Banana Ball TV (BTV), the production arm for the Savannah Bananas baseball team, has installed three Calrec 36-fader Argo M consoles, three Type R systems, and True Control 2.0, to expand remote production capabilities.

The Savannah Banana exhibition baseball team tours packed baseball stadiums worldwide, using altered baseball rules that favor trick plays, all within a two-hour limit to increase audience engagement. Think Harlem Globetrotters, but for baseball.

This year, the team introduced the “Banana Ball Championship League,” which adds even more opponents and an even busier broadcast schedule covering games across 75 stadiums and 45 states.

Spread across two main control rooms at BTV's remote facility in Savannah, and with flypacks positioned out in the field, Calrec’s flexible audio network sits at the core of a significant expansion of BTV's REMI capabilities. Designed to extend capacity and accommodate future growth, it makes BTV's workflows much more fluid, according to Savannah Bananas’ Head of Technology Matt Webster.

“We’ve seen lots of expansion for the 2026 World Tour season, and part of re-building our facilities from 2025 to 2026 was to expand capabilities and increase overall efficiency,” Webster said. “The Calrec consoles are all being used to support REMI broadcasts; we have Argo consoles in our main control rooms and we deploy the Type R frame in the field in our mobile units and flypacks.

“This gives us a combination of analog, embedded SDI, MADI and Dante, and all the audio is given a first pass mix and level set before it is embedded in our video transmission system back to Savannah. We ensure lip sync is correct on-site, so when it comes back into the control rooms, we just focus on mixing the broadcast as if we are doing it at our home stadium.

“We also have remote control of the consoles via the Calrec Assist GUI for changing things on the fly. The most challenging part of any audio console is how you have to interact with it if you are not standing directly in front of it, but nothing beats having access to a web page; it means we can access any console from inside the stadium to make changes, and I can also work remotely to support all our shows from home and fix issues that arise quickly. It is a game-changer for sure.”

Access to Calrec’s True Control 2.0 protocol, which provides even greater levels of remote control and unparalleled flexibility to scale up when required, gives scope for BTV to further develop its workflows. Webster says he plans to introduce it more as the season progresses.

It demands an audio workflow as dynamic as the Savannah Bananas’ antics on the field, Webster added.

“We want the technology to outpace production,” he said. “It’s all about scale and simplicity, and Calrec allowed us to achieve this in our second generation of REMI workflows. With broadcast consoles like the Argo and Type R, our workflow has dramatically improved. The Calrec equipment allows us to truly make sure we have the best audio – sweetened and observed.

“It brings us a level of consistency that we have been looking for; it just works, and it is simple enough for any audio operator to just jump in and start driving. We have many local audio mixers in the Savannah area that have an entertainment and film focus rather than a broadcast one, but the Calrec consoles have been extremely easy for them not only to make the transition, but to excel.

“It means all our production staff are able to move from room-to-room and from site-to-site and not have any compromises or workflow limitations.”

NEW BERN, N.C.—Wheatstone will demonstrate its VMX virtual mixing platform at IBC 2026, Sept. 11-14, in Amsterdam.

The VMX platform is server-based and web-browser accessible for mixing in any environment on a variety of devices, from recessed touch screens in the studio to tablets at the ballpark.

VMX can be installed on an existing server or a dedicated appliance and offers a selection of tiles including basic utility mixers, a simple virtual mixing interface and complete virtual broadcast consoles for the television newsroom or the radio on-air studio, Wheatstone said.

Virtual consoles are accessible through a web browser, allowing users to quickly add newsrooms, control rooms, voicetrack booths and remote mixing instances on demand—complete with backup mirroring synchronized in real time for instant failover.

VMX is AES67-compliant with an easy-to-install setup wizard, the company said. It is scalable from large enterprise systems to the VMX Nano, priced and scaled for remote or emergency broadcast applications, according to Wheatstone.

VMX is part of Wheatstone’s Layers software-based broadcast suite for virtualizing studio functions as an extension of the WheatNet IP audio network.

Wheatstone will demonstrate the VMX total virtual mixing experience at IBC 2026 stand 8.A51, along with its WheatNet IP audio network of virtual and fixed consoles, talent stations and intelligent I/O access units.

More information is available on the company’s website.

STOW, Ohio—Audio-Technica has introduced the 20 Series Control Application, a Stream Deck plug-in designed to provide streamlined control of compatible Audio-Technica USB microphones directly from Elgato Stream Deck devices.

Developed for streamers, content creators, podcasters, gamers and audio production professionals, the application delivers fast access to essential microphone functions through customizable Stream Deck keys, dials and foot pedals.

Compatible with the Audio-Technica AT2020USB-X, Audio-Technica AT2020USB-XP and Audio-Technica AT2040USB microphones, the 20 Series Control Application allows users to mute and unmute microphones instantly, adjust microphone input levels, and, for AT2020USB-XP users, control Automatic Gain Control (AGC) and Noise Reduction (NR) functions directly from the Stream Deck interface.

The plug-in integrates with the Elgato Stream Deck ecosystem through simple drag-and-drop configuration, enabling users to assign controls to specific keys, dials or foot pedals and customize layouts to match individual workflows for streaming, recording, gaming, podcasting or content production.

Among the plug-in’s key functions is instant mute/unmute control, allowing users to silence or reactivate their microphone with a single press. The feature is especially useful for live streamers and gamers; it can also be assigned to compatible Stream Deck foot pedals for convenient hands-free operation.

The Virtual Fader function enables precise microphone input adjustment directly from the Stream Deck interface. Users can configure the control to set fixed microphone levels or increase and decrease levels incrementally using keys or rotary dials.

For users of the AT2020USB-XP microphone, the application also provides direct access to the microphone’s onboard AGC and Noise Reduction functions. AGC helps maintain a consistent output level regardless of changes in speaking or singing volume, while the Noise Reduction control allows users to select from multiple levels of ambient noise suppression or disable the feature entirely depending on their recording environment.

The Audio-Technica 20 Series Control Application is available now through the Elgato Marketplace.

For more information, read a recent blog from the company.

In Australia, the patch bay is called a tail board. In the United Kingdom, the engineer responsible for matching cameras is often called a “racker” rather than a shader.

At the FIFA World Cup, those differences disappear remarkably fast.

The world’s largest sporting event brings together hundreds of broadcast professionals from different countries, cultures and technical traditions. Within days, engineers from Australia, England, the United States and beyond must operate as a single crew delivering one of the most recognizable sounds in sports.

They arrive speaking slightly different technical languages. The same piece of equipment or role can have multiple names. Yet by kickoff, those differences largely vanish. The audience hears one broadcast, not the dozens of production cultures working behind it.

What viewers remember is the roar after a goal, the tension before a penalty kick, the swell of a national anthem and the eruption of a stadium after a dramatic winner. They remember how the World Cup feels. Audio is a major part of that feeling.

Australian broadcast veteran Tim Stapleton, audio guarantee for Host Broadcast Services (HBS) in Kansas City, is one of the people responsible for creating that experience. A veteran of UFC, cricket, combat sports in the Middle East and the recent Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, this is his first World Cup. The scale stood out immediately.

"The World Cup is unique because of the sheer number of moving parts," he said.

Big Event, Big Undertaking
Commentary facilities are handled by a completely separate company, with 10 dedicated booths inside the stadium. Outside, the production compound fills a parking lot with mobile rack rooms and support units from multiple vendors.

The biggest difference from a normal match is the atmosphere. “The crowd makes it sound like a magical moment, not a regular weekly game,” Stapleton said. “You can tell it is something special.”

HBS deploys a standardized audio plan across all venues while adapting to each stadium's characteristics. In Kansas City, the bowl design allows crowd noise to rise naturally, giving the mix team exceptionally clean audience capture.

Capturing that atmosphere requires far more than the standard soccer microphone package. The foundation remains familiar: pitch microphones positioned around the field to capture ball strikes, player movement and referee whistles, along with microphones mounted on cameras to follow the action.

Beyond that foundation, the World Cup expands significantly. Additional crowd microphones and immersive audio arrays are deployed throughout the venue to capture the atmosphere that defines the tournament. In Kansas City, ambient microphone arrays are positioned on the roof, camera deck, and pitch level, allowing the team to capture everything within the roar of the stadium.

The goal isn't simply to make the crowd louder. It's to make viewers feel present.

GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium (or, FIFA is calling it during the tournament, Kansas City Stadium) presents a unique advantage in that regard. Stapleton noted that the stadium's bowl design allows crowd noise to rise naturally through the venue, creating excellent opportunities to capture clean audience reaction.

A Mix That Tells a Story
For Stapleton, however, the technical design is only part of the equation. His approach to mixing is rooted in storytelling. Rather than simply balancing levels, he actively follows the action around the field, searching for sounds that draw viewers deeper into the match. The crowd remains a constant emotional foundation while individual moments are allowed to breathe naturally. "You're telling a story," he said.

Goals are allowed to build organically rather than exaggerated artificially. As the action moves around the field, microphones mounted on handheld cameras, Steadicams and other mobile systems help bring viewers closer to the moments they are seeing on screen. There is even a microphone mounted on the referee, though it is only used during specific review situations.

The Lionel Messi hat trick in Kansas City was a perfect example. “The reaction inside the stadium was immediate and overwhelming,” Stapleton said. Moments like that are exactly why so much effort is placed on crowd capture. The goal isn't simply to hear the reaction; it's to transport viewers into the stadium and allow them to experience the emotion of the moment alongside the fans in attendance.

The technology behind those moments may be sophisticated, but for many of the visiting engineers, the most memorable part of the World Cup has been adapting to life in the United States.

For Felix Harris, an HBS A2 from London with extensive Premier League and Club World Cup experience, the technical approach feels familiar, just on a larger scale. American stadiums, compounds, and travel distances are noticeably bigger than what he's accustomed to in the U.K.

"It's really tomato-tomah-to as far as nomenclature goes," Harris said. "But it's definitely a bit more." A lot more.

Andrew Lilley, another U.K.-based HBS A2, pointed to one practical difference: U.K. vehicle-length restrictions limit how much equipment can fit in a mobile unit. American trucks simply have more room, allowing for larger technical footprints and expanded microphone deployments. “A good tech sheet keeps everyone on the same page,” Lilley said.

Teamwork Comes Quickly
While terminology and workflows may vary, crews quickly find common ground. According to Stapleton, the real key to building a successful crew has nothing to do with technology.

“The first few days are essential,” he said. Crews learn each other’s strengths. They figure out how people communicate. They discover who works best in which roles. Shared meals, a drink after work and long production days help transform a group of strangers into a functioning team. “You spend so much time together that you become a family.”

Harris described the welcome from U.S. crews as warm and accommodating. Lilley joked about adjusting to the food, the lack of public transportation and a level of humidity that felt different from anything he experiences at home. “You do not do green vegetables in the States,” he joked. “And everything is on a bun.”

Stapleton has been impressed by Kansas City itself. “The best part is the locals,” he said. "Everyone has been friendly and willing to help.”

By kickoff, the terminology has been sorted out. The accents have become familiar. The workflows have aligned. Engineers who arrived from different continents are now focused on a single objective, helping billions of viewers feel connected to a match happening thousands of miles away.

Shared meals, long production days and countless hours spent solving problems together have transformed a group of strangers into a crew. The microphones, trucks and technology make that possible. The people make it memorable.

Together, they create the sound of the World Cup.

SKOKIE, Ill.— Studio Technologies has unveiled Model 385, a compact, lightweight Dante-enabled beltpack designed specifically for broadcast and live-event audio professionals who use parabolic microphones, boom poles and other specialized microphones to capture critical on-air audio.

The portable Model 385 combines a high-performance microphone preamplifier with a single-talk/two-listen intercom interface, delivering a unique combination of on-air microphone and intercom audio resources in a convenient beltpack form factor, the company said.

Supporting Dante audio-over-Ethernet networking and powered via Power-over-Ethernet (PoE), the Model 385 integrates seamlessly into modern fixed and mobile broadcast environments, it said.

