eSports

The Glensound Origin Series:  The GTM eSports Interface -  The story about how the GTM came about

Glensound, Maidstone, UK.   Summer 2020

During 2019 and 2020 we supplied equipment for 4 eSports projects in Korea, through our partner One Up Solution.  This was in the days before the GTM, and these system were designed using our Beatrice B4+ 4 channel intercom along with the MIX32, 32 channel Dante rack mixer.  The teams, coaches and referee all used B4+ units, with group mixes created on the MIX32.  The game was PC based and converted to network audio using Dante virtual sound card.

These tournaments indicated that a suitable, dedicated device didn’t exist, but that there was a clear need for one.  Managing Director Marc Wilson started putting together a specification brief on the functionality for a new unit.  This would cover solving the existing problems, but also enhancing it with new features that the Dante system and remote control would allow us to add. 

Over proceeding years we had been working with Jon Pratchett at various exhibitions.  Jon is an AV Systems expert (RTS Award Winner), and one of his areas of work was in producing eSports arena events.  We spoke to Jon about our ideas, and he helped us with an overview of needs in the eSports world.  Previously running multiple cable runs for 2 headsets per player, and using a separate mixer to generate the team mixes was always a significant amount of work and required engineer monitoring.  Add to this that the tournaments could be based on multiple platforms (PC, X-Box, PS etc) and you needed to get the individual game audio to each player.  It was clear the benefits that a Dante based platform, that could solve the problems in a single unit, would bring.

Our Design Engineer,  Alex Clarke, was a keen gamer himself and understood the player needs of a dedicated device, so he took the lead on the hardware design, to give a clear and simple experience for the player, with oversized controls, and a modern LED look.  Our Senior Software engineer Marcin Rybak took the lead on the considerable software involved in the firmware and remote control in GlenController.  Marcin added further new features such as different operational states for each user, and the Background Audio Guard preventing unwanted crowd comments from entering that shared talk mix.

The first unit was actually the GTM-SI.  Riot Games tournaments didn’t allow the players to physical interaction with the interface, so Alex designed a version with no top panel controls for a forthcoming League Of Legends tournament and it was this version that was actually released first.

Over the years the software has continued to evolve to the requests of different tournaments needs, and in 2025 the GTM Mobile was added to allow tournaments using games based on mobile phones.