An approach for fast and intuitive monitoring of microphone signals using a virtual listener

Nowadays a great deal of technical effort is required to fulfill the user`s expectations regarding the audio-visual quality of broadcasting content. When recording or transmitting a live event, a huge number of microphones are often used. Such a multitrack recording session, conducted with a digital audio workstation or a mixing console can consist of several hundred audio signals. It is still a very challenging task to control such a large number of microphones. In this paper an approach for fast and intuitive monitoring is presented using the concept of object oriented audio production. For this, each microphone signal is handled as an audio object. Based on the calculation of a virtual listener signal, which can be freely positioned insight the microphone scene, an audio session even with a huge number of channels can be controlled efficiently.