“The Model 385 was developed to address the evolving needs of broadcast sports and live entertainment production teams that require reliable, high-quality microphone and intercom functionality in a highly portable format,” Studio Technologies President Gordon Kapes said. “By combining exceptional audio performance, Dante networking and flexible monitoring capabilities into a single rugged device, the Model 385 gives field audio personnel an efficient and intuitive solution for demanding production environments.”

Using a standard 3-pin XLR connector, the Model 385 supports both dynamic and condenser microphones, with selectable P48 phantom power available for condenser microphone applications. A low-noise, low-distortion microphone preamplifier circuit offers adjustable gain ranging from 20 decibels to 65 dB in 1 dB increments. The analog microphone signal is converted to 24-bit digital audio and output through a Dante transmitter channel.

A 5-pin XLR connector allows connection of a broadcast headset, with adjustable gain and low-voltage electret power support for the headset’s microphone. The output of the headset’s microphone is routed through a second Dante transmitter channel, activated via a pushbutton talk switch, to provide intercom communication with other Dante-enabled beltpacks and intercom devices.

“The flexibility of Dante networking was a major design priority for the Model 385,” said Kapes. “Users can easily integrate the unit with Studio Technologies products as well as a wide range of Dante-enabled equipment from other manufacturers.”

The unit is Dante Domain Manager-compatible and compliant with AES67. Crews can quickly get up and running with just a PoE Ethernet connection, microphone and headset while maintaining dependable communications and premium audio performance, Kapes said.

Model 385 allows users to create highly customizable headphone mixes by combining up to four audio sources routed to the headset’s dual-channel headphone output. Three push-in/push-out rotary controls enable adjustment of listen levels for the main microphone preamplifier output and the two incoming Dante receiver channels.

These channels are commonly used to support intercom and program audio feeds. An integrated sidetone function provides confidence monitoring of the headset’s microphone signal.

More information is available on the company’s website.

HEBDEN BRIDGE, England—Calrec Audio has updated its ImPulseV Virtualised Audio Mixing Engine to expand the market for virtualized audio workflows.

The ImPulseV portfolio now includes two new, smaller DSP package options—96- and 140-path configurations—alongside the existing 256-processing path option. Tailored for smaller systems that still demand uncompromising, broadcast-grade audio performance, all three packages share the same comprehensive feature set, including full processing on every path and support for 5.1 and immersive audio formats up to 7.1.4. DSP resources can also be dynamically allocated across channel and bus paths in real time, ensuring maximum efficiency for any production setup.

Calrec has also introduced shorter, more flexible licensing terms—one year, 12 weeks and four weeks—lowering the barrier to entry and allowing broadcasters to scale their production capabilities with no need for long-term commitments or high upfront costs, according to the company. This makes ImPulseV “an ideal solution for boosting resources for temporary, variable, or one-off productions,” Calrec said.

“Traditional broadcasters are reinventing their operations so that they can produce more content for less, faster and across more diverse platforms,” said Henry Goodman, director of product management at Calrec. “Remote and distributed production, combined with virtualization, reflect the broader trajectory of live production: away from fixed infrastructure and towards flexible, hybrid workflows that blend on-premise, cloud and distributed resources.

“This transition is enabling broadcasters to increase agility and cost efficiency through new business models," Goodman added. “Hybrid workflows that incorporate a blend of existing and new infrastructure allow broadcasters to build resource efficiency into every production—and that is quite an attractive proposition.”

AudioShake said it will launch its Copyright Compliance System, an end-to-end workflow for detecting, identifying, removing and documenting copyrighted music in mixed media files.

The Copyright Compliance System is already in use across broadcast, sports, postproduction and rights administration, with early customers including ESPN, NFL Films, Jaywalker Music, CrunchLabs, Music Reports and amp, the company said.

The technology combines several manual processes into one automated system, helping studios, broadcasters, sports teams and other distributors use enormous volumes of library content that can’t be redistributed because copyrighted music is baked into the original sound mix, according to AudioShake.

Music copyright compliance is a meaningful bottleneck in monetizing and distributing such content on FAST channels and streaming platforms, AudioShake said.

The AudioShake modular system allows customers to use the full pipeline or adopt individual components (detection, identification, removal) inside their existing workflow. Extending upon AudioShake’s Music Removal model, the Copyright Compliance System combines:

• Music detection, flagging whether music is present in a piece of content, including noisy, fully-mixed audio where music is buried under dialogue, crowd noise and effects. This helps downstream cue sheet teams know where music is present and where to fill out the relevant information.
• Music identification, isolating the music in any media file and identifing the artist, song title, album, label, release date and ISRC for each segment. Teams can quickly QC the identified music, combine repeated segments and correct start and end times to accelerate cue sheet creation and approval.
• Music removal, removing music from a clip while preserving dialogue, ambient sound and effects. In scenarios such as social distribution, archival relicensing, or platforms where rights would otherwise create friction, AudioShake opens the downstream path for rightsholders to license replacement tracks, swap in their own catalog or recoup royalties for music that previously went unreported.

One early user is ESPN, which manages a vast library of live, archival, and digital content, AudioShake said. Constraints such as copyrighted arena and walkout music, expired licenses on archival programming and dialogue embedded into crowd noise have historically limited what content ESPN could distribute and how quickly it could do so, AudioShake said.

ESPN uses AudioShake to remove or isolate copyrighted music from sports highlights, preserving original commentary and crowd noise, and to accelerate the turnaround of rights-cleared assets across television, streaming, digital and social platforms. Similarly, NFL Films and the NHL’s Calgary Flames use AudioShake to clear sports clips and game footage for broadcast and social distribution, where music rights would otherwise create friction.

AudioShake said its solution addresses music-licensing problems that have restricted distribution of digital properties like ESPN’s “The Ocho.” Previously unusable content can be distributed across new platforms and to new audiences, extending its lifespan and the reach of ESPN’s archives, AudioShake said.

ESPN used this capability in a 2026 Super Bowl ad. AudioShake isolated the voice of Phil Simms, the Super Bowl MVP quarterback of the 1986 New York Giants, saying “I’m gonna go to Disney World” in the famous 1986 postgame commercial for Walt Disney World. Because of ambient in-stadium music, licensing the full clip would have been cost-prohibitive for just a few seconds of a 60-second commercial. AudioShake removed the ambient music and extracted Simms’ vocal, making the clip usable.

“As ESPN continues to expand the ways we reach and serve sports fans in an age of content abundance, it’s important to lean into groundbreaking technology solutions that can help us bring the right content to the fans that want it as quickly and efficiently as possible,” said Kevin Lopes, vice president, business development and innovation, ESPN. “Working with AudioShake to leverage their innovative audio separation lets us unlock more content for fans by accelerating and modernizing workflows and ensuring we can deliver more high-quality sports content to fans wherever they are.”

More information is available here and here.

EMERYVILLE, Calif.—Brian Gross has joined the audio team at systems integrator Advanced Systems Group as an account manager.

He’ll be a part of the Burbank, Calif.-based group led by Director of Audio and Post Hamid “Gadget” Hopkins and support clients across applications ranging from music recording to studio design to immersive audio, ASG said.

Gross’ career is rooted in recording studios, music production and audio post, ASG said, and he has designed, built and run commercial recording facilities.

“I love music technology, but when I’m working with clients, it’s not just about selling equipment,” Gross said. “I’ve been in their shoes. I know the problems they’re trying to solve, and I know how to get them there. I’m the first person to say when they don’t need something. It’s about nurturing relationships and providing real value to people.”

ASG said Gross’ experience should be particularly valuable as recording and postproduction studios transition to fully digital environments.

“Brian knows audio technology, has a deep curiosity about it, has run large studios and truly wants his clients to flourish,” ASG President Dave Van Hoy said. “He understands the nuances of music production and post workflows, which helps design systems that stay out of the way of creativity. That perspective, combined with his consultative approach with clients, is particularly valuable as immersive audio and next-generation studio design continue to evolve.”

Among Gross’ top emerging technology priorities will be immersive audio and modular studios, ASG said. The company recently inked an exclusive reseller agreement with Nu-Studio, which offers a modular, portable control room.

“I’m really excited about the Nu-Studio platform as well as immersive audio and helping push both forward,” Gross said. “At the end of the day, I want to give people the best possible environments to create.”

I like to watch the beginning of big sporting events and was looking forward to hearing and seeing the band The War and Treaty sing the Star-Spangled Banner on “Monday Night Football” back in November.

The sound started out bad and, surprisingly, never got better during the entire performance. Clue one: Basic troubleshooting. Two singers were on wireless microphones, accompanied by an acoustic guitar—direct—three faders. Each channel was distorted and the balance between the sound elements never changed.

Before submitting this article and blaming the “MNF” crew, I decided to check out YouTube, where The Sports Video Channel was credited, not “Monday Night Football.” I am glad I did, because I was shocked—this certainly was not the same mix I heard live on my ABC affiliate.

What happened and who is really listening?

I can only ask, what was the mixer listening to? What was master control listening to? It reminds me of a favorite saying from the late, great television producer Fred Rheinstein: “Are we doing the same show?” What are you listening to?

Staying in Phase
In the early days of stereo sound over analog copper wire, it was not uncommon for the left and right channels to get out of phase. Often, this would occur in transmission, clearly beyond the event mixer’s control. It became common to send a “split track” of the announcers on the left channel and the other sounds on the right channel, with the two-channel (stereo) mix taking place back at master control. That worked, but I never thought it sounded very good, especially when you used an Orban stereo synthesizer to create stereo—“phase-y” stereo at best.

Surround sound was a nightmare with the widespread use of Dolby Pro Logic, an analog synthesis of surround sound delivered over two analog audio channels. If you had the decoder, then you could decode the surround, but if you didn’t, you had what was dubbed “super stereo”—once again, phase-y-sounding stereo. Dolby Surround was problematic until digital transmission and the first set of ATSC standards.

As a very green sports location sound mixer, I quickly learned to listen to and monitor the output of the OB van and as many other places as possible. There could be several processing or signal-splitting stages before the sound leaves the truck, and a problem could easily happen at a spot where you may not be listening.

After the audio program leaves the audio production space, further processing may happen somewhere in the audio signal flow. Isn’t someone listening to the sound? I remember the story about a master control technician who told the field mixer, “the meters looked fine there.” Who is listening to the sound?

But the question still lingers on how can the audio mixer produce sound for the masses when the consumer listens on earbuds, TV speakers, and sound bars? Not to mention the sound may be listened to in stereo, surround and even immersive by a few. How about language? Language intelligibility has plagued the broadcast sound mixer since advancing from mono to stereo. In mono, there is no gimmick like a “phantom center” that could disappear when the left and right channels are out of phase.

Immersive Challenges
Surround sound was difficult for the sound mixer because there were four channels of event sound and music and only one channel for dialogue. Compounding the mixing challenge is speaker alignment and placement, and often the surround speakers are too close to the mixer. Significantly, if the center speaker is too close it can give the sonic impression that the voices are too loud, resulting in the mixer turning the voices down and making them hard to hear.

With immersive sound the problems are further complicated by the fact that you have just added four overhead speakers. Now you have between eight and 10 effect and music speakers and still just one voice channel.

Part of the problem is how we define channels and how we mix them. I do not see any reason to not put voice in the left and right channels or in the front immersive channel, in addition to the center channel. You might argue that true reproduction in the home may be off, but then consider how sound bars project the sound. Who are you mixing for?

Mixing audio beyond stereo is arduous because of speakers and speaker placement, but significantly because of the acoustic mix space. World Cup soccer is hosted in multiple locations with different equipment and mix spaces making a cohesive consistent sound challenging.

Beginning in 2010, Felix Kruckles and Christian Gobbel of HBS (Host Broadcast Services) devised a signal flow and schedule where all the World Cup matches were produced in stereo in the venue and stems were sent to the International Broadcast Center. Then, a surround or immersive sound overlay was blended and mixed in a proper mixing room. All matches were mixed in the same audio mix studio—that is consistency! Felix and Christian were listening.

