Australian Open 2010

Looking after the studio audio for Eurosport at the Australian Open was a thoroughly enjoyable job. The mix of cultures and languages amongst the crew created many amusing moments, when we all knew what we wanted to communicate, but nobody could find the right word so everybody could understand at once.

The studio setup was tight, four cameras in a pretty small studio with three presenters, and then the guests had to squeeze in too. When those guests were the top players such as Roger Federer or Serena Williams there would be an additional crowd along with them, and at times we could have up to twelve people in the studio!

As far as the audio went it was simple yet had it’s own challenges. “We used Electrovoice RE50 mics, they are dynamic omnidirectional mics, well suited to this sort of application.” “The studio was open to the air at the back so a condenser would suffer too much from wind noise and also pick up too much ambience from the Rod Laver Arena directly behind us, so dynamic was the way to go. “ “We also chose an omnidirectional mic as both talent and guests mic technique was quite variable, and omnis don’t suffer from proximity effect, so the voice tone was much more consistent irrespective of how close they held the mic.”

“I compressed everything quite a lot to go to air, as we were live to Europe, and had to match the off-air levels from the network, so I couldn’t afford the studio to come across quieter or les punchy than the promos or other program material. I only compressed lightly, a ratio of 2.5 to 1, however I had the threshold down quite a bit so it was always compressing a little, but would stop any peaks from excited presenters sending us into clipping.

All in all we had a great time, going live to Europe meant we had to be on the ball all the time, and we got to watch a lot of tennis!