Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Our regular host LJ Rich kick-started proceedings with enthusiasm and energy before Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sounds' Nicky Birch cut the metaphorical ribbon. She spoke about how this is a boom time for the audio industry in traditional areas like podcasts and music, but also through creators on social apps like TikTok and Twitch - so it's an important time to be innovative by taking risks and breaking rules. Nicky is the new formats and innovation editor and explained how they are doing this creatively - with short-form content such as 5 Minutes On and Transfer Gossip Daily, and technically - using personalised trails and local news bulletins to make content more relevant. She closed with a request for people to get in touch with creative, disruptive content ideas.

Nicolas Becker gave the keynote talk, explaining the sound editing technique that led to him winning this year's Oscar for Best Sound. Sound of Metal is the story of a metal drummer while he loses his hearing. Nicolas described the use of a custom in-ear device to record the inner sounds of the actor so the audience could experience this. He talked through recreating the sound of a cochlear implant by avoiding familiar processing techniques such as delays, instead gathering feedback from individuals who have only one cochlear implant. Finally, Nicolas detailed his philosophy on recording every sound for each project, creating a unique sound palette instead of using sound libraries or re-using sounds. Recording in-person links the sound to memory and emotion, increasing the chance of serendipity, both of which can significantly help when putting together the final mix.

A panel on aural diversity followed, opening with a talk from Professor Andrew Hugill (who has worked with us on a Â鶹ԼÅÄ Taster pilot Spectrum Sounds). He has instigated  investigating individual hearing differences through academic research, composition and performance. Andrew described a concert hosted by the consortium where they took many different approaches to ensure the best possible experience for an aurally diverse audience. These included listening inside or outside the venue, tactile feedback through vibrating floors, BSL interpretation, and video interpretation.

Andrew was followed by another of our collaborators, Angeliki Mourgela, who talked about her development and testing of a simulation tool for four different facets of hearing loss. This has been designed as  to easily check the effect of varying hearing impairments on a mix. The production team used it at Casualty for the sound design in Jade's World, an episode exploring the experience of a character who is deaf and wears hearing aids. The next steps are to try to use the tool in automatic processing to improve mixes for people with different hearing needs.

Finally, Dr Alinka Greasley talked about the Hearing Aids for Music project, explaining the importance of good audio discrimination for musicians, the challenges with existing hearing aid technology, and some of the latest advances in the field. Examples include using machine learning and GPS to analyse the best settings for different environments, using user feedback to change the processing, and using deep neural networks to process different sounds differently.

The Sound In Short sessions gave quickfire introductions to various topics. The first was a fascinating conversation between Jon Manel (podcast commissioning editor at Â鶹ԼÅÄ World Service) and Nambulanta Kombo, the winner of their International Podcast Competition 2021. The competition was designed to get ideas from outside their regular group of contributors, so it was open to those not currently working in the industry. Nambulanta's winning idea, Dear Daughter, launched on 10 December 2021 and is a collection of letters from people around the world to daughters. It was inspiring to hear Nambulanta's story of making the leap from producer to presenter, and Jon described the competition as a Â鶹ԼÅÄ World Service highlight from 2021.

In Soundscapes, Kahl Henderson gave some detailed insight into creating the sound worlds in the Â鶹ԼÅÄ submarine drama Vigil. Kahl talked about the challenge of creating a sound world that most people haven't experienced, walking through the layers from some of the bigger, more complex scenes. Axel Kacoutie followed, talking about his editing techniques on The Guardian's Today In Focus. He told us that "if a photo is worth a thousand words, sound is worth a thousand pages", and gave insightful commentary on using sound design to emphasise narrative and embellish the story.

Deta Ward and Simon Smith from our  consumer technology and audience behaviour group, talked about why the car is such an important space for audio - up to a quarter of radio listening happens in-car. They showed us two hardware devices for car audio: Amazon's Echo Auto and Spotify's Car Thing, which each have their pros and cons. It was interesting to hear about the big tech companies battle for this area while considering the Â鶹ԼÅÄ's role here.

Finally, Â鶹ԼÅÄ Research & Development's Laura Harrison introduced MakerBox, a community of practice to empower the next generation of creatives by providing access to tools and training and facilitating discussion. Laura talked about the Seeking New Gods project, in which musician  and colleagues used our Audio Orchestrator software to make an immersive version of his most recent album that could be played out over multiple connected personal devices.

