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I've noticed that during some well-produced (HBO eg) boxing matches, sometimes the mix seems to include an audible 'swoosh' for a missed hook or other fast, wide punch. It's very effective and mostly subliminal because of course those produce no actual sound.

I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining it, but of course it could be a coincidental sound like the scuff of a shoe on the canvas. I haven't studied it, just noticed it.

I can almost imagine some processing trick that tracks the velocity of objects in a sound field etc. After seeing the video insertion tricks being played in other sports, I'm ready to believe anything...

Can anyone here speak to the possibility?

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  • Triggering sound with visuals, hmm, i think that would make the whole job of the sd guys easier, but most of what ive seen is countless daw tracks, hours and creativity. Im not saying its impossible, rather curious myself too!
    – frcake
    Commented May 29, 2018 at 22:09

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This is nothing new, and it is likely to be caused by a sound designer triggering the sounds manually. The same is done in (live) broadcasts for other sporting events, the Norwegian State Broadcaster NRK has a rather good article about it here (translated via Google): https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnrkbeta.no%2F2011%2F11%2F18%2Flyden-av-en-mann-som-flyr-forbi%2F&edit-text=

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Maybe hypercardioid microphone which captures fighter´s breath while punching? Should sound like whoosh. Or do you mean postproduction, not live? Then its probably just the whoosh sound put on top of the punch, no big deal. Maybe recorded with midi controller and sampler to save time. Sounds impossible to me for DAW plugin to track the picture, similar to Captcha.

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  • The sounds of grunts, stomps and solid punches are captured with shotguns or parabolics, and the quality of that work does vary -- a question of money I'm sure. This is in another class.
    – Jim Mack
    Commented May 30, 2018 at 13:02

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