Ben Majchrzac, the senior audio engineer for the NBA on NBC, takes us behind the scenes to explore the complex world of professional sports audio engineering and the process required to create an immersive auditory experience.
This makes me think of that one time when the announcers had a microphone malfunction, and it turned out to be the best playoff viewing experience ever until they started talking.
https://www.floridatoday.com/story/sports/2024/04/20/magic-cavaliers-playoff-game-quiet-espn-technical-difficulty/73397182007/#
There was a game this season that this happened too on ESPN or ABC. Sometimes I wish they’d just use a play-by-play with no color commentary because there are callers like Breen which can really add a level of drama to late game situations
Can he please walk us through how they nerf the crowd?
I’ve watched dozens of games at Madison Square Garden and Peacock/NBC seems to nullify the sound of the crowd in ways other broadcasts (MSG, Prime, ESPN) don’t.
I just noticed this yesterday! The crowd was so muted even at the end when the crowd noise should have been highest. Definitely NBC’s audio mix at fault
Isn’t MSG the loudest arena as far as crowd noise goes? Maybe it was just an overcorrection.
you literally just lower the faders for the crowd mics
Might be some noise suppression as well not just lowering the tracks, like they use for the announcer mics which are also cardioid pickup pattern to reduce crowd noise bleed
This was a such a great video. For something so technical, he explains everything in detail yet in layman’s terms for even a novice to follow along
This is really cool
One of the reasons I love sports is the joy of watching people who are great at this super specific craft, and sharing in their arcane shoptalk and minutiae — especially when they’re also good at talking about it. And I get a similar joy from watching stuff like this.
Those are some expensive mics. The cheapest one were on each side of the backboard at 200 each.
Wow I guess that makes sense why I hear the crowd phasing sometimes.
oh good to know who I can I thank for all the NBC/peacock games sounding like absolute ass
This is impressively nerdy
Now tell Prime to fix their audio being ahead of the video
Guess that Loud City OKC crowd energy is real to this audio engineer.