Our Audio Marketing Wizardry panel discussed three standout examples of the creative use of sound in sonic branding. They agreed sonic branding has moved on from the days of using the same sound clip repetitively. Marco Vitali revealed that recall is eight times higher with audio than with visuals. He described his award-winning "music intelligence" concept, which avoids repetition by generating various combinations of sounds using different lengths and instrumentation. He demonstrated this with examples from his work for the Oxygen true crime TV network and Al Jazeera. Jane Lingham from the Â鶹ԼÅÄ and Steffan Cummins from Wolff Olins shared their process for the upcoming sonic rebrand of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ. They tried to characterise the organisation's DNA, such as "threeness" derived from the famous Â鶹ԼÅÄ blocks logo. Steffan described how they built a sonic palette and moved between different parts of the sonic brand through pitch bending and stretching chords. Composer Alexander Parsons talked about Grayson's Art Club and Surviving Covid. In the latter, he tried to accompany a documentary about patients lying in a coma for months. After violin and piano sounded "too normal", he experimented with some very old traditional instruments which had a breathy sound, complimenting the constant presence of the ventilators.

We were privileged to record an interview with Oliver Tarney - the supervising sound editor on the latest Bond film "No Time to Die". He spoke about creating a different sound for each character; for example, the gun used by Ana de Armas's character sounds lighter and more delicate than Bond's heavy but accurate gun. Oliver also worked on Casino Royale, so he could directly compare the sound of the hot-headed, rough and ready Daniel Craig in his first Bond movie to the more proficient, accomplished, and accurate man in his last. Oliver told us about the recording process and how they got access to the cars and stunt drivers for a couple of days to record "on-boards" and "bys", and using sledgehammers and guns to record cracking glass. He also spoke about his approach to editing, including how to manage fatigue by thinking about the dynamics and shifting between sound design and music. Oliver attributes his success to approaching every project as the thing you ultimately want to be doing; it's a good way to practise and will help get you noticed.

Personalisation is a hot topic in the media industry, and we covered this from various angles. Â鶹ԼÅÄ R&D's Ian Forrester set the scene, introducing his Adaptive Podcasting tool, which uses sensors to personalise a podcast without direct input from the listener. This research started with bespoke hardware but is now possible on smartphones due to the ubiquity of different sensors and access to many data sources. Ian is growing an international community of practice to explore the resulting ideas. Next, Anna Doble talked about how online communities can bridge the gap between a production and its audience. These communities have shaped the narrative ark in podcasts like Death In Ice Valley and it was great to hear listener's feedback, suggesting that being part of a group felt like a significant improvement.

R&D's Dave Bevan and Michael Armstrong talked about their work on deriving value from existing radio metadata by processing it into a format that can be presented to listeners and made useful. They've gone further, using the metadata to generate interactive content such as quizzes automatically. Finally, Professor Adrian Hilton introduced the , where the universities of Surrey and Lancaster have worked with us to make paradigm-shifting changes in delivering personalised media at scale. This involves using artificial intelligence to create flexible content; developing production tools and workflows; and working out economical and ecological ways to deliver personalisation to millions. There was a lively chat about the potential benefits and risks of personalisation, focusing on ethics, privacy, and trust - all complex issues but essential to get right.

The day culminated with an unforgettable masterclass and Q&A with the Peabody-winning producer and composer Benbrick (AKA Paul Carter). He shared his lessons, gathering them into two main themes. The first was "perfectionism", his philosophy that nothing is done until it's done, but also that nothing is sacred. The second theme was "putting yourself out there", not relying on gatekeepers but making your own connections. He shared some remarkable examples and explained how his demo resulted in Ricky Gervais calling him a "future genius". Benbrick then walked us through two examples of his workflow for producing Have You Heard George's Podcast? Tips included creating your own categorised list of sound clips to draw on and time-stretching music to create texture. Huge thanks to Benbrick for the effort in creating this wonderful session.

With that, Sounds Amazing was over for another year. It was an incredible collection of talks from many people across the audio industry, but the common thread was innovative thinking. Hopefully, the audience were inspired - we certainly were, and we're already thinking about 2022's event! A huge thank you to all the speakers and everyone involved behind the scenes.

 - 

Â鶹ԼÅÄ R&D - Casualty, Loud and Clear - Our Accessible and Enhanced Audio Trial

Â鶹ԼÅÄ Taster - Casualty: A&E Audio

Â鶹ԼÅÄ R&D - How we made the Audio Orchestrator - and how you can use it too

Â鶹ԼÅÄ MakerBox - Audio Orchestrator

Â鶹ԼÅÄ R&D - Sounds Amazing 2018: An update on audio at the Â鶹ԼÅÄ