Who is listening? The misuse of compression is at an all-time high, and I would bet that it did not sound like that in the audio room. When there were only a couple of channels of compression, compression was tricky. Now virtually every audio channel and signal path has compression available, and maybe that is the problem—the compression is cumulative over the signal flow. I hear overcompression every time I turn on the TV. I bet it has to do with meeting the loudness numbers required by law!

Who is really listening? Maybe quality control is the best use of AI. You could program a gazillion qualitative and quantitative factors into a “QC bot” and it could “steer” the mix with some DSP into perfection so we can all listen in high fidelity.

The real question is, what did I really hear? I know I am not crazy! Yet.

Adobe has expanded its work with Speechmatics to deliver cloud-grade speech recognition on-device for its Premiere editing software that the company says can run accurate on-device transcription locally and is powerful enough for professional work.

Speechmatics has been Adobe's partner since 2021, when Adobe became the first non-linear editing platform to include speech-to-text (STT) in Premiere. The new feature deepens with a new on-device STT model in Premiere that delivers near-cloud accuracy while keeping all audio local to the device.

When Adobe launched STT for Premiere, large enterprises couldn't always use cloud-based services due to privacy concerns. Speechmatics was one of the few providers with on-device models—a key reason for the partnership.

Five years later, those privacy requirements haven't changed. With the rise of LLMs and data sovereignty concerns, the need for secure deployments has, in fact, increased. What has changed is the performance gap: Speechmatics' new on-device model brings local transcription on par with cloud accuracy with optimisations to run efficiently.

This means, Adobe explained, that studios, agencies, and production companies handling content before it goes public can now work seamlessly from anywhere: on a film set, between client meetings, on a flight—at full accuracy, with no dependency on a connection and no interruption to the work.

The new Speechmatics on-device model has been trained on millions of hours of speech to deliver high accuracy for accented speech, non-native speakers, and noisy environments like field reporting or film sets. As a result, Adobe said that the new on-device model in Premiere:

• Is within 5% relative to cloud accuracy, evaluated across nearly 10 million words of diverse real-world data
• Processes 1 hour of audio in about 55 seconds
• Leads the way against the closest competitor, with a 12-16% improvement against Whisper-powered creative solutions
• Runs on Windows & Mac, making use of the latest AI acceleration techniques to ensure efficient processing across a range of hardware, including broad hardware support for the latest Mac M5, NVIDIA RTX, AMD GPUs and older hardware such as Intel Macs.

Speechmatics on-device joins Speechmatics cloud and Speechmatics on-prem as a purpose-built option for ISVs and OEMs where data residency, offline capability, or predictable costs make local execution the right architectural call. It integrates as a C/C++ library on macOS and Windows.

More than ever, technology suppliers in 2026 are meeting media entities where they live and work, with a hybrid, flexible and often invisible ecosystem.

Audio infrastructure manufacturers and providers agree that while the “sound” still must be perfect, the exact location of the gear no longer matters.

“We are not moving towards a future where the physical location of the audio suite doesn’t matter anymore,” said Calrec Director of Product Management Henry Goodman. “We’re already there.”

WHO, HOW AND WHERE

While the “where” has shifted, the “who” remains the foundation of the broadcast. Humans are still largely mixing and shaping program output. “But how and where they do all this has changed beyond recognition,” Goodman said.

The show’s exhibit floor offers ample evidence for television, radio and streaming contexts.

Wheatstone is showcasing its VMX virtual mixing platform, which can serve as a single mixing backend for multiple consoles or surfaces, at its booth.

Marketing Director Dee McVicker said the cost benefits from virtualization are a focal point. “Not to mention removing the massive physical limitations of the studio as we know it,” she said.

For manufacturers, the challenge is ensuring that as consoles move from isolated desks to complex networks — whether on-site, on edge or in the cloud — the engineer’s experience remains intuitive.

Solid State Logic intends to decouple the “big console” experience from the giant desk. Berny Carpenter, SSL’s broadcast product manager, said that through the company’s Virtual Tempest Engine, the software can be deployed across public clouds or private data centers.

Does this flexibility mean that mixing can be performed truly anywhere? Wheatstone’s McVicker offered a nuanced take.

“We’re not taking away from the tactile feel of a fixed console, yet we’re not limiting you to that or where you might be mixing at the moment,” she said.

Goodman too said Calrec’s approach is to provide the “big console” experience in a portable package.

FIXED HARDWARE TO MOBILE APPS

In the West Hall, Lawo is preaching a philosophy of agility through its HOME Apps platform. The concept is a departure from the “one box for each task” style of broadcasting.

For a media outlet using a generic commercial off-the-shelf server, Lawo believes the platform is ideal for managing a succession of workflows, allowing a broadcaster to decide on Monday that it’s an audio mixer and on Tuesday that it’s a multiviewer by switching containerized microservices.

“Hardware infrastructure no longer dictates workflows: Workflows now define the agile processing stack,” said Wolfgang Huber, Lawo’s public relations manager.

According to Huber, that kind of agility is important in mobile production trucks, where every inch of rack space and watt of power counts.

Wheatstone’s VML, an HTML5-based virtual console, can be accessed through a web browser, offering mixing on a laptop, tablet, smartphone or desktop. “You have a lot of flexibility to set up remote broadcasts, temporary studios in a disaster situation or even add on a permanent production studio,” McVicker said.

BY YOUR SIDE

But how does an engineer harness all of the power available now, particularly from AI and automation?

At Telos Alliance, AI is framed as a “mixing assistant riding shotgun,” said Clark Novak, its marketing content manager.

Telos’ flexAI platform utilizes the Jünger Audio Intelligent Companion, an AI-powered automixer.

Novak explained that flexAI pushes background noise down while keeping dialogue consistent, allowing the engineer to focus on the overall mix while the platform handles “small corrective moves.”

SSL offers a similar philosophy with its System T Dialogue Automix. Carpenter said that the system focuses on the active speaker across a large number of sources to reduce crosstalk.

“It allows the operator to focus on the output, rather than reacting to who is currently speaking,” Carpenter said.

Lawo, for its part, sticks to deterministic algorithms in its KICK sports mixing technology, for example, to avoid “AI hallucinations” in high-stakes environments.

But with the platform’s close-ball mixing, which is automated based on camera tracking data, Lawo’s Huber said the technology allows the audio engineer to focus on creative storytelling rather than manual gain-riding.

But a recurring theme is that disappearance of large surfaces. For instance, Telos Alliance’s Axia Altus and Studio Essentials lines allow mixing to be controlled entirely via a web browser.

“Virtual mixing isn’t about replacing the studio,” Novak said, “it’s about expanding it to other locations.”

Wheatstone’s McVicker called it a hardware-agnostic philosophy.

As NAB Show exhibitors will demonstrate, the movement to flexibility is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Most facilities are adopting a hybrid approach — keeping hardware where tactile control is needed, but moving the “heavy lifting” to the cloud.

As Calrec’s Goodman concluded, the tools must provide the operator with the ability to adapt to demanding environments.

Whether the processing happens in a basement rack or a distant data center, the mission remains the same: clear and compelling audio.

© 2026 NAB

LAS VEGAS—In a notable effort to improve the quality of audio in OTA broadcasts, Dolby Laboratories and TV Azteca have announced a project to bring Dolby Atmos to free-to-air television in Mexico over ATSC 1.0 transmissions.

The two companies said the distribution of immersive audio within the current ATSC 1.0 transmission standard marks a significant step forward in the evolution of live television and opens the door for other broadcasters to make similar improvements to audio quality of OTA broadcasts.

Those involved in the project said immersive audio has a particularly powerful appeal in live sports events, where sound is an essential part of the emotion. With Dolby Atmos, sound moves above and all around, placing viewers at the center of the action and making every game more thrilling and memorable, Dolby said.

“Our work with TV Azteca represents a decisive step in bringing immersive experiences to mass audiences in Mexico,” said Pankaj Kedia, vice president of Americas, commercial partnerships at Dolby Laboratories. “Imagine watching a game from your living room and hearing where every cheer in the stands comes from, the sound of the ball, and the voice of the commentator moving around you. That is what Dolby Atmos makes possible today in Mexico.”

Pedro Manuel Carmona Ortiz, CTO of TV Azteca added that “this project with Dolby Laboratories marks a technological milestone, as well as a turning point for the industry, which would not have been possible without the support and collaboration of our strategic partners in this journey.”

In addition to Dolby, those include Imagine Communications and Ateme, a global provider in video compression and distribution solutions.

“We are collaborating with Dolby to demonstrate that innovation in audio can transform free-to-air television,” added Pedro Carmona Ortiz. “Our goal is to bring people closer to the real emotion of every story, with a quality that was previously reserved for premium environments.”

The announcement was made in Las Vegas, during the 2026 NAB Show, where Dolby, Imagine and Ateme are exhibiting.

LAS VEGAS—Calrec (Booth:C6907) and Grass Valley (Booth: C2408) are announcing a long-term broadcast audio technology partnership that they will be showing to attendees at the 2026 NAB Show.

The companies are combining their industry expertise to deliver a software-defined production environment that will see Calrec's ImPulseV virtual DSP software integrated with Grass Valley's AMPP cloud-native live production platform. The deployment will provide broadcasters with a unified environment for managing live broadcasts.

Coupling Grass Valley’s solutions in video production with Calrec’s broadcast audio expertise, ImPulseV, strengthens audio workflows within Grass Valley’s AMPP market leading Ecosystem.

The companies noted that the partnership provides all the benefits of close integration and orchestration with proven applications from renowned broadcast partners on a single platform. Calrec’s pathway into AMPP OS will start with AMPP Control integration and evolve towards a fully native ImPulseV application running on AMPP.

The collaboration also strengthens AMPP's tier 1 audio capabilities alongside its tier 1 video production strengths, creating a single platform for high-end live productions.

The integration comes at a time when the industry is moving towards software defined production, open standards and collaboration. As hybrid workflows continue to develop, the partnership gives broadcasters the confidence to define and scale their own infrastructure requirements, and to fully utilize their resources.

“We are delighted to be partnering with Grass Valley, an organization that shares our belief that innovation, people, and technology define the future of our industry. In today’s fast-moving production landscape, strong solutions and trusted collaborations are more critical than ever,” explained Sid Stanley, managing director at Calrec. “Our virtual ImPulseV technology, combined with the Grass Valley’s AMPP Ecosystem, creates a powerful proposition, uniting best-in-class solutions to give broadcasters the freedom to build, scale, and adapt without compromise. This marks the next evolution of Calrec’s strategy, empowering our customers with true choice, flexibility, and control in a software-defined world.”

Adam Marshall, chief product officer at Grass Valley, added that “with the integration of Calrec’s ImPulseV into AMPP, we are extending the power of software-defined production with tier-one audio workflows. Media organizations can now deploy premium audio capabilities in a fully software-defined environment while maintaining the quality, responsiveness, and familiar operator control expected for high-value live production. Whether on-prem, in the cloud, or across hybrid environments, it all operates within a single, unified platform”

Stanley stressed that “as our industry transforms, the need for agile, scalable, future-ready solutions has never been greater. Together, Calrec and Grass Valley are setting a new standard, combining cloud, virtualization, and multi-vendor integration into one seamless ecosystem for next generation production.

“The introduction of ImPulseV into this ecosystem is a key milestone, enabling customers to deploy everything from micro-control rooms to global production environments with speed and precision - shaping infrastructure around their needs, not the other way around,” he added. “This is not just an important announcement for today, but a meaningful step towards the future. Both Grass Valley and Calrec are deeply committed to continuous innovation and investment - because in a world moving this fast, standing still is not an option.”

