Audio is something we don’t always necessarily think about, until something goes wrong and then we realise how we often take it for granted.
Hello there (General Kenobi), my name is Leyna, I'm a final year esports student at the University of Staffordshire and part of the SteelSeries x NSE brand ambassadorship programme. Alongside my studies, I work as a freelance caster and host for CS2 and Valorant. I first got involved with NSE during my first semester, playing on a VALORANT team. By my second semester, I was helping out hosting the BUEC finals, building hype and dishing out interviews!
The SteelSeries ambassadorship has really helped me out by upgrading my setup with an Arctis Nova Pro headset (that actually gets equal amounts of time both out and about listening to music, as well as in the comfort of my room for gaming and casting). Some of the features on the Arctis Nova Pro are lifesavers in my daily life, such as the hot swappable batteries, meaning that I never lose power mid-cast and the ability to switch between onboard audio profiles according to what I’m using or needing my headset for each day! Working on broadcast frequently means that high-quality audio input and output are crucial, so being able to join the SteelSeries Brand Ambassadorship programme felt like the perfect fit because their peripherals aligned with the excellence I prioritise in my equipment. The upgrade to my headset sparked my interest in delving deeper and exploring just how important audio is in the world of esports in ways that don’t necessarily immediately spring to mind.
For casting specifically, audio cues are a vital resource. It gives you the ability to hear what the players do, such as footsteps, gun reloads and utility. This allows for you to get a proper picture of the information that each player possesses at any given time. In fact, I actually find it throws me off greatly when I have either no game audio, or it’s stuttery/delayed. Sounds also helps form my judgement on when to speak and when to throw to my co-caster, if everything is quiet and calm, I can give the colour caster the opportunity to take over and delve into the nitty-gritty analysis to fill that gap. It’s also beyond useful in terms of time sensitive systems, such as bomb/spike timers. The speed of the beeping lets you know if a clutch is even possible, and how big of a task lies ahead of the player(s). The ticking growing faster is a great tool to help you build hype as the round crescendos.
Audio is crucial for communication too, with the obvious connection being made about hearing our co-caster properly to be able to throw between each other cleanly and efficiently. But it’s also majorly important in regards to being able to understand and hear our production team. As somebody who spends a fair bit of time in front of the camera, the importance of communication with production is something I value highly. When you’re live, especially at a LAN event or on a stage, you are pretty cut off from everything else and you don’t always have the ability to directly ask for help, so your lifeline is your producer. Producers give instructions on what’s happening, what you are meant to be doing, such as giving you cues for how long until you are live, or if there is an issue with the game or production and they need you to continue vamping (meaning filling, stalling or waffling to buy time). A good producer will also be able to tell if something is wrong, such as if you forget what you’re meant to be talking about next, or if you need a break for whatever reason, and can help find a solution or provide answers and the viewers will be none the wiser that there was ever an issue. The last thing you want in those moments of needing help is poor quality audio distracting you, leaving you distracted and in exactly the same situation.
Audio is a heavy focus for production too, not only communicating between themselves but to ensure that the audience has an enjoyable and safe time. Ensuring that the right audio sources can be heard, and striking a good balance between game sound and casters that allows for people to hear both without the other overpowering it being the fundamentals. Anybody who has been following the Counter-Strike scene keenly over the past few years has probably heard the jokes and copypastas made about the ‘PGL Audio Guy’, which stemmed from technical issues at an event nearly 3 years ago now, but has never been lived down. Nobody wants to be the next ‘audio guy’ on the chopping block, as it’s a label that can’t seem to be shifted.
There also has to be a lot of care put into setting up and monitoring audio on broadcasts, as it’s actually a case of safety for viewers and people working on the event. Exposure to loud noises, especially for prolonged periods of time, can cause physical damage to people’s hearing. The duty to look after the wellbeing of workers and the audience falls onto the organiser of the event/broadcast, and there are lots of measures that are suggested to be put in place to best keep everyone safe. A brilliant resource if you want to look more into the health and safety side of audio is BBC.
There’s a whole host of other roles in this industry I could talk about here - observers, directors, videographers, and dive into the nitty gritty of production in full on nerd mode. However, I think it’s about time I put my own headphones on, blast some background music (the award winning SteelSeries headphone audio is the only way to truly do justice to my awful taste in music) and get back to all of the university work I have been putting off for weeks!
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