Ponderous pop-proggers Coldplay are in the midst of a world tour promoting their album, Mylo Xyloto. This kicked off at Madrid’s Plaza de Toros Stadium last October, accompanied by a live webcast of the concert on YouTube. Music mixing facilities were
provided by UK company Red TX, with Tim Summerhayes mixing on a Studer Vista 8 digital console in the recently launched RED II mobile studio. Summerhayes says this gig was something of a personal revelation, proving that webcasting was a valid way to transmit live concerts. “Thanks
to the band’s schedule we were lucky enough to have time for a dummy run,” he explains. “We had a high- speed internet connection coming back into the truck and the sound and picture quality were superb.” All internet encoding was done
separately by other facilities and Summerhayes says he was struck by the difference this makes compared to the more instantaneous world of broadcast TV: “I wanted to see how much I could do with the stereo mix during the run-through and panned something hard left. It took 25 seconds until that had any effect on what was coming back from the live stream.”
“What broadcasters were happy with five to 10 years ago is now not good enough, especially with the coming of HD. These connections are very bandwidth hungry, even with the latest algorithms” Mark Shadbolt, SIS Live
integrated, particularly in these days of surround and multichannel operation sound operations. “There’s the need for different languages on multiple audio channels in both Asia and Europe,” he says, “so manufacturers like us provide the appropriate tools for Dolby within the transmission chain, with cards both up and downstream but with the main work done in the play-out server.” Dolby Laboratories is promoting its
surround sound technologies as “bringing the cinematic experience into the home” for live transmission as much as DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Rob France, Dolby’s senior product marketing manager, says there has been a “growth in 7.1” with the current focus on 3D stereoscopic transmission by broadcasters, for both films and live events.
The company’s key offering in both TV and video on demand is Dolby
Digital Plus, which, says France, delivers quality audio at lower bandwidths, a critical consideration for broadcasters wanting to get more on a carrier. Dolby, like the broadcast companies, now has to consider a wide range of outlets for this material, including computers, mobile phones and tablets as well as TVs.
NEW DELIVERY Andrew Horbury, director of marketing for DTS, also reflects this trend, saying that as content is delivered to the home over a vast number of delivery methods there is an increasing demand for audio in a number of different formats. “Multi-platform delivery requires a
flexible approach and with DTS HD we have a scalable solution that scales from high efficiency modes to lossless,” he says. “So whatever the situation and
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