Both companies noted that audio has remained one of the most challenging workflows to virtualize without compromising quality, latency or the operator experience. The cohesive Calrec ImPulseV and Grass Valley AMPP integration is designed to meet these challenges, by delivering:

• Common orchestration
• Shared control
• Scalable infrastructure
• Cloud and on-prem flexibility
• Elastic resources aligned to live production demands

Calrec's ImPulseV creates flexible workflows across COTS hardware, public and private cloud, existing processing hardware and distributed resources, contributing to an efficient, flexible hybrid production environment. ImPulseV is part of Calrec's Ecosystem, powered by True Control 2.0, which unifies the company's high-end control surfaces with remote production capabilities. Broadcasters can use True Control 2.0 to manage up to five Calrec consoles or processing cores simultaneously.

By integrating ImPulseV with AMPP, broadcasters' flexibility to manage their assets is further expanded. One control surface can adapt – without loss of quality – to local, cloud and remote productions.

Both ImpulseV and AMPP provide OpEx based deployment models, enabling broadcasters to expand event coverage. The integration delivers audio capabilities that scale, without compromising the operator experience.

Calrec is exhibiting at the NAB Show between April 19 and 22 on Booth C6907, and Grass Valley is on Booth C2408. The integrated ImPulseV and AMPP workflow will be demonstrated on the Grass Valley Booth C2408.

CLEVELAND—Broadcast audio supplier Telos Alliance will be showcasing four new products as well as upgrades to existing solutions at the 2026 NAB Show from April 18 - 22 in the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, Booth #C1819.

During the show, the company will feature its portfolio of traditional hardware products alongside virtualized and software solutions.

Several brand-new products will be introduced for the very first time at this year’s show, including:

• Omnia® XII, the brand-new flagship FM/HD/DAB audio processor from Frank Foti and the Omnia team that combines all-new algorithms and Frank’s effortlessly loud and clean “Clemenza” clipper with forward-thinking I/O and features users require to support today’s workflows (https://omniaxii.com)
• Axia Pulsar, a compact new AoIP console surface with 8 motorized faders - expandable to 16 - a touchscreen monitor section, and the same top-tier audio performance as the company’s larger Quasar XR and SR consoles (https://telosalliance.com/pulsar)
• Telos Infinity IP Intercom MK2 Master, Expansion, and Desktop panels, featuring 16 bigger, brighter, easier-to-read TFT button displays (https://telosalliance.com/infinity)
• Telos Infinity VIP SE, the latest member of the growing StudioEssentials family of compact hardware products, which merges the flexibility of Infinity VIP software with the convenience of easy-to-deploy compact hardware (https://telosalliance.com/VIP)

Improvements to several of the company’s existing offerings will also be demonstrated. The Jünger Audio flexAI platform features the Jünger Audio Intelligent Assistant (JAIC) to aid in managing complex multichannel mixes in real time, and the flexAI platform is now fully deployable in the cloud (https://telosalliance.com/flexAI)

Meanwhile, the Minntonka Audio AudioTools Server automated file-based processing platform addresses one of the top issues faced by television viewers: Dialogue intelligibility. ATS can analyze audio content and, if necessary, make corrections to ensure viewers no longer struggle to hear and understand dialogue within the overall mix (https://telosalliance.com/ATS)

Partner ip-studio will showcase its STUDIO ZERO ecosystem in the Telos Alliance booth, a fully-realized, 100% virtual cloud-hosted solution first introduced at the 2023 NAB Show. STUDIO ZERO merges a suite of Telos Alliance products with ip-studio’s advanced automation and workflow management software, making practical, reliable cloud-based studios a reality (https://ip-studio.com).

More information is available at https://www.telosalliance.com/.

NORTHRIDGE, CALIF.—TSL today announced the acquisition of JLCooper Electronics, a pioneer in professional control, automation, synchronization, and interfacing products.

The announcement was made after the death of founder Jim Cooper was announced on March 16. TSL says the acquisition “ensures continuity of service and support for its global customer base spanning live events, music, radio, pro-AV, and education markets.”

Cooper got his start at UCLA AND was also Chief Engineer at Oberheim Electronics before launching JL Cooper in 1979. He was also a former President of the MIDI Manufacturers Association.

Notable JL Cooper customers include Cirque du Soleil, NBA, Grand Ole Opry and global artists including Depeche Mode, Pearl Jam and Hans Zimmer, as well as a wide range of OEM clients that align with TSL’s strategic growth plans.

TSL says the move further expands its capabilities into adjacent markets while broadening its technology offering to its core broadcast customers.

“JLCooper’s range of interfaces will be great additions to TSL’s Hummingbird control ecosystem, giving creators, operators, and engineers expanded options and greater flexibility in how they connect and control systems within the latest software-defined, cloud, and hybrid workflows,” the company said in a statement. “The addition of MIDI control and communication solutions further enhances TSL's capabilities and broadens TSL’s industry reach into music and audio production, opening up the enormous breadth of devices compatible with the MIDI industry-standard, which Jim Cooper himself helped to create and establish.”

Following the acquisition, TSL will move JLCooper’s production operations from El Segundo, CA to its base in Northridge, CA after which TSL will commence production and shipping of JLCooper solutions.

“With the sad news of Jim Cooper’s passing, it was important to find a way to secure the future for JLCooper’s revered technology, while ensuring continuity for its customers and we’re glad we’ve been able to move so quickly to achieve this,” said Matthew Quade, CEO, TSL. “Bringing its solutions into the TSL Hummingbird ecosystem, which already combines and has expanded the much-loved Tallyman and DNF Controls capabilities, will only enhance the flexibility and choice available to our customers, while broadening the markets that Hummingbird can support.”

“We were all terribly shocked and saddened by Jim’s passing, and have been working round the clock to find a way forward for his business that would ensure his legacy continues and maintains support for the users that have grown to love JLCooper solutions for the past 46 years,” said Chuck Thompson, General Manager, JLCooper Electronics. “I’ve been delighted by how TSL has been able to provide a route forward in a short timescale, and the professional understanding and support the TSL team has shown. I can’t imagine a better home for the brand and products and look forward to working with TSL on providing customers with enhanced options for their future workflows.”

BURLINGTON, Mass.—Avid has released data showing that the filmmakers, editors and sound teams worked with Avid Media Composer and Pro Tools to create the vast majority of this year’s Academy Award®-winning pictures.

In total, 87% of winning productions were crafted using Avid solutions, reinforcing Avid’s long history as the creative platform trusted for the world’s greatest storytelling, the company reported.

“Well-deserved congratulations to all the filmmakers, editors and sound teams recognized at this year’s Academy Awards,” said Wellford Dillard, CEO of Avid. “These films didn’t just entertain audiences – they moved, thrilled and inspired millions of people. We’re proud to see the world’s most important stories shaped by artists using Avid tools as part of their creative process. That’s what drives us every day – building technology that helps the world’s greatest creators deliver their best work.”

Filmmakers working with Avid creative solutions were recognized across major categories including Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Sound and Best Animated Feature Film. Winning productions include:

• Best Picture: `One Battle After Another'. Producers: Adam Somner, Sara Murphy and Paul Thomas Anderson.
• Best Film Editing:`One Battle After Another'. Editor: Andy Jurgensen.
• Best Sound: `F1: The Movie'. Sound team: Gareth John, Al Nelson, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Gary A. Rizzo and Juan Peralta.
• Best Animated Feature Film: `KPop Demon Hunters'. Producers: Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans and Michelle L.M. Wong.
• Best International Feature Film: `Sentimental Value' (Norway).
• Best Visual Effects: `Avatar: Fire and Ash'. Visual effects team: Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett.
• Best Documentary Feature Film: `Mr. Nobody Against Putin' Producers: David Borenstein, Pavel Talankin, Helle Faber and Alžběta Karásková.

Alongside a wide array of this year’s winning productions, Avid also reported that its editing and audio solutions were used across the majority of nominated works in several major categories, with 8 of the 10 Best Picture nominees were crafted using Avid, 4 out of 5 editors in Best Film Editing cut their films with Media Composer, and and all Best Sound nominees used Pro Tools.

For example, Andy Jurgensen, winner of the Best Film Editing Oscar for `One Battle After Another', cut the film using Avid Media Composer®.

“This film had so many tones – comedy, drama, action – it’s so hard to compartmentalize,” said Jurgensen. “One thing I really got into on this movie was Avid’s automatic transcribing tool… When you need to find just a word or a phrase you can search and find it in all the different takes. It saved me so much time.”

The sound team behind `F1: The Movie', which won the Oscar® for Best Sound, used Avid Pro Tools workflows to craft an immersive racing experience that captured both the authenticity and excitement of Formula 1.

“What makes F1 exciting is that it is the peak of motorsport racing. It is the top of the top,” said Juan Peralta, re-recording mixer at Skywalker Sound. “One of the edicts we got from the producers of this movie was to try to make it as authentic as possible… We also were making a fun movie – we want people to enjoy it and just be on for the ride.”

Learn more about the creative process behind `F1: The Movie' here: https://connect.avid.com/f1-the-movie-lp.html

Find out more about Andy Jurgensen’s editing experience on `One Battle After Another' here: https://theroughcutpod.com/one-battle-after-another/

HEBDEN BRIDGE, U.K.—Calrec will unveil solutions for broadcasters that unlock the full potential of hybrid workflows that provide greater freedom, flexibility and choice in how they configure its products during the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Building on its hardware foundation, Calrec’s compact IP-native, 48-fader Argo M audio console with integrated digital signal processor (DSP) will make its U.S. debut. With up to 356 channels of internal DSP, Argo M delivers the power, familiarity and reliability of Calrec’s Argo platform in a streamlined 24-, 36- or 48-fader footprint.

The Argo M maximizes desk space with full-sized fader strips and intuitive controls for the most demanding production. Plug-and-play SMPTE ST 2110 and cloud connectivity deliver immediate high-performance control.

The ability to connect Argo M to an ST 2110-networked environment and to an existing Calrec ImPulse core alongside other Argo surfaces means broadcasters can quickly create multi-console IP environments. Seamless connectivity to ImPulse, ImPulse1 and ImPulseV means additional external DSP paths can be added as needed.

Calrec will also showcase key software updates and a feature preview at the show, including:

• Argo v1.4.24, providing the functionality of 1.4 and operator enhancements, which is available immediately.
• Type R v3.2, delivering improved Mix Minus outputs, Assist Upstand meter tiles, Off Air record contribution dialogue and Syslog support with a Q2 release.
• A preview of Argo Offline Assist, which allows offline configuration and will be available in Q4.

The company will also preview ImPulseV running on virtualized server hardware. Calrec's ImPulseV virtualized audio mixing engine creates workflows across multiple platforms whether COTS hardware, public cloud, private cloud or existing processing hardware and distributed resources, contributing to an efficient, flexible hybrid production environment.

Calrec’s ImPulseV employs the same familiar user interface and can be controlled directly from any Argo or True Control 2.0 enabled console or via the company's Assist web UI.

The company will also demonstrate its IP-native 24-fader Argo M console with ImPulseV cloud DSP software, which is designed to be deployable across multiple hosting environments, giving broadcasters ultimate choice as to where and how they deploy.

Calrec will also demonstrate True Control 2.0, the glue that connects Calrec’s IP ecosystem together. Its IP Ecosystem powered by True Control 2.0 allows users to blend on-premise infrastructure with remote operations and virtual cloud resources. By decoupling audio and video from hardware, teams can scale dynamically, orchestrate thousands of audio channels across distributed DSP environments and virtualize entire workflows.

It will also feature Argo S with IP connectivity, version 1.4 Argo software, Argo Q and its Type R modular, expandable IP mixing system,

See Calrec at 2026 NAB Show booth C6907.

More information is on the company’s website.

Broadcast audio has undergone a dedicated development process over the years, progressing from mono to stereo, analog to digital and baseband to Audio over IP (AoIP). Despite this, it continued to live in the shadow of broadcast video and was almost subsumed when embedded audio was introduced in the 1970s. Today, with dedicated standards and protocols such as AES67, Dante and Ravenna, the position of audio in TV has grown in stature while also coming under the aegis of the more video-oriented SMPTE ST 2110.

This, however, does not appear to be a hindrance to the ongoing evolution of TV/streaming audio, now firmly established on an AoIP foundation and looking towards the continuing implementation of Next Generation Audio (NGA), with AI promising more practical benefits for processing and control.

