Driving immersive audio forward at Sky

Last month, in one of the biggest boxing matches seen in the UK for several years, Anthony Joshua knocked out Alexander Povetkin at Wembley Stadium to maintain his custodianship of the WBO, WBA and IBF world heavyweight belts.

It took Joshua to a highly impressive record of 22 fights and 22 victories. It was his first though, and the first pay-per-view match ever, to be captured in UHD and Dolby Atmos.

For the Sky team behind the Sky Box Office presentation, it marked the latest stage in a history with Atmos that started with tests in football broadcasts at the beginning of 2017 before being rolled out across its UHD EPL coverage from the start of the 2017/2018 season.

As such, even though the individual members of a production might be coming across it for the first time, there’s an impressive bank of knowledge building up regarding the format.

Nik Taylor-Pugh was Sound Supervisor on that night, and it was his first Atmos broadcast. “The one difficulty with the Joshua fight was…