Over the years, SCHOEPS has been and continues to be partner of several major sports events.
Sports transmission is a niche of sound recording that perhaps places the highest demands on the recording equipment. Here, microphones are required to give their all: they need to have the ability to accurately reproduce a complex, non-uniform sonic environment; be deployable at the blink of an eye; be easy to handle; be robust enough to reliably withstand all manner of wind, weather and harsh conditions - all on top of delivering wonderful sound at all times. In addition, they should be as discrete as possible, without covering up any of the event itself, or the advertising banners.
It is the combination of these factors that makes sports coverage such an interesting field – for organisers, engineers, service providers and manufacturers alike. Recently, SCHOEPS has made some breakthroughs in microphones setups that have significantly contributed to improving the audio quality of sports coverage.
The most important signal in sports coverage is often the commentary track. Good intelligibility of spoken commentary can only be achieved with the use of a specialized, high-quality speech microphone with a frequency-independent pickup pattern. SCHOEPS offers a solution to this specific need with the HSC 4VP headset for use inside a broadcast booth, and the HSC 4VXP for commentary directly in the stadium itself.
The atmosphere at a sporting event is generally recorded in stereo, surround, or 3D audio, in order to capture the ambience in a way that is convincing and immersive to the listener. Here, SCHOEPS offers their tried and true ORTF series; the ORTF sets are available as fully-assembled plug & play solutions, and are put to use regularly at major sporting events. “ORTF Stereo” is well-suited for two-channel stereo, while “ORTF Surround” and “ORTF-3D” are geared toward 5.1 surround sound and 3D audio respectively.
All of these systems can be used in conjunction with multicore cables and suitable wind and rain shields – some with integrated heating elements – for easy and reliable deployment. Our credo is to deliver the highest possible sound quality with the greatest ease of use.
Often, for sports coverage, a number of supporting signals are recorded. For this application, we recommend our digital shotgun microphone SuperCMIT, as it provides the highest directionality without compromising sound quality. Our ultra-compact shotgun MiniCMIT with built in low-cut filter, paired with a small windshield, is also well-suited for the job and is often used in a MiniCMIT M/S set. If the source contains mainly medium and high frequencies, our parabolic dish system offers the highest directivity.