Building on the Backbone
The advent of ST 2110 enabled the discrete transport of audio and video, giving operators the freedom and flexibility to send either stream to different destinations. This is part of the “second wave of IP,” which Christian Struck, senior product manager for audio expert infrastructure at Lawo, predicted will be at the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas.

“It’s fair to say that AoIP is the de facto standard now, but I think what we will see at the NAB Show will build on that as the backbone architecture [for systems],” he said. “This means using the abstraction layer or the generic infrastructure that is capable of dealing with audio and video in an equal manner…to abstract further away from bespoke hardware and move the offering towards software values.” He also highlighted the EBU’s recommendations for the Dynamic Media Facility [DMF] as “a clear trend” towards generic backbone architecture that will “allow operators to define how to utilize these facilities for whatever purpose and on what scale.”

Costa Nikols, executive team strategy adviser for media and entertainment (M&E) at Telos Alliance, picked up on the concept of the DMF, adding that ST 2110, NMOS (Networked Media Open Specifications) and virtualized audio engines are now the “baseline” for new builds and major refurbishments.

“MXL [Media eXchange Layer] is [also] becoming predominant in the broadcast space, allowing for different virtual machines and processes as well as memory share, with ST 2110 for signal flow and a bunch of transport standards like SRT and NDI and, in the audio world, Dante,” he said. “As well as those, there are software-as-a-service [SaaS] platforms from companies including Grass Valley, Vizrt and Matrox, [all of which can enable] virtualization like the DMF, configuring different rooms via software depending on the function you need to have that specific day.”

Going Full 2110
The Dante AoIP protocol is now firmly established in broadcast and its developer, Audinate, has expanded further into the market with video functionality. “Operationalizing IP and software workflows at scale” for broadcast audio is a growing trend, Principal Product Manager Will Waters said.

“New facilities are being brought about with IP at the core, with ST 2110 as the backbone,” he said. “But it’s not just about the [audio] quality, which is there on the digital side. It’s more about how you operationalize that, scale the network and ensure you don’t get into challenges because we really need a deterministic behavior in the audio, where networks are inherently packetized, so they’re meant to be agnostic to what’s flying over them. The trend I see is operationalizing that alignment with PTP [Precision Time Protocol] across the facility to get better control of multicast flows.”

Jason Waufle, global strategic business development manager at Shure, observed that Dante and AES67 are now being backhauled into ST 2110 networks as part of OB truck integrations.

“The industry consensus is a full ST 2110 or IP infrastructure is the way to go,” he said. “You’ve got significantly more flexibility, control and interoperability of audio and video and transport. Shure has been making Dante and AES67 native products for nearly a decade, and advancing our onboard DSP [to] make our array microphones essentially an edge device for a network, capturing more audio data than a single analog mic could.”

Phil Owens, senior sales engineer at Wheatstone, said there are also advancements in routing and distributing AoIP in live broadcast.

“The preferred method of operation now is to be able to grab any source or signal and send it and use it anywhere you want,” he said. “That kind of distribution and sharing is right in the IP wheelhouse, whether it’s long-distance transport with AoIP or just within the same building.” Right now, Owens added, Wheatstone is focused on server-based systems that can be in the cloud, but he sees on-prem setups as more practical. “Server-based apps can provide scalability and redundancy that bespoke hardware is lacking.” he said.

Immersive and Personalization
While AoIP is now either being implemented or is part of broadcasters’ plans across the sector, NGA, immersive systems such as Dolby Atmos and personalization of audio for alternative languages and commentaries are more confined to streaming services.

“Amazon and Netflix are overtaking the conventional linear TV broadcasters [when it comes to] Dolby Atmos and binaural,” Struck said. “It has always been a significant challenge to make the infrastructure and complete signal chain immersive-capable. It’s much more common to the large streaming services than it is for broadcasters, where only exceptional and selected things are transmitted in immersive.”

Nikols is more positive, saying Telos is seeing immersive and personalized audio “showing up in strategic plans” for new projects and installations. “They’re no longer just nice to have,” he said. There is now a “software-first virtualization mentality” in broadcast, Nikols continued, coupled with AI-assisted workflows. “It can assist in the creative process, [through] loudness control, compliance monitoring, speech enhancement and noise reduction.”

Another assistive application is in audio mixing, with Shure and others using AI to develop systems that can handle the more mundane aspects of a production. “We came up with the capability of developing DSP that, from an AI standpoint, allows the engineers not to have to worry about the audience mix because it does it automatically,” Scott Sullivan, vice president of strategy and innovation, explained. “But the things that are more in the hands of the professionals, that’s going to be significantly down the road. Right now, I think AI is a complementary tool.”

No doubt AI in all its forms will be prominent at the 2026 NAB Show, but it could be the less-showy aspects of audio, such as the second wave of IP, that really point the way ahead for this ever-evolving sector.

Driven by advances in IP, the cloud and AI, audio technology is more than just about sound—it's about providing viewers with a more immersive and accessible experience. In our latest Guide to Audio, we examine the latest trends in audio technology and discuss how broadcasters and media companies can bring these innovations to life across live, linear and streaming workflows.

Download the Guide here.

BRAKEL, Germany—Schulze-Brakel has unveiled SchulzClip, its dedicated branding solution for wireless clip-on microphones.

Designed for modern wireless microphone systems, SchulzClip allows broadcasters, production companies and brands to place their logo directly on camera without compromising sound quality or usability. The product clips securely onto shirts and collars and provides a clean, professional on-camera appearance while reducing wind and pop noise.

Manufactured using SchulzFoam technology, SchulzClip ensures clear, natural audio and features a non-reflective flocked surface suitable for professional broadcast environments. High-resolution, full-color logo printing enables strong, customized brand visibility.

“SchulzClip combines professional audio performance with visible brand presence in a way that has not been available before,” says Jens-Uwe Rumsfeld, CEO of Schulze-Brakel.

SchulzClip is compatible with wireless microphone systems from Shure, Sennheiser, DJI, RØDE, Saramonic and Deity. The product is ISO 9001 certified and made in Germany.

More information is available on the company’s website.

STAMFORD, CONN—NBC Sports has selected Audio-Technica to once again provide professional microphones, broadcast headsets, headphones and related accessories for its production of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

NBC Sports will utilize Audio-Technica equipment to deliver much of its audio capture requirements across all sporting venues for its production of the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, helping NBC Sports route the excitement in Italy back to viewers watching coverage of the Games in the United States.

“NBC Sports is proud to mark 25 years of partnership with Audio-Technica, whose advanced audio technology solutions have played a vital role in supporting NBC Olympics’ production efforts around the world. Throughout this longstanding partnership, Audio-Technica has continued to deliver premium products and pioneering innovations in microphone technology, serving as the foundation of an audio signal chain dedicated to superior sound quality and reliability. Audio-Technica consistently delivers outstanding performance, Games after Games, whether in the host city as well as at our Stamford broadcast facility,” said Karl Malone, senior director, audio engineering at NBC Sports.

“We are delighted to be able to once again provide an extensive package of microphones, headsets and headphones that meets the demanding of technical requirements of NBC Sports”, states Rodrigo Thomaz, project manager – broadcast partnerships at Audio-Technica with technical responsibility for the collaboration; “and that they continue to have the confidence in our brand to deliver both on audio quality and logistical excellence.”

Click here for more on NBCUniversal’s Milan Cortina 2026 programming.

TV Tech’s overall coverage of NBC Sports' overall tech plans for the 2026 Winter Games can be found here, here and here.

Talking to Karl Malone, senior director of audio engineering at NBC Sports and Olympics, about the sound he intends to capture and deliver during the Winter Games in Milan-Cortina reveals a passion and excitement for the event he hopes viewers will sense at home.

A critical part of making that happen will be the extensive use of immersive microphones to take advantage not only of the five speakers and subwoofer of a 5.1 surround mix, but also of four height channels dedicated to picking up mics elevated to capture a fuller soundscape and immerse the audience in the moment.

“It’s usually quite cold and potentially not too windy up there [in the starting hut of downhill skiing], but it’s isolated, and I think immersive mics are really going to give us that feeling of isolation,” said Malone, offering an example of how channel-based immersive audio will benefit the coverage of one event.

“How we mix these normally, you’ll never hear any crowd in the mix because it’s all about the athletes and their time and the focus on them, the zoom in on the eyes and listening to the audio,” he said. “You see the breath, and you hear the breath. Then, as they go down the hill and they’re vying for a world record, you start to bring in the crowd and immersive.”

Dolby Atmos and Audinate Dante
Delivering immersive audio leveraging 10 channels of Dolby Atmos audio will be a major priority for the network during the Games. “We have large 8.0—basically four height and four sort of lower-level—arrays that we will use for the general ambience at pretty much all venues just to get that larger immersive crowd sound whether indoors or outdoors,” Malone said.

“Then we have some smaller immersive mics as well, which are Dante-based,” he continued. “That’s a huge advancement in being able to get immersive audio into tighter spaces and also being able to do it on a single Ethernet cable, which is wonderful.”

Using Dante enables the A1s mixing coverage at the NBC Sports hub in Stamford, Conn., to control mics strategically positioned around venues in Milan-Cortina. Accessing the mics through a remote desktop, the A1s can not only operate them, but also steer pickup in real time, as necessary, from 4,000 miles away.

“One of our hopes is to get these types of mics into the starting houses of the downhill races where the venue is smaller,” he said, specifically identifying how he hopes sound will convey “the pressure and the tension of being very high and very alone on the top of a mountain.”

“You can feel it, and you have to be able to hear that, too,” Malone said.

Meanwhile Back in Stamford
NBC will use 14 control rooms in Stamford, four of which can be considered primary control rooms, he said. One will be used for primetime, a second for daytime coverage, a third for USA Network and a fourth for NBC’s “Gold Zone,” its whip-around streaming coverage on Peacock, presenting the most exciting action from various venues. Each primary control room will handle 5.1.4 immersive mixes.

The remaining control rooms in Stamford are what the network refers to as “venue control rooms,” used to mix audio for ice hockey, cross-country skiing, speed skating, Alpine sliding, aerials and moguls, as well as at the Olympics Snow Park, where freestyle skiing and snowboarding will take place.

“Those control rooms act like trucks, feeding into a master audio control room where they’ll take the eight channels of immersive height information and mix that down into four,” Malone said. “So, it’s a finished product in 5.1.4.”

For this year’s Games, the network is giving its editors in Stamford the ability to edit 16 channels, not simply 5.1 surround. “Ultimately, you want those 16 channels to go back into a control room so that the A1 can play it back as live and have access to those eight channels of height microphones to be able to mix down into four channels,” Malone said.

“We championed the ability to maintain that whole 16-channel workflow through the building—from the venue all the way through edits and then back to a live control room,” he said. “That’s pretty important.”

There will be two exceptions to this remote integration model (REMI) workflow, however: the opening ceremony and figure skating.

U.S. viewers and the network regard figure skating as a “top-tier sport,” Malone said, and as such, NBC wants to have more production personnel on site.

“They [NBC Olympics reporters and talent] have more access to athletes,” he said. “It’s a bigger production with more cameras and more NBC cameras. There are more NBC microphones. It’s just bigger.”

The same is true of the opening ceremony, so both will be produced from an on-site mobile unit.

Distribution to Various Platforms
Audio from Stamford will be handed off as discrete 5.1.4 PCM to be encoded to Dolby Atmos and delivered to Comcast, Peacock, multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) partners and the network itself. At that point, the network will remove the height channels for distribution to affiliates. “All of the NBC O&Os will get AC-4 [the codec used by Dolby Atmos and integral to ATSC 3.0],” Malone said.

“What we did for Paris [2024 Summer Olympics] is they [the owned-and-operated stations] took our network 1080i and up-res-ed it to 1080p HDR with Dolby Vision and Atmos for NextGen [TV],” Malone said, adding that some affiliates transmitting NextGen TV will do the same this time.

