Archive notice: This article was originally published on January 15, 2010. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
With the world’s first live broadcast of a weekly television-play series in HD with a 5.1 soundtrack, English satellite broadcaster Sky made broadcasting history in summer 2009. One of the eight UPM-1 upmix processors recently acquired by the broadcaster was used to create the 5.1 ambience during the broadcast of the Sky Arts Channel series from Sky Studio 6 in Isleworth, London. The UPM-1 was used in particular to process stereo spot effects, atmospheres and previously recorded music from the Sky audio archive in order to offer viewers a seamless 5.1 experience.
Originally developed to create 5.1 audio material from archive material available only in stereo, the UPM-1 has been used extensively for live broadcasts since its delivery to Sky. However, the series of live performances broadcast under the name “Sky Arts Theatre Live!” marks the first theatre production in which a UPM-1 was used.
Carlton Waghorn, sound supervisor for the entire series, explains some of the thinking behind using the Sky UPM-1: “It was a very exciting project in which we were able to combine some of the old tricks and experience from the days of black-and-white live broadcasts with the latest HD and 5.1 technologies.”
“It was also an attempt to offer our viewers the most complete 5.1 experience possible. We produced the theme music in 5.1 and were very creative in positioning the microphones. However, I feared that following the opening music and some applause at the start in 5.1, viewers would mainly experience a ‘flat’ stereo performance until the final applause. We absolutely wanted to avoid that.”
The approach to solving this problem was ultimately to process all archive-sourced sound atmospheres and most spot effects, as well as existing music inserts, with the recently installed UPM-1. “It is a great tool,” explains Waghorn. “The UPM-1 brought the entire project to life and ensured that we had enough material available in 5.1 throughout the performances. I remember that after it was announced, some people thought it was a post-production tool. In fact, however, the UPM-1 is adaptive and was developed for real-time use. We used this property as effectively as possible.”
“To be honest, I will send a great deal of content through the device over the next few years, since to the best of my knowledge all our effects and music archives exist exclusively in stereo. The UPM-1 is the perfect tool when you want to use this material in 5.1 broadcasts.”
“The other great property of the UPM-1 is that it produces highly phase-coherent, stereo-compatible results,” adds Keith Lane, Project Planner at Sky. “Backward compatibility is absolutely essential for us. It is no use creating 5.1 mixes if they sound terrible after a stereo downmix. We plan to broadcast more theatre plays in HD in future. The UPM-1 will play an important role in this.”
