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Members of the production team at Katara Studios in Qatar with equipment racks that incorporate numerous Prism Sound components utilized for the soundtrack of the FIFA World Cup 2022.

Prism Sound Helps Katara Studios Deliver The Soundtrack Of FIFA World Cup 2022

Studio team employs flagship ADA-8XR multichannel converters and more in production of multiple tracks in support of the ongoing global sporting event in Qatar.

Prism Sound audio conversion has played a key role in the creation of music for the opening and closing ceremonies at this year’s FIFA World cup in Qatar, all of which was recorded and mixed at Katara Studios in the capital city of Doha.

“Katara Studios has over 50 Prism Sound converters ranging from the flagship ADA-8XR multichannel converters, through to DA2 stereo D/A and AD2 stereo A/D converters,” explains Mazen Murad, Katara Studio’s director of music production and mastering engineer. “We use them for everything, all the time. For the FIFA World Cup project, every activation that had anything to do with music involved a Prism Sound unit at some point in the creative chain – from recording live musicians, through to mixing, mastering and post production.”

The 2023 World Cup has seen FIFA break with tradition by scrapping the concept of one official song, and instead, it has released the FIFA World Cup Official Soundtrack that offers multiple songs from artists such as Trinidad Cardona, Davido, AISHA, Ozuna and Gims. Produced by FIFA’s Creative Entertainment Executive, RedOne, three songs on the official soundtrack were recorded at Katara Studios.

“We began working on audio demos in 2021, soon after FIFA Sound announced its new entertainment strategy,” Murad says. “The aim of the songs is to connect audiences through a shared passion for music and football. Artists from all over the world have been involved, representing many different countries and musical genres.”

To capture the music for the FIFA World Cup opening and closing ceremonies, Katara Studios hosted a week of full orchestral sessions that were engineered by Matt Howe, Katara Studios chief recording engineer and formerly of AIR Studio and Metropolis. Howe and Murad invited British-based composer and conductor Youki Yamamoto to lead from the podium. The orchestral sessions used Prism Sound converters to input audio from around 64 microphone signals into Pro Tools.

“Some of Katara’s larger systems are configured with up to 96 channels worth of Prism Sound ADA-8XR’s in transportable racks,” Howe says. “We can even go higher than that if we unite them in tandem with our other interface racks, at mixed sample rates and connected to other capture systems. This is useful when we have requests for very high definition “audiophile” multichannel recordings such as Dolby Atmos and Immersive sound ‘stem’ capture and delivery when we can afford to go outside of the remit of broadcast standards.”
The FIFA World Cup 2022 kicked off on November 20 and runs through to December 18. “The work we did for FIFA sounds great,” Murad concludes. “Prism Sound converters play a big part in our success, and we really couldn’t have delivered such high-quality audio without them.”

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