“The AC-4 pipe has already been laid out to NBC O&Os,” he said. “It’s really testing the pipe at this stage, and we’ve done very successful AC-4 tests with both immersive AD [audio description]—being able to take audio description and present that in a 5.1.4 presentation.”

To ensure its 5.1.4 immersive audio presentation is available to Peacock subscribers, the streaming service has conducted extensive testing of home devices, such as Roku boxes, Amazon Fire TV Sticks and others, to ensure glitch-free decoding and presentation, Malone said.

“That’s why it took a long time in my mind for Peacock to go immersive,” he said. “It’s because there are the creatives, including me, saying: ‘We’re ready to do this creatively. We can give you 5.1.4.’ But Peacock had to test every single device. They aren’t going to launch without making sure everything is right.”

Planning for the 2026 Winter Games started right after the Summer Olympics, with the goal of one-upping NBC’s award-winning coverage of the Paris Games.

“You don’t sit on your laurels,” Malone said. “You think: ‘What can we do better? How can we engage the audience more? How can we tell the story our directors and producers want to tell?’”

For the Milan-Cortina Games, when it comes to audio, the answer is clearly immersive.

Sports television has always chased immersion. Higher frame rates, longer lenses and increasingly complex graphics all served the same goal: putting the viewer closer to the action.

But for all the visual advances, sound remains a powerful shortcut to realism.

At the U.S. Figure Skating National Championships in St. Louis on Jan. 11, a quiet piece of audio innovation brought audiences closer to the ice than ever before by placing microphones directly inside it.

Cutting Into the Ice
Broadcast audio technicians arrived in St. Louis early to help the ice operations team install prototype Audio-Technica contact microphones directly into the skating surface. These contact microphones converted vibrations in the ice into an electrical signal that could be amplified for broadcast.

From there, a narrow trench ran from the mic location back to the dasher boards, allowing the cable to exit cleanly at the rink perimeter. Once the microphones were seated, the cabling was dressed tightly against the wall so it could later be tied into the broadcast infrastructure.

After installation, the ice team packed slush over the microphones and trenches, resurfaced the area, and painted the ice to conceal any visible lines. When finished, there was no visible evidence that 10 microphones were sitting just beneath the surface, positioned evenly around the rink.

Once the physical work was complete, the broadcast audio team tied the microphones into the broadcast truck, where the real test began.

A Different Kind of Microphone
The prototype microphones were contact mics, capturing only vibrations from the ice. Audio-Technica supplied the mics, with Gary Dixon, director of broadcast business development, closely involved in testing and exploring their applications.

“The goal is always the same,” Dixon explained. “How do we make sounds more interesting to people?”

Because the element was embedded directly into the ice, the microphones were inherently isolated from ambient noise. The mics use standard phantom power and were connected to conventional microphone inputs, with an internal amplifier bringing the piezo-element (an electrical charge or voltage generated by mechanical stress) signal up to microphone level.

Crowd reaction, PA spill and arena noise simply did not factor into the signal path. What remained was pure mechanical sound: blades carving ice, shifts in pressure, landings, takeoffs and the rhythm of the skating itself.

The microphones used in St. Louis were available through Audio-Technica’s rental program, with plans for a future commercial release. Dixon sees broad potential well beyond figure skating, such as basketball rims, soccer goalposts, swimming environments and even engines. Anywhere vibration tells a story, contact microphones offer a new way to listen.

Mixing the Ice
For Randy Pekich, senior audio mixer with NBC, the first listen was eye-opening.

“When I heard them, my first reaction was, ‘No way that’s a shotgun mic,’” Pekich said. “I was completely fascinated.”

With more than three decades in television audio and a background spanning music recording, studio television and large-scale remote productions, Pekich had embedded microphones into just about every imaginable place. But contact microphones in ice were new territory.

His initial concern was physics. With roughly an inch of ice covering each microphone, Pekich expected the sound to be thin, fragile or highly localized. Instead, he found that each mic captured a surprisingly wide area, roughly a 6- to 8-foot diameter, with enough detail to hear skaters working at center ice.

“They’re outstanding,” he said. “One of the best inventions to happen to the sport.”

Historically, figure skating audio relied on a combination of shotguns, PCC-style boundary microphones and occasionally lavaliers embedded in the dasher boards. As overall venue levels increased, those microphones inevitably behaved more like crowd mics, capturing PA and audience noise instead of isolating on-ice action. The in-ice contact microphones changed that equation entirely.

Simplifying the Mix
During the event, Pekich continuously monitored ambient sound levels in the arena, including crowd noise, music playback and general environmental spill, to understand what he was up against. With the contact microphones, much of that fight disappeared.

“I worried whether 10 microphones would be enough,” he admitted. “Then I heard everything.”

Because the microphones only responded to vibration in the ice, fader management became significantly easier. Instead of chasing skaters around the rink or riding levels to avoid crowd surges, Pekich could focus on storytelling. Subtle compression and minimal EQ were all that was required.

“Considering the massive frequency restrictor of the surrounding ice, they performed flawlessly,” he said. “They’re very true to sound.”

Importantly, the sound resonated with those who knew it best. Former skaters serving as on-air analysts commented that the audio matched exactly what they remembered hearing while skating. In some cases, they could even identify blade placement, helping them explain technique and judging decisions to viewers.

The Ice Team Perspective
Embedding equipment into the field of play is always a sensitive issue, particularly in a sport where surface quality directly affects athlete safety. John Monteleone, director of education with the U.S. Ice Rink Association, who oversaw the ice operations, acknowledged the initial hesitation.

“Most ice operations staff shy away from placing any foreign matter in the ice,” Monteleone said. “But after refining the process since 2019, we’re confident in the installation.”

The key, he explained, was precision and consistency. Keeping the cable runs straight, thoroughly removing ice shavings and carefully packing slush over the microphones ensured a uniform surface. Throughout the event, there were no impacts to ice quality, no interference from resurfacing equipment and no contact from skaters’ toe picks.

Removal, however, remained the most time-consuming part of the process. Locating and extracting the microphones after the event could take time and required chipping and hot water. Even so, Monteleone said he would be comfortable deploying the system again.

“My preference is always to keep the field of play as clean as possible,” he said. “But with the experience we’ve gained, I have no reservations about continuing to use in-ice microphones for these events.”

A New Layer of Immersion
Figure skating is a deceptively difficult sport to mix. The action is fluid, the pacing varies and the most important moments are often quiet, such as a subtle shift before a jump or the scrape of an edge setting up a landing. These embedded contact microphones added an entirely new layer of that story.

The on-ice sound translated exceptionally well, earning praise from the production team, leadership and viewers alike.

For audio, innovation doesn’t always mean more microphones or more channels. Sometimes it means listening differently. By installing directly to the ice, these contact microphones offered a rare combination of isolation, authenticity and emotional impact, bringing audiences closer to the sport without ever being seen.

Ever feel like simply keeping up with the mixing demands of live production prevents you from doing your best work?

With so many microphones across the field, court, or set and so many channels to monitor and mix, it can be overwhelming. Adding to the challenge are ever-present budget realities that demand A1s do more with fewer people and tighter timelines.

But that equation is changing. The new Shure DCA901 digital broadcast mic array combines 78 individual microphones to create eight distinct software-steerable channels, an audio DSP that powers a built-in automixer, and control software to ease setup and reduce the burden of managing multiple microphones used to create a conventional mix.

With the DCA901 array, A1s can build their mixes as they truly intend them to be rather than out of concern over the precise positioning of mics, microphone failure or unwanted noise from, for instance, fans in the stands who may drown out the sound of a shoe squeak on court or a player calling for the ball on a football (soccer) pitch.

Ultimate Control

Consider a conventional live audio production for a televised basketball game. An A1 working with assistants would attach shotgun microphones to the stanchions supporting the backboard and point each toward the court, providing a wide pickup pattern. A pair of lavalier mics—one at each net—would also be attached to pick up the ball hitting the rim or the swish of a nothing-but-net free throw—and another shotgun mic at midcourt.

Add into the mix an assortment of on-camera mics, other mics positioned around the arena for crowd noise, and a couple of cameras with shotgun mics attached to capture the sound of those in-your-face under-the-basket shots.

Now consider replacing most, if not all, of that with a DCA901 mounted to each stanchion. With the microphones’ easy-to-use control software, individually steerable coverage lobes are positioned to cover each half of the court. Using the array’s Auto Position feature found in its web-based GUI, an A1 selects a channel and instructs an assistant to make a sound at a desired location. Using that sound, the system automatically aims one lobe at the sound to pick up audio from that location.

The DCA901 offers several key benefits in this scenario. First, there are far fewer possible points of failure—fewer mics and backup mics, less cabling, and fewer wireless channels that might fail. Next, setup time drops dramatically—from hours to as little as 30 minutes. Gone is the need for back-and-forth between an A1 and an assistant, tweaking each mic's orientation. Instead, DCA901 lobe steering is done in software away from the array. Fewer mics, backups, and support gear, along with faster setup, translate into lower production costs.

More Intentional Mixes

Perhaps the greatest benefit of using the DCA901 is that it unlocks the full potential of A1s to mix live productions the way they want, not as they must. The array’s powerful, yet easy-to-use functions and software give A1s the freedom to mix with intention.

For instance, replacing so many conventional microphones with a pair of DCA901s in the basketball scenario means A1s can rely upon the array’s automixer to create a submix of the action on court as it moves from coverage lobe to lobe rather than mixing multiple audio channels coming from stanchion shotgun mics, lavaliers, camera mics, and the rest.

Rather, taking the submix from the DCA901 automixer and a few mics around the arena for crowd noise, an A1 has enough time to focus on the other sound elements that go into the main mix, such as sound effects associated with animated graphics, which might otherwise have been missed.

Of course, these same benefits can enhance audio production by opening up new possibilities for A1s to mix intentionally and achieve their creative vision for other sports, studio shows, and even reality TV.

Having that extra set of virtual hands makes all the difference not only for A1s but also for producers and directors, who expect their shows to look and sound great.

Click here to learn more about the DCA901 and schedule a demo in your environment.

Broadcasters, production companies, and show producers alike know that engaging audiences more deeply in their productions not only makes their work memorable but keeps the public coming back for more.

That’s why there’s been so much attention paid over the past few years to enhancing resolution—taking it to 4K and even 8K UHD—and transitioning to high dynamic range (HDR) pictures offering a much wider color gamut than standard dynamic range. Each helps to put lifelike images—those that pull viewers into content—on screen.

But what about audio production? Equal effort is being given to enhancing viewers’ audio experience as well. A number of technologies have emerged to enhance the audio experience, such as speech enhancement and descriptive audio. But it’s immersive sound that most directly engages audiences in the action by creating a captivating audio experience that’s the perfect match for 4K/8K UHD images and HDR.

Until recently, capturing immersive audio, especially for live productions like sports, has required elaborate, time-consuming mic setups and exceptional mixing diligence to create an immersive sound experience. Not only was a good deal of work needed to precisely position and tweak the mics' aim to pick up the channels required for the immersive mix, but cabling and mounting complexity grew with each new microphone.

A new digital broadcast microphone array from Shure, however, is changing that equation. The Shure DCA901 is equipped with 78 individual microphone elements that form eight lobes, which can be steered remotely in real time to create a sound field that changes as the action moves across the screen. During setup, having steerable lobes means adjusting the pickup from a central computer, not physically at the mic. During production, they mean being able to capture audio as the action unfolds.

For instance, for basketball games, two DCA901 arrays—one mounted to each backboard stanchion—provide A1s with total court coverage and the ability to steer audio pickup to capture dribbles and shoe squeaks as play moves around the court.

Beyond sports, the DCA901 is leaving its mark in live studio production, newscast production, reality TV production, and even after a shoot is finished in post-production.

Bill Oakley, Shure Associate Director of Global Product Development, recently sat down with TVTech contributing editor Phil Kurz to discuss immersive audio and the role the company’s DCA901 is playing in simplifying production of live immersive audio.

Click here to watch the interview.

