A round up of sound

The theme so far this month in the world of BBC technology has been Sound, with a showcase event last week at the New Broadcasting House Radio Theatre.  Sounds Amazing was a joint production by BBC R&D  and BBC Academy bringing together lots of ideas and demonstrations from the world of audio.  Much of it has been written up elsewhere, so here's a brief round-up of some of those highlights and other news.

• We learnt more about how spatial audio works and the difference between binaural and object-based sound. And as the summer approaches, soon it will be the Proms with more binaural experiences such as these
• There was a demonstration from the Blue Planet 2 sound production team about the scale of sound editing.  Each episode has around 170 sound tracks and takes roughly 15 days to edit and mix.  There's more on the underwater soundscape here 
• We heard about BBC Radio's ambitions around podcasting, following the recent appointment of a podcast commissioning editor.  It's now estimated that 10% of the population are listening to podcasts
• Zillah Watson, head of the newly created VR Hub, spoke about some of their recent commissions including the 360 video documentary Damming the Nile.  More here  on how it was made.   
• For VR fans, there's also a new immersive tour of the old Alexandra Palace studios, which takes you back to the early days of television
• And finally, a sound treat.  My colleagues in Archive Development have just released a library of 16,000 sound effects.  While still BBC copyright, they've available for personal, education or research purposes.