• The Sounds of NBA LIVE 15

    A post-release blog from EA SPORTS details how the NBA LIVE 15 development team recorded and incorporated stadium authentic crowd chants, music, sound effects, and announcer sound bites into the game.

    Visiting numerous NBA arenas, the development team mic'd up the entire arena to capture the audio in 7.1 Surround Sound. The team plans to record sound at every NBA arena.

    Continue on to read the blog and see a video from EA SPORTS.


    One of the best approaches to making NBA LIVE 15 feel authentic is to start with the in-arena atmosphere.

    For starters, our development team researched what every NBA team does in their arena, and came up with a detailed list of team-specific crowd chants, music, SFX and announcer sound bites that fans can expect to hear.

    When it came to creating those sounds, what better way to do that than to actually go and record the atmosphere? But a stick mic with a handheld recorder won't cut it; we had to mic up the whole arena.


    Stadium audio was captured in true 7.1 Surround Sound by using three different microphone arrays: One for a very wide, panoramic surround, another for a much tighter single-person perspective, and third for a courtside perspective.


    With 24 Mics capturing three audio perspectives, it gave us a lot of flexibility in mixing an arena's sound based on what gameplay camera is being used. In order to accurately replicate the acoustics of NBA arenas, we captured the reverb impulse response in 7.1 Surround. This real-time 7.1 surround convolution reverb heard in NBA LIVE 15 allows us to recreate acoustics of an NBA arena.

    The NBA LIVE 15 audio team were aggressive in their attempts to capture sound from as many NBA arenas as possible.


    We traveled to several cities with SUV’s loaded with audio gear. Setting up 24 Mics at each stadium was quite the challenge, we had to roll our sleeves up and crawl around arenas in order to lay audio cables.


    On top of things like fan chants, the music group was also able to secure licenses to much of the hype music heard around the league, as well as exclusive recordings form real stadium organists.

    The team really focused on all the little details that fans of each city would catch. If NBA LIVE 15 sounds exactly like your home arena, it's because we were there recording. Our plan is to eventually capture all of the NBA's arenas in order to make NBA LIVE as lifelike as possible.