NEP Visions, one of Europe's largest independent outside broadcast facilities companies, has been putting SoundField's DSF-2 digital microphone to work for almost two years, using it to provide 5.1 ambience on its HD transmissions including the European Champions League soccer final and coverage of UK football Premier League and Championship matches for SKY Sports. NEP Visions has also begun working with SoundField's new DSF-3 digital processor, which completes an entirely digital signal path from the SoundField microphone to broadcast and forms the basis for the 5.1 surround-sound audio feed to HD broadcast clients.
NEP Visions became a serious user of SoundField technology when the DSF-2 digital microphone was launched in 2006. "We undertook trials of several different systems in the days before regular HD broadcast services were launched, trying to find the best way to produce an HD-compatible 5.1 audio feed for use with our HD broadcast clients like SKY Sports," said Neville Hooper, deputy head of sound. "We just weren't happy with some of the cheaper multicapsule solutions, which produced all types of phase problems when folded down to stereo. But SoundField's system behaves like a point-source microphone, produces no phase artifacts and gives you a simultaneous, phase-coherent stereo signal, which is essential because stereo is still the most important standard for nearly every mainstream broadcaster. The DSF-2 gave us the best results of all the systems we tried."
Since then, NEP Visions has used DSF-2 systems on their regular work for SKY. When working for other broadcasters, they have switched to their own analog SoundField SPS422/SP451 combination.
For more information, visit www.soundfield.com/news/news_dsf.php and www.transaudiogroup.com.
