ), the organization that provides the audio and video crews for the games . Professional Sound caught up with him to learn about the experience and what it entailed . Part one of this interview appeared in the December 2016 issue of Professional Sound .

PS : Is it a pretty uniform audio mix that was sent to each of the hundreds of broadcasters ?
DM : The mandate for OBS is to send out what is happening on the field of play , which is the sound of the sport itself as well as the sound of the ambience of the arena , so you ’ re picking up the audience , or if it ’ s sailing , you ’ re not going to hear much audience but they want to hear the waves or whatever sound is surrounding the athletes . So you try and capture that and that goes out in 5.0 , basically , because on the centre channel we only send out a bit of ambience at about -20dB . The idea being , that signal is sent back to the various rights holders and then they add in their English or French or German or Japanese commentary on that centre channel . So we don ’ t want to have anything too spikey or interruptive on that centre channel ; it should be just ambience , not the sound of a basketball hitting the rim or anything too dynamic so that there ’ s not absolute silence if the announcer mutes his or her mic to cough .
I guess that might be one of the weird adjustments for the A1s mixing these sports if they ’ ve done 10,000 soccer games or volleyball games back in their home country is that at the Olympics , they ’ re mixing without any commentary , which is not what they usually do . It took some of them a couple of days to get used to that , because somebody scores a goal and they ’ re used to pulling the audience mics down a bit because the commentator is going to say something . You can ’ t do that at the Olympics because you don ’ t know how long that commentator is going to talk . If he ’ s speaking English , it might be 10 seconds ; if he ’ s speaking German it might be 20 . So you have to leave that up to the host broadcasters at the International Broadcast Centre to adjust the mix for their own commentary . That was an interesting learning curve for some of the new guys , though the majority of the A1s have worked on several Olympic games over the past two decades , so they know what is expected of them . They know that it ’ s a generic audio and video feed for the whole world , not just one national audience .
We were there for three weeks listening to all these sports and never heard a commentator . It was strange but interesting , since OBS ’ s job is to deliver the field of play and the ambience in addition to any music that is playing that is related to the event . For example , in synchronized swimming , rhythmic gymnastics , and some of the equestrian events , music is a big part of the sport , so that needs to be there . For something like beach volleyball or basketball , the music is kind of between the plays and it ’ s incidental and not that critical . But some of the sports the music is very critical and has to be just at the right level for the aficionados of the sport .
PS : Looking back , are there one or two major challenges that stand out to you ?
DM : On the really busy days when you had 30 events and everything happening simultaneously , that was tricky . Like , what do you listen to ? Of course , we had a server recording all the sports all the time . So if something did happen at a venue that we weren ’ t watching at that particular time , and one of the producers came in and said , just for example , “ Hey , they lost all the audience mics at bicycling ” or something and we were watching sailing , you could go back and look . They ’ d give us a timecode number and we ’ d go back and look at it and try to figure out what went wrong and phone the [ A1 ] up . It ’ s impossible to watch everything all the time , so that was a bit complex .
It kind of levels out towards the end as people get used to it , but there are a couple sports , like the marathon , decathlon , and the pentathlon , that only happen once . They happen in one day and there ’ s no lead in – there ’ s a practice round , I guess – but they don ’ t have five or six days to hone the sound on those events . So that is really challenging and I think some of those guys did an amazing job . Some of the sports are much more difficult from an audio standpoint than others . Some of the equestrian sports where they ’ re jumping over hurdles and going around the field , there are literally 100 mics on the field and the guy is moving all the time . Then you ’ ve got something like weightlifting where it ’ s pretty straight ahead ; there are only so many things that happen . Some of those guys had very , very demanding sports .
Water sports are really tricky , too , and I really tip my hat to some of those guys . They ’ re moving a fader every five seconds for three hours , basically , whereas somebody doing the high jump , there ’ s not a lot going on .
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