National honour for broadcast audio engineers
Tuesday 7 February 2017
A PROJECT to make live broadcasts more entertaining for sports fans has won the backing of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
The exciting new technology automatically mixes and enhances the sound of live sport for television to put the viewer ‘in the game’ as never before.
Co-creator Dr Rob Oldfield has been awarded a prestigious Enterprise Fellowship to support the work which the Academy calls a “winning combination of academic excellence and business acumen”.
As Audio Research Consultant in the University’s Acoustics Laboratories, Rob’s role is to integrate the research prowess of leading academics with commercial enterprise and build on an industry-focused culture which has seen Salford engineers work with companies like Dyson, Boeing and NBC Universal.
Interactive
Rob has focused much of the last five years looking at how broadcast audio can be more engaging, immersive and interactive. His work with Dr Ben Shirley has led to new technology which Rob pitched in a Dragon’s Den-style session to secure the prestigious Enterprise Fellowship for 2017.
With the support of the University Technology Transfer team, Rob and Ben have laid the foundations of a new spin-out company called Salsa Sound Limited.
During the year-long Fellowship, the team will be taking the patented technology to market, marking a significant step in the advance of live broadcast sport sound.
Rob said: “I’m very honoured to have won the Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship and am really excited by the opportunity it affords. To be able to bring this technology to market is a dream come true for me and to be able to do it with the support, training and mentorship from the RAEng is amazing!
“I always wanted my research to be applied in the real world so I’m really excited to be able to do this through Salsa Sound.”
IMAGE by: Francesca Scotrick-Boyd, 2nd Yr, BA Television & Radio
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