All 6 articles in this series are now available in our free eBook ‘Immersive Audio 2026 – The Book’ – download it HERE.

All articles are also available individually:

When It Comes To Immersive Audio, Less Is Always More

Immersive audio has transformed the sound of sports broadcasting, but how much does it really matter to fans at home, and who is driving its adoption? Sports sound engineer Chris Eckford has some ideas about all this, and his pursuit of the perfect mix is all about keeping it real for viewers at home and not just furthering the lofty ambitions of the broadcast industry.

Eckford is exceptionally well placed to talk about immersive audio. He has been mixing live sports for the last 15 years on a host of immersive productions, ranging from international events like the World Cup and the Euros, to English Premier League (EFL) and Premiership football for Sky and TNT Sports. He was also a Sound Supervisor at Sky when the company became the first UK broadcaster to switch to full immersive audio for the 2017/18 Premiership season which saw it broadcast 124 Premier League matches in full Dolby Atmos.

Meanwhile, as the host of the Pushing Faders podcast, Eckford has quizzed a variety of audio folk about immersive sound. Episodes have ranged from discussions about the history of immersive audio with veteran award-winning A1s like Ian Rosam and Robert Edwards, to asking Dolby’s Mick Dwyer about the technical considerations of immersive audio and how US A1 Glenn Stillwell’s approach to training helps sound operators adapt their live mixes to Dolby Atmos across a variety of consoles.

The Art Of Restraint

But it’s soccer that Eckford says is the most natural fit for immersive coverage, and the key to a good mix is not just about the practicalities of mixing the signals but making sure it adds value for the viewer. When creating the illusion of immersion, less is always more.

“The key to a good immersive mix is not to overdo it,” he says. “Just because there is all this extra space that can be captured doesn’t mean it has to be filled with noise. At a football match, 90% of the game is covered by camera one on the halfway line. To me, the most immersive way to mix it is to make the person at home feel like they are sitting in that position.

“Everything has to make sense to the viewer from that perspective and if the viewer suddenly hears something that they wouldn’t normally hear in that position, it is jarring and it breaks the spell. If you want to make someone feel like they are sitting in the stand at Anfield, then you need the crowd in the Kop to swell from the right hand side of the screen. In a stereo presentation you inevitably lose some of that from the soundfield, but you can capture it perfectly in an immersive presentation and placing the listener at camera one is the most compelling way to do it.”

Above Us Only Sky

While immersive works well for soccer, it might not be appropriate for every sport. In fact, sometimes it can be downright disruptive.

“I think capturing the audio in the height channels has to add value,” he says.  “I’ve worked on Atmos presentations for cricket and I found that because the majority of a cricket match is quiet, capturing the air above your head can sometimes be counter-productive to a viewer focused on the field of play; at one game we managed to capture the sound of an airplane circling the ground which was actually more distracting than immersive.

“At a football match, you can place the PA and the crowd above you, or with boxing you can place the walk on music in the heights like it would be in the stadium. But if it’s just fresh air, then there’s no point. The trick is to keep the balance right and use only what adds to the user experience.”

Ultimately, it’s a question of taste and context. NBC Sports first broadcast the U.S. Open – another famously quiet sport – in Dolby Atmos in 2020, capturing not only the sound of ball flights, but of birds and airplanes. However, golf is a very different environment, and over the many acres of a championship golf course, immersive coverage does indeed give the production more space, and capturing information in the height channels also helps minimize the constant hum of the many generators spread throughout the course.

The Hidden Benefit

But whatever is being captured, whoever is listening, and in whatever format they are listening in, one of the upsides of planning for immersive coverage is that it benefits absolutely everyone, and with most terrestrial content providers still broadcasting in stereo, it’s a consideration that cannot be overlooked.

“Immersive definitely makes a huge difference when you are sat in the right  listening conditions, like in a truck that’s got Atmos monitoring or in an immersive listening suite,” says Eckford. “It’s like the difference between going to watch a film at the cinema and listening to it on your TV speakers or your sound bar.

“But one of the benefits of pushing the boundaries for immersive audio is that it improves everything else downstream. Putting out more crowd mics to capture a more immersive environment means that when you downmix to stereo, that stereo mix sounds even better. As much as I love sitting in the truck and listening in a full immersive environment, most people at home are listening in stereo, and it still has to sound great for them.”

It’s why the stereo downmix is a massive part of mixing immersive content effectively. Dolby downmix parameters are still set by individual broadcasters, so audio mixers like Eckford know what to expect. “Certain broadcasters might have a full center on the dialog, or there might be a diverged dialog, but because it is all pre-determined by individual broadcasters we know how to deal with it in advance,” he says.

However it is configured, having a downmix that translates well to the majority of viewers listening in stereo is one of the reasons why immersive coverage is so tightly regulated by broadcasters, and with the scope to capture anything from the widest of environments, guidelines at big-ticket events like the World Cup and the Olympics are vital. With multiple sound supervisors working across multiple events, consistency and restraint are very real challenges, so having a grown up to tell you what is and isn’t appropriate is a useful thing to have. Meanwhile, in addition to maintaining consistency, it ensures that every immersive mix translates effectively to stereo.

If It Ain’t Broke

It’s also why certain sports stick with what works.

“A lot of immersive coverage is still standing on the shoulders of the people that have come before,” says Eckford.  “Much of the foundational approach is consistent with the work pioneered by people like Rob Edwards and Ian Rosam, especially when working at major tournaments or for established broadcasters. When changes are made, they still tend to follow similar parameters.”

While the number of mics used in immersive presentations may have evolved – these days there might be spot mics behind the goals or on the 80 yard cameras – that balance is still rooted in those tried and tested formulas. The reason is a simple one; as well as servicing consumers listening in immersive environments and on soundbars or spatial headphones they also translate well to stereo.

It works, and when broadcasters do go off-piste, it sometimes doesn’t.

“When we first started experimenting with immersive mixes there was much more leeway to creatively adapt the mix, and if you were on staff with a broadcaster, it was actively encouraged,” says Eckford. “The immersive sound design for the “whoosh” sting that accompanies many of the graphics as part of the presentation sounds like it is coming out of the middle of the screen towards the viewer. We created another version in the height channels with some delay so it moved up and away from the viewer instead. This worked great for immersive viewers, but the stereo downmix made everything sound out of phase because there was nothing at all in the height channels; it was just the same noise a couple of milliseconds later.”

Looking Forward To The Future

Having established the relationship between immersive and stereo delivery, Eckford is still positive about the future of spatial audio.

“Better or more immersive audio has always been a hard sell to production,” he says. “Production has always been more willing to pay for visual enhancements, and sound is always the last department to be thought about when it comes to the quality of equipment.

“But driving more adoption of these concepts will absolutely follow the needs of the market and the equipment that people have available to them, and a lot of the demand for immersive audio is from people listening with immersive headphones.

“Delivering an immersive mix that sounds good on headphones is probably not something that people want to be known for, but it is absolutely what they need to be creating because it’s such a key consumer item. People are more likely to pay good money for a phone and a decent pair of headphones than they are for a beamforming soundbar or a full immersive speaker setup.

“Things like head tracking where the soundscape tracks the user’s head movements while the audio remains anchored to the same content is what will drive immersive content. I think to most football fans, that is more sellable than being able to sit in a certain position in the stand.”