Glasgow, UK: As has been tradition since 1930, August saw the World Pipe Band Championships (known amongst pipers as ‘The Worlds’) taking place in Glasgow, Scotland. Featuring their traditional line-up of bagpipes with rhythmic accompaniment provided by bass, tenor and snare drums, the competing pipe bands travelled from all over the world to take part. Recording the event for posterity as usual was a team from BBC Scotland. However, for the 2006 championships, their remit was a little wider than in previous years. The BBC formerly recorded only the vision for the event, the sound being recorded separately by another company for later release on CD. However, this year the BBC team were entrusted to record the sound and the vision. Both were used for the televised highlights of the Worlds, broadcast a few weeks after the event. The audio was transmitted on Radio Scotland’s weekly Pipeline program and will be released on CD in the near future. The BBC Scotland sound engineer responsible for capturing the sound of the massed pipe bands elected to use a single SoundField SPS422B microphone for the job. Traditional pipe bands play in a circle, and the engineer was concerned that once the mic was erected in the centre above the bands, it would be impossible to make any necessary adjustments without getting in the way of the TV cameras. The SPS422B allows the virtual orientation of the microphone to be changed without physically moving the mic, by adjusting controls on the associated SoundField decoder unit (for more details on how this works, see the SoundField microphone technology sheet accompanying this release). The BBC engineer was therefore able to fine-tune the sound and even change the pickup pattern of the microphone without going near the pipers. The proprietary four-channel SoundField B-Format signal output by the SPS422B was recorded by the BBC Scotland team, as well as being simultaneously decoded to stereo for audio and video transmission. Talks are currently underway about releasing a DVD of the 2006 competition, and the stored B-Format signal from the event can be decoded to 5.1 Surround Sound for inclusion on this disc if required. BBC Scotland is in the process of moving into new headquarters at Pacific Quay in Glasgow, which will be fully capable of High Definition broadcasting. The BBC Scotland sound engineer from the World Pipe Band Championships is currently evaluating both SoundField’s small portable ST350 mic and also the company’s top-of-the-range microphone, the new digital DSF-2, for possible use at BBC Scotland High Definition Outside Broadcast events. |
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