Dennis Baxter with some of the assistants of the event.
Dennis Baxter showed to students and professionals during his conference several advices and microphone techniques for surround formats focused in the transmissions for sports events. He mainly presented his recent work with the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil in different sports and arenas.
Mr. Baxter started explaining how boundary microphones were used to bring more excitement to the viewers and how they were installed all along the venues of the different sports, and even how microphones were installed in some of the participants to ensure more excitement and realism to the viewers all around the world. Furthermore, Dennis Baxter specified on the evolution of the MPEG-H Audio and how the different options of the system will allow the user to customize what they want to hear and experience in every transmission.
A remarkable point of the conference was how Dennis uses microphones in the sports that have a net such as tennis, volleyball, table tennis, etc., but he specified were the microphones were installed according to the development of each sport to avoid noise, rumble and hits form the balls. Also, the rigging and waterproof techniques were specified, having in consideration that the systems needed to be installed for over a month and moving a single hanging microphone will need a certified team of rigging professionals, which is traduced into a lot of money and time. For this opportunity, Audio Technica supported with all the microphones for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, having ready for the event 7,000 microphones of different references from their catalogue.
It was relevant to consider that Mr. Baxter has to supervise the high quality of the audio delivered in the transmission since it is given to most of the countries around the world, from mono to 22.2 formats. The assistants were impressed with the microphone techniques and arrays proposed by Dennis, since for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games thousands of microphone were used to capture over a hundred sports that were played simultaneously in different arenas around the city and having over 600 people working in audio of this event.
Dennis Baxter is an audio consultant and Sound Designer for major international sporting events. Having finished preparation for The 2016 Rio Summer Games, his expertise in both creative and technical audio production spans nine Olympic Games and thirty years, earning him five Emmy awards and most recently, the New York Film Festival's International award for Best Sound for the BBC's production of "The Sound of Sport". Author of A Practical Guide to Television Sound Engineering and teaches broadcast engineering at both university and professional levels around the world.
The event was developed by Audio Technica and the Audio Engineering Society Colombia Section with the support of the Sound Engineering program of the University of San Buenaventura and Ene Audio Institute.
