Following success with CBS NWSL, the MLS and USL soccer, and Manchester City FC, vCROWD became the go-to off-the-shelf solution for virtual crowd sound (particularly in the US). We worked really closely with the incredible broadcast team at BTN to produce high-quality sample banks for each team in their league. Without historic recordings from discrete crowd microphones, we created sample banks from clean feed recordings from previous seasons play- a significant challenge to remove the sounds of program edits with pitch effects, compression, EQ artefacts and the sounds of the PA system etc.

With college sports being quite a partisan affair and different crowds responding differently to the events on the field-of-play, we put together entirely separate sample banks for each of the 14 teams in the league including the sounds of the team bands, touchdown cheers/chants etc. vCROWD enables easy switching between sample banks so one vCROWD installation was able to be used for any team in the league. Each sample bank is automatically configured by the chosen sample bank, populating the interface with a different number of buttons and sliders accordingly to allow the operator better control of the team in question’s crowd.

The results for the football season were fantastic with the operators doing a fantastic job, producing a virtual crowd sound which in many cases was indistinguishable from a real crowd! Following this success we rolled out sample banks for the BTN men’s and women’s basketball as well as ice hockey – we really have had a lot of fun editing together such a diverse set of sample banks!