NEW YORK—Audience complaints have increased as TV soundtracks evolved from the intelligible speech of the analog era to the cinematic-style wide dynamic range digital multichannel productions of today. Addressing this omnipresent issue, the AES Technical Committee for Broadcast and Online Delivery has published the comprehensive Technical Document (TD1009), “Improving Dialogue Intelligibility in Media,” which diagnoses the intelligibility problem and presents solutions.

“Dialogue intelligibility affects today’s audiences,” said Jim Starzynski, NBCUniversal Director and Principal Audio Engineer and Chair of the working group. “Increased reliance on captions has become apparent and indicates a problem. This study reveals why audiences can struggle to understand their favorite shows and offers in-depth solutions.”

Sound for picture delivered through broadcast and streaming is the primary focus of TD1009. Solutions also apply to audio-only media. Important takeaways from the study include detailing the “Dialogue Intelligibility Ecosystem”—dialogue’s journey from acquisition to the ear of the consumer and the application of how humans understand and interpret dialogue. Solutions presented include fostering a culture of dialogue intelligibility in the post-production process; addressing the limitations of TV sets, set top boxes and audio/video receivers; and identifying what can go wrong in distribution.

Production insiders and subject matter experts have collaborated for over two years in the development of TD1009 to guide creative professionals, content distributors, device manufacturers and consumer enthusiasts, AES said. The guide was created under the leadership of the AES Technical Committee for Broadcast and Online Delivery (TC-BOD), an international group that addresses audio quality chaired by David Bialik, Kimio Hamasaki, Matthieu Parmentier and Jim Starzynski.

The publication of TD1009 follows its initial public presentation at the AES Show 2025 – Long Beach Convention, during the session “Improving Dialogue Intelligibility in Media: A Report from the AES Broadcast and Online Delivery Technical Committee.” “With AES TD1009 now publicly released,” notes Rafael Kassier, who co-chairs the AES Technical Council with Lesley Fogle, “we encourage broadcasters, streaming platforms, content creators and audio engineers worldwide to explore and apply its recommendations to enhance speech clarity and overall listener experience.”

This paper is distributed openly by the Audio Engineering Society and may be viewed/downloaded at https://aes.org/community/technical-council/aestd1009/. The TC-BOD can be contacted by email at broadcast@AES.org.

On an NFL game day, the mix isn’t just sound, it’s the heartbeat of the broadcast. The goal is simple: Make viewers feel like they’re standing on the field without overwhelming the action. Neither Daniel Haggard nor Jeremy Katz originally imagined themselves shaping the audio for primetime NFL games, but once they found their way into broadcast audio, both discovered the rare mix of pressure, precision and excitement that keeps them coming back.

Haggard started in the early 2000s in Syracuse, back when the workflow was still mostly analog and troubleshooting was half the job. His big break came in 2015 when veteran mixer Wendel Stevens invited him to join NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” a leap that meant six months on the road with a brand-new crew.

“It was terrifying and thrilling,” he said. “Only 6 million people watching.”

Seven years as an A2 gave him hands-on experience with RF, comms and field audio. That training made stepping into submixing a natural next move.

Katz’s route looks different. He cut his teeth working with bands, eventually landed at regional sports networks before joining Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football” four seasons ago. His philosophy is straightforward: “My job is to capture everything happening on the field and hand the A1 something solid and clean. I try to be as aggressive as I can, and the A1 can decide what’s safe for air.”

Katz said the key is chasing clarity, not noise for the sake of noise.

Showing and Telling
Both mixers talk about audio in practical, picture-first terms. If something is happening on screen, the viewer should hear it—simple as that. From the quarterback’s cadence to a clean catch or the thump of a tackle, the goal is to match the energy and detail the cameras are showing. Anything that’s unnecessary, distracting or muddy doesn’t belong in the mix.

One tool they fully agree on is the mic mounted on the SkyCam. Hovering just above the action, it’s positioned closer to the players than almost any other microphone. Katz calls it “the best mic on the field,” and Haggard uses it as a bed of natural sound.

From there, player mics provided by the league give him extra detail on the line. He brings them up after the huddle breaks, rides them through the snap, then pulls them down quickly to avoid smearing the rest of the soundscape.

Parabs are another staple. Both mixers prefer committing to a single parab per play rather than blending multiple at once.

“Quality over quantity,” Katz said. “You get a clearer picture when you’re not stacking too much.” Haggard agreed that picking the right mic and trusting it is part of the craft. Sometimes you guess wrong, but when you guess right, it feels perfect.”

Nowhere is that more true than with the most coveted sound in NFL audio: the “doink.”

Across crews, mixers keep a friendly, season-long competition over who can capture the best goalpost hit. Katz joked that the entire “TNF” truck starts cheering the moment a kick drifts toward the upright.

Haggard remembered one playoff game where everything lined up: the contact mics on the post, the 416s under the crossbar, the tension of the moment and Mike Tirico’s call. “If that mic was down, it would’ve ruined the whole moment,” he said. “Instead, it was perfect. I rode the adrenaline all the way back to the hotel.”

An Art and a Science
Mixing the NFL isn’t easy—you’re dealing with massive crowd surges, stadium PA music, sideline chaos, sweaty linemen, unpredictable ref mics and dozens of camera perspectives that shift direction every few seconds. You’re anticipating where a play is going before it happens. You’re making choices that millions of viewers will react to instantly.

Both mixers emphasize that it’s a creative craft, not just a technical job. You learn by watching others, borrowing ideas, shaping your own style, and adjusting to each game’s personality. “There’s no single right way to mix,” Haggard said. “You pick up techniques, try new things, and keep refining. That’s what makes it fun.”

For viewers at home, the result is seamless: Every snap, tackle and catch lands with clarity and intensity.

Behind the screens, it’s hundreds of subtle decisions: mic choice, fader ride and EQ tweaks that make the difference between a flat, lifeless broadcast and one that truly feels alive.

NEW YORK—The Audio Engineering Society will hold the 2026 AES Show, Oct. 30–Nov. 1, 2026, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tenn.

AES Show Nashville will offer attendees and exhibitors new and exciting programming, which will extend beyond the normal scope of previous AES Conventions. From pre-show events and experiences to extensive studio tours and involvement with the local audio community, the new location will open up Nashville’s rich audio legacy to the international community of AES Show attendees.

Nashville has earned its nickname “Music City” by way of a uniquely concentrated ecosystem of world-class studios, live music venues, leading audio education institutions, pro audio manufacturers, engineers, artists and audio professionals. Music creation and production are woven into daily life of Nashville.

The city is home to many world-class recording studios, production and rehearsal facilities, a local network of top engineers and producers as well as several major record labels, music award shows and specials, film and TV scoring studios, live sound venues, broadcast facilities and top-tier professionals pushing the art and science of audio.

AES Show Nashville will also take advantage of the unique offerings of the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, located steps from the world-famous Opry House facilities, home to the “Grand Ole Opry” live radio broadcast, the longest-running live radio broadcast in U.S. history. The radio show started in 1925 on WSM Radio. The AES will offer exhibitors and attendees specially priced hotel and registration packages.

More information is available on the AES Show website.

Video-streaming services delivering content to the state of California will soon be required to change the way they handle advertising to alleviate one of viewers’ biggest annoyances: Loud commercials. Thanks to Senate Bill 576, signed into law in October 2025 and taking effect on July 1, 2026, commercials can no longer be noticeably louder than the surrounding program.

Broadcast and cable television providers have been adhering to the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act—better known as the CALM Act —since it was signed into law in 2010 to address this same issue, but it has not applied to streaming services.

The new legislation closes that gap, requiring streaming platforms to follow the same practices outlined in CALM, which itself is based on the recommended practices outlined in ATSC A/85, ensuring that ads are delivered at the same volume as the rest of the program content.

Are You Being Served?
To understand how this impacts streaming services, it helps to look at how ads are actually delivered on these platforms. The two main approaches are client-side ad insertion (CSID) and server-side ad insertion (SSID).

Client-side means the ads are added into the stream by the app or device itself. CSID is flexible and allows for targeted ads, but controlling levels is challenging, as every device handles playback differently.

Server-side, on the other hand, stitches ads into the stream before it ever reaches the viewer. SSID behaves more predictably and is often preferred as it helps counter ad blockers, but it introduces its own challenges since different vendors use different encoding pipelines, which can result in inconsistent loudness.

Streaming providers employ these models in different ways. National broadcasters like NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox already comply with the CALM Act for their traditional broadcasts, so extending those practices to their streaming apps is a natural next step.

Major streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video are also affected. Netflix recently introduced an ad-supported tier, Hulu and Disney+ lean heavily on server-side insertion, and Amazon Prime’s hybrid model mixes subscription and ad-supported content.

Local broadcasters face a unique challenge, as they often depend on third-party server-side ad insertion vendors for their streams, meaning they will need to ensure those partners are meeting California’s new requirements.

The biggest impact may be felt by FAST (Free Ad-Supported Television Services) channels like Pluto TV, Tubi, and Freevee. These platforms rely almost entirely on server-side ad insertion, pulling ads from a variety of suppliers, making them especially vulnerable to loudness inconsistencies.

Video-on-demand providers face their own challenges, as many of them use client-side ad insertion that requires normalization at the device level. This approach makes consistent loudness more difficult and requires VOD platforms to ensure loudness metadata is included and preserved so that the playback device can adjust levels accordingly.

Overcoming Technical Challenges
The technical hurdles to comply with this new regulation are significant. Different server-side ad insertion providers use different encoding methods, which means ads can arrive with varying loudness levels. Ads themselves often come from multiple sources, each mastered to different standards.

On top of that, playback devices—from smart TVs to mobile phones—interpret audio differently, which makes it even harder to guarantee a consistent experience. Content created before the legislation was enacted adds another wrinkle, since it may not meet modern loudness standards and would need to be reprocessed.

So how do streaming platforms tackle this? The first step is becoming familiar with ATSC A/85 recommended practices, which guide CALM compliance and, in turn, adherence to the new streaming regulations. Streaming providers will need to integrate file-based and, in some cases, real-time processing and loudness control into their server-side commercial insertion workflow, just as they currently do for their primary programming.

For client-side insertion, ensuring that loudness metadata is included and maintained is a promising option. Measuring loudness at ingest (to determine the need for corrective measures) and downstream (as a final QC step before distribution) using the latest iteration of ITU-R BS.1770 is critically important.

California’s new law is a big step toward making streaming feel more polished and viewer-friendly. For national broadcasters, it’s an extension of practices they already follow. For FAST channels and VOD providers, it’s a wake-up call to tighten up their workflows.

The challenges are real, but the solutions are within reach. By adhering to established loudness measurement, enforcing metadata-driven normalization, and holding vendors accountable, streaming platforms can not only comply with the law but also deliver a smoother, more enjoyable experience for viewers.

LAS VEGAS and NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Shure technology played a critical role during the broadcast productions of the 59th Annual CMA Awards at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville and the 2025 Latin Grammy Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

At the CMA Awards, Shure microphones and wireless systems delivered clear, reliable audio. The country music event’s production team relied heavily on Shure Axient Digital Wireless and PSM 1000 in-ear monitoring systems to deliver pristine sound to the crowd, artists and those tuning into the ABC-produced event around the world.

ATK provided wireless support with 34 channels of Axient Digital and 24 channels of PSM 1000 powering 116 belt packs per side, the company said.

“I still continue to be amazed by the rock-solid performance, operating range and tolerance to interference [of Axient Digital],” James Stoffo, RF coordinator for the CMA Awards, said. “One diversity set of antennas upstage center covered an entire arena from the stage to the back of house. When the transmitters were anywhere in the arena, I had completely pegged RF indication at the receivers. Exactly what you want to see.”

The show featured Shure KSM11 microphones for host duties and standout performances, including Luke Combs, who also paired the KSM11 for his collaboration with BigXthaPlug.

“I have been using the KSM11 for over three years for both speech and performance applications,” said Paul Wittman, production sound mixer for the CMA Awards. “They have a smooth, natural response and are consistent across many voices.”

