Anyone for Stereo Tennis?

With Wimbledon upon us again, I was reminded that one of the use cases we considered when we were designing Bluetooth LE Audio was based on a tennis audience at Centre Court.  Despite all of the money and technology that goes into international tournaments like Wimbledon, the sound reinforcement design provided for spectators still hasn’t evolved to the level of the original TV tennis games of the 1960s.

Looking at the spectators sitting in the main courts, it looks as if they’re aging, possibly because you need a hefty Civil Service defined-benefits pension to afford the tickets.  Which mean that a fair number will have hearing loss.  According to Wimbledon’s Access Guides, there are Hearing Loops located at key points around the grounds, but it doesn’t mention if they’re in the courts.  Even if they are. reinforcing sound for a tennis audience poses some interesting questions.

Most of the time when you’re listening to live entertainment, what’s going on, along with its associated sound is in front of you.  Sport stadia add an extra complexity, as most spectators sit on one of the long sides of the stadium.  So, as far as the sound is concerned, one half of the spectators hear the mirror image that the other half hears.  Which means that when Djokovic serves, one half hears the thwack and grunt on their left, while the other half hears it on their right.  For an event like Wimbledon, that gives the accessibility crew a problem – what do they feed into the sound feed for the best accessibility experience?

For a hearing loop, it’s an easy answer, as the loop will almost certainly only support mono.  Listeners can hear the amplified sound from the court, but they’ll be back in a pre-1957 mono era, before stereo became a commercial reality.  Seventy years later, ignoring any subsequent progress in audio technology isn’t demonstrating much progress. 

But it doesn’t need to be constrained.  When we were designing the new Bluetooth LE Audio standards, the problem of tennis courts came up.  We realised that with separate left and right earbuds or hearing aids, it would be trivial to flip the sound around, so that listeners could choose which way round they wanted to hear the audio.

In the case of a tennis match, the key input would be the sounds from the court, probably captured with respect to the umpire at the net, including their pronouncements of the score and match progress.  That would be fed to an Auracast transmitter as a stereo feed, and spectators could select which channel corresponded to their left and right, based on where they were sitting.  Spectators at either end could mix the two channels to provide mono, with the option to change the balance, so that the end nearer to them sounded closer.

What we didn’t anticipate was the lack of imagination of product designers.  Almost everyone working in audio design today has spent their life designing with the constraints of a one-to-one link, where sound isn’t shared or manipulated.  We’re just seeing the start of spatial audio, but it’s very much the exception, not the rule.  Instead of getting excited by the new possibilities, most developers are desperately tying to ignore them, shoe-horning their new products into the same old shoeboxes.

Which is a shame, as we can now do so much more with audio.  The new Auracast capabilities, which are coming to earbuds, hearing aids and speakers will transform the way we use sound, both for voice and music.  Events like Wimbledon should be used as an opportunity to experiment and showcase the opportunities.  We’ve seen theatres and public venues embrace Auracast, but sport seems to be dragging its heels.  Whoever may win at Wimbledon this year, let’s hope Auracast gets seeded next year.