{"id":22278,"date":"2025-04-15T15:09:15","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T15:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/22278\/"},"modified":"2025-04-15T15:09:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T15:09:15","slug":"why-did-the-audio-suck-so-badly-on-the-formula-1-broadcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/22278\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Did The Audio Suck So Badly On The Formula 1 Broadcast?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula 1 has a problem. Well, it has lots of problems, like tires that sometimes last forever, and tracks where passing is apparently impossible. But there\u2019s one problem it has no excuse for: an international broadcast that was almost unwatchably bad.<\/p>\n

If you tuned in to the qualifying session of last weekend\u2019s Bahrain Grand Prix, you might have wondered what was going on in the control booth. Cars screamed at full volume on track, completely overwhelming the Sky commentary from David Croft and Martin Brundle. In a complicated session with a lot of action up and down the field, it made the action incredibly hard to follow.<\/p>\n

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But of course, this is a billion-dollar sport with TV deals that start in the eight-figure range. Naturally, this audio faux-pas was sorted out in a matter of seconds, right? Oh, honey, no. It went on all fucking weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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I have to turn the volume down because of the extreme loud engine noise in the team radio audio, and then when there is conversation between driver and pit the sound is too low so you have to increase the volume and then the engine sound comes back and it is too loud again. aarrg<\/p>\n

\u2014 Philip van der Matten (@philipvdm) April 12, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I wish I were kidding, but I watched the whole sorry thing. As an Australian, I was tuned in to the Sky feed via Kayo, and I honestly couldn\u2019t believe what was happening. For the entire qualifying session, the track audio was turned up way too loud, and the commentary was far too soft. I looked forward to the distant shots after the cars passed by so I could actually hear what Brundle and Croft were saying.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not exactly clear\u00a0why\u00a0this happened. You got the distinct vibe that someone had left the work experience kid on the mixing desk without supervision. What was more confusing was that it went on for the entire qualifying session.<\/p>\n

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Hey there. Thank you for your feedback, this has been passed onto our team now and they are monitoring it. Any changes that they make likely won’t be immediate, so we cannot provide a timeline on that for now. If the issue does persist though, then please contact our customer\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 The Official F1\u00ae Help Channel (@F1Help) April 12, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Appeals through official channels did little to help.<\/p>\n

At some point, surely, you would think someone at Sky or in F1 would have noticed that the commentary was turned down to almost nothing. They might have picked up a phone and screamed at whichever idiot was in charge, and gotten the problem sorted? Alas, no. The terrible audio mix continued for all of qualifying and the vast majority of the race. Apparently nobody\u00a0was listening, and many fans rushed to Twitter to complain that something was deeply wrong in the broadcast booth. [Ed note:<\/strong> Yeah yeah, \u201cIt\u2019s X now,\u201d but who cares? \u2013 Pete]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s astonishing that this can even happen. I work at a proud and enterprising automotive website. If I so much as misplace an image or make a few too many typographical errors, somebody will notice and I\u2019ll get a friendly ping on Slack to pull my goddamn socks up. However, you can apparently produce a garbage TV feed that\u2019s shown to millions of people around the world,\u00a0live, and get away with not even checking the faders for two full days in a row. Just\u00a0astounding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Where does the problem lie? In this case, possibly Sky F1, given it was their commentators being drowned out on their feed. Regardless of who is precisely at fault, F1 needs to step up and ensure the world is getting a better show than this.<\/p>\n

\"FansFans begged to Sky, to David Croft, to anyone\u2014for a solution. Credit: via Twitter screenshot<\/p>\n

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Hey there. Please try restarting your device and logging out of your F1 TV Account, and then log back in. If after this you are still experiencing issues Please contact our customer support via this email: general@en.formula1.com and let us know the case number you receive in\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 The Official F1\u00ae Help Channel (@F1Help) April 13, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Unhelpful advice was never far away.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, it was a weekend the Formula 1 broadcasters will hope to put behind them. Beyond the regular sound issues, a number of important passes were entirely missed by the telecast. As a weird bonus, the \u201cREPLAY\u201d icon flashed up multiple times during live images for some reason.<\/p>\n

\"LaughedI laughed when I saw the hastily-assembled timing graphics show up late in the Bahrain Grand Prix. I tip my hat to whoever had to smash those together under pressure when the timing system went haywire. Image credit: Me, photographing the F1 telecast on my television.<\/p>\n

The most challenging issues raised their head later in the race, when George Russell\u2019s Mercedes stopped triggering the timing system<\/a>. This not only left the broadcast unable to show accurate timing, but made it near-impossible for Russell\u2014or his direct competitors\u2014to trigger their DRS systems in line with the rules. This was a technical issue outside the control of the broadcast team itself, but it created yet more problems for the on-air product.<\/p>\n

Credit where it\u2019s due, the graphics team rushed to manually create custom timing graphics to keep the viewers at home updated as to the state of the race. But unfortunately, it\u2019s not the first time this year that timing has apparently completely gone awry. Previous races have seen the timing tower disappear entirely for ten-plus minutes at a time, leaving viewers in the dark as to how the race is developing.<\/p>\n

The fact is that F1 is a\u00a0major global sport. It doesn\u2019t get any bigger than this. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so shocking that the quality of the broadcast has been so poor. Maybe heads need to roll, or maybe they just need to make sure somebody at Sky is actually watching the feed that\u2019s being broadcast around the world.<\/p>\n

\"FanThere really is no excuse for poor coverage. Getting the sound right is just one of the basic jobs of making television. Credit: via Twitter screenshot<\/p>\n

In any case, I\u2019m happy to help out. Give me the number of someone in the booth, and I will gladly ring up and chew them out next time they\u2019ve left a vital audio channel on mute or something. The world (and my friends) will thank you.<\/p>\n

Image credits: via Twitter screenshot<\/p>\n

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