Scrutable

Would it be technically feasible to use Zoom or similar to connect smart devices to football stadium speakers to generate crowd noise? It would mean they could actually hear us yelling at the screen!

I wrote an article for gamers on the subject of crowd free sports events some years ago. Didn't think of pandemic as the reason for crowds being banned unfortunately.

https://alternatiescorporation.wordpres ... n-economy/

Mixing thousands of channels of audio in real time sounds like a bit of a task.

The current series of The Infinite Monkey Cage is experimenting with a Zoom audience. Not sure what the mixing process is exactly but it seems to work not too bad. That's something in the order of scores or a couple of hundred audience members though, not ten thousand.

Martin Y wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 20, 2020 11:43 pm

The current series of The Infinite Monkey Cage is experimenting with a Zoom audience. Not sure what the mixing process is exactly but it seems to work not too bad. That's something in the order of scores or a couple of hundred audience members though, not ten thousand.

A couple of hundred audio streams plus some simple effects (chorus and multitap delay) might simulate a crowd pretty well though.

JQH wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 20, 2020 3:23 pm

Would it be technically feasible to use Zoom or similar to connect smart devices to football stadium speakers to generate crowd noise?

That depends on the noise. For people just cheering etc, there's no problem. It's just a case of adding together the sound samples, which is very simple. However, if the crowd wants to try singing, things will go wrong because of the delay from mouth to ear. When people stand beside one another, that delay is very short so they can synchronise their voices, but sending the sound over the Internet incurs delays, and systems like Zoom are not optimised to minimise delays - they get the delay low enough to be adequate and don't bother doing any more (because it is difficult).

You also get substantial delays in stadiums, which can mess things up a bit there.

But Zoom wouldn't have anyone close to you to sing in time with, so it'll never sound good.