"We recorded the World Championship darts event to multitrack at Alexandra Palace in December, using two analogue SoundField systems," explains Sky's operations manager Keith Lane, speaking in the middle of another darts championship match. "The broadcast itself was in stereo, but we took the multitrack recordings back to HQ to see whether we could produce 5.1 coverage of a game to the standard we wanted using the SoundField approach. The experiment went so well that we decided to make all of our darts coverage high-definition with 5.1 sound as soon as we could. Hence our contribution to the refurbishment of Bow Tie's OB2; we will be using that vehicle regularly for our Premier League darts coverage."
Sky's first HD broadcast from the darts premier league using the DSF-2 microphone and DSF-3 digital 5.1 decoder followed in early February 2009, and the SoundField systems will be used on all of the matches through to May's championship final at Wembley Arena.
(Jim Evans)