Other artists relying on Shure Axient Digital and mic capsules included: Old Dominion and Megan Moroney, using a Shure SM58; Chris Stapleton, using a wired SM58; Riley Green, using a Beta 58A; Zach Top, using KSM9; Little Big Town, using the KSM11 and SM58; Ella Langley using the SM58; and Patty Loveless, using the SM58.

Latin Grammy Awards
This year’s Latin Grammy Awards saw Shure play key roles from the opening number, featuring Carlos Santana, to performances by Aitana, Alejandro Sanz and Karol G. Artists and the production team relied upon Shure’s Axient Digital Wireless Microphone System and the Axient Digital PSM In-Ear Monitor System

In addition to the main show, the Latin Recording Academy Person of the Year Awards and Latin Grammy Premiere were both supported entirely by Shure wireless, including Axient Digital Wireless and Axient Digital PSM In-Ear Monitoring Systems.

“The Latin Grammy Awards were a big success,” Univision Technical Manager Michael Karsch said. ”I attribute this to the professional audio crew and the support of Shure. Due to frequency limitations in Las Vegas, our Shure representative loaned us the new Axient Digital PSM system, which enabled us to provide an interference-free monitoring system for the talent. The talent loved the sound as well as the smaller belt pack. This made life easier and delivered a stress-free production.”

Production teams deployed eight channels of Axient Digital PSM for Stage A, while the rest of the show featured the trusted Shure PSM 1000. Wireless podium audio was delivered flawlessly using Shure AD3 transmitters, and announcers Maluma and Roselyn relied on Axient Digital systems paired with Shure KSM11 Cardioid Condenser Vocal Microphone capsules, Shure said.

“We had the opportunity to implement multiple channels of Digital PSM In Ear monitor systems,” said James Stoffo, RF coordinator for the Latin Grammy Awards. “The analog PSM RF spectrum was full of back-to-back DTV so I requested that we add as many Digital PSM channels as we could get our hands on. Everything went off splendidly and the monitor technicians were happy. The wide RF tuning range and audio quality, even in low RF signal conditions, makes the RF tech’s job so much easier. My intention is to specify the Digital PSMs on all future live productions.”

More information is available on the Shure website.

SAN FRANCISCO & THE COLONY, Texas—Dolby Laboratories is making what it is calling a “new chapter” in its retail efforts as part of an agreement with NFM (Nebraska Furniture Mart) to launch the first-ever Dolby Home Experience, at NFM's The Colony location on Saturday, Dec. 6.

Dolby said that the Dolby Home Experience is an immersive retail destination where shoppers can see, hear, and feel how Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos transform their favorite movies, music, sports, and games.

"The Dolby Home Experience at NFM represents a new era of experience-driven retail," said Ketrina Dunagan, head of Americas marketing at Dolby. "This launch reflects how Dolby is meeting today's consumer through experiences that show, not tell, the difference our technologies make. Together with NFM, we're bringing the power of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos to life in a way that's simple, accessible, and built for how people shop today."

Built as a dynamic, interactive environment, guests can explore the ultra-vivid picture of Dolby Vision and the immersive sound of Dolby Atmos in a setting that feels like home guided by Dolby-trained experts and surrounded by the latest TVs, soundbars, and devices from leading brands. From inspiration to hands-on demos, the space helps consumers understand the value of a better entertainment experience, no technical expertise required, the two companies said.

"We are giving our Dallas-Fort Worth customers a new way to explore home entertainment," said Robert Kincheloe, store director at NFM. "The Dolby Home Experience transforms our store into an interactive destination where shoppers can try out the latest products, get hands-on guidance from experts, and see how premium entertainment technology fits into their everyday lives."

Dolby and NFM will host a two-day grand launch event from Saturday, Dec. 6 to Sunday, Dec. 7, with interactive demos, exclusive offers, giveaways, and hands-on opportunities to explore Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.

More information is available at the Dolby Home Experience webpage.

AJA Video Systems has joined the RAVENNA community, a network of partners devoted to advancing the RAVENNA standard for distributing real-time audio over internet protocol (AoIP).

AJA’s DANTE-12GAM and OG-DANTE-12GAM audio embedder/disembedder products support RAVENNA. The products make it easy to bridge between SDI and AoIP infrastructures. Both include dual 12G-SDI input and outputs, providing up to 32 channels of audio embedding and 32 channels of disembedding simultaneously for a total I/O capacity of 64 channels.

“As the transition to IP accelerates, interoperability is essential for our customers, many of whom are working with a combination of SDI and IP tools,” AJA President Nick Rashby said. “Joining the RAVENNA community underscores our ongoing commitment to meet customers where they are in their IP journey, broadening AJA product support for the larger AoIP ecosystem. RAVENNA is a powerful AoIP option, and now our customers can take advantage of it.”

Welcoming the company to the RAVENNA community, Lawo RAVENNA Evangelist Andreas Hildebrand said RAVENNA support in select AJA products will “unlock seamless interoperability with a range of AoIP protocols—and that benefits all professionals looking to make the most out of AoIP.”

More information is available on the AJA Video Systems and RAVENNA websites.

NEW BERN, N.C.—Wheatstone has named company veteran Darrin Paley vice president of business accounts, effective immediately.

In his new role, Paley will head global business sales for its Wheatstone, Audioarts Engineering and VoxPro product lines, the company said.

“Darrin brings to this new role his deep understanding of the issues facing our industry today and his experience as a trusted partner to our customers and dealers for more than 25 years," Wheatstone president and founder Gary Snow said.

Paley joined Wheatstone in 2001, initially as a senior sales engineer. Prior to that, he spent six years with family businesses Oakwood Broadcast and Ron Paley Broadcast (now GS Technical Broadcast Services), a specialist in broadcast-facility design, project management and installation, particularly for Wheatstone products, the company said.

Paley will be based from Wheatstone’s New Bern factory and can be reached via email at darrinpaley@wheatstone.com or at 252-638-7000, extension 116.

LOS ANGELES—Major League Soccer will introduce a broadcast audio enhancement tonight during the LAFC vs. Austin FC playoff match.

Partnering with EDGE Sound Research, MLS will debut “Embodied Sound,” a breakthrough technology that uses real-time object tracking to isolate the soccer ball as a unique audio source, the company said.

The game will mark the first-ever use of isolated ball audio in a live soccer broadcast, enhancing the control and clarity audio engineers will be able to achieve. By routing the ball’s sound into a dedicated channel, the broadcast mix will deliver more precise and immersive effects and capture the energy of each kick, post hit and player reaction without overwhelming ambient noise, it said.

The system provides mixers with a clean, controllable ball channel that will enable them to emphasize key moments in real time without affecting other ambient sounds, it said.

EDGE Sound Research is a member of the MLS Innovation Lab. The company, a U.S. based leader in multimodal audio, is pioneering new forms of multimodal sound to bridge the physical and emotional dimensions of sound.

The MLS Innovation Lab identifies and supports cutting-edge startups driving advancements in fan engagement, on field performance, and media technology.

More information is available on the company’s website.

HOUSTON—Regional sports network Space City Home Network has upgraded its audio control room with a Solid State Logic System T S300-32 audio console as part of the broadcaster ongoing buildout of Dante network infrastructure.

SCHN is a regional sports network that provides coverage of Houston Astros MLB and Houston Rockets NBA games across a five-state area via satellite, cable and OTT providers.

“I’ve always been impressed by Solid State Logic and the System T was the natural progression from the C10 [from Solid State Logic] that we had previously,” Chris Frazier, chief broadcast engineer, said. “When you're on a C10 you have already bought into how well Solid State Logic builds their desks.”

SCHN’s C10 came from NBC News in Los Angeles when the Houston facility was under different ownership. “We continued to use a C10 that was manufactured in 2011 all the way until this year, so we got a good 13 years out of it,” he commented. “The fact is, SSL builds good stuff.”

​SCHN’s production facility is connected to the teams’ local sports venues via dark fibre. Video and audio feeds are taken directly from the respective venues, with the production team located at SCHN’s facility. Road games for both teams are produced from the SCHN studio. Following the installation of the System T, Frazier said, “we've already extended our network so we're now doing our pre- and post-game shows with Dante across the dark fiber network.”

​The System T S300 32-fader control surface at SCHN is controlling a TE2 Tempest Engine. To interface with the control room’s new and legacy audio equipment, the System T is connected to two Net I/O D64 AES to Dante converters, a pair of Net I/O A32 SSL SuperAnalogue line level I/O to Dante and AES 67-based IP network interfaces, and a Net I/O SB i16 SuperAnalogue mic/line to Dante stage box, the two companies explained.

System T’s market-leading Dante integration was a critical factor in SCHN’s purchase decision. Through previous capital expenditure projects, Frazier said, SCHN had already installed a variety of Dante-enabled audio signal distribution equipment. “We had a lot of the appliances that we needed but we weren't ready to develop our Dante network until we had the desk here, because it's central to all of what we do. The ability to manage the entire Dante network from the desk is crucial. System T’s inbuilt Dante routing control determines 90% of our routes.”

​San Francisco-based Advanced Systems Group LLC (ASG), which is headquartered in the Bay Area with an office in London, supplied and integrated the new System T platform, having provided asset management, archive and broadcast equipment to SCHN’s previous owner’s regional sports network facilities around the country. The decommissioning of the C10 and the commissioning of the new System T were scheduled during a four-day break from live productions. ​

“I’ve had the privilege of working with Chris and his team for nearly a decade, and this solution was a great fit,” said Tyler Berry of ASG. “We deployed System T at a former owner’s facility with seamless results. When SCHN needed to replace the C10, System T was the clear choice for its flexibility and SSL's outstanding support. Thanks to Chris, SSL, and ASG’s systems integration team lead by Michele Ferreira, the project was a resounding success."

Decommissioning started on a Saturday, Frazier reported. “The System T configuration process started Monday morning, by Wednesday morning we were capable of doing a complete show and by Thursday afternoon we were trained and fully operational,” he said. “SSL’s Support Manager Richard Wand was awesome. We really enjoyed his leadership and his ability to get us up to speed. He was a great resource.”

Frazier said he also appreciated the support of Jason Martin, a provider of A1 broadcast remote audio services who works in the broadcast truck at Houston home games, and who has had extensive experience with System T. “System T came highly recommended from Jason; he was a huge advocate for it. He was already familiar with the System T from a previous installation he had done where he mixed, so his level of expertise came in handy,” he said.

Space City Home Network, which re-launched under its new name and new ownership in October 2023, broadcasts about 250 games annually “We don't have a lot of downtime here,” Frazier says. “On average, we do six games a week during baseball season, and an average of three to four during the basketball season.“

SCHN is available through a variety of providers in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and eastern New Mexico. ​

More information is available at www.solidstatelogic.com.

NEW YORK—The Audio Engineering Society (AES) has signed a new shared resource arrangement with the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), that AES said marks an important step forward in strengthening the organization’s leadership, operational capacity and long-term growth and stability.

The new relationship between AES and IES will begin on December 16, 2025.

As part of this collaboration, Colleen Harper will serve as executive director, serving AES in a shared role with IES. Harper previously served as AES executive director from 2019-2022, and her proven leadership helped guide the Society through significant growth and development. Graham Kirk will also again work with AES in a shared role as director of business operations, reinforcing a successful track record of industry partnerships and revenue growth.

“This partnership represents IES’s commitment to supporting technical and professional societies,” said IES president Wilson Dau. “By sharing our resources and expertise, we can help AES continue its important mission while leveraging the operational efficiencies that benefit both organizations.” In this new relationship, some current IES staff will support both IES and AES initiatives, and IES will hire three additional staff members to accommodate the increased workload.

“We are very excited about this next chapter,” said Audio Engineering Society president Gary Gottlieb. “The last time we had the winning combination of Colleen, Graham and Clyne Media, AES saw measurable gains in membership and event attendance. We believe this shared arrangement brings us back to that successful formula, while also giving AES access to the depth and flexibility of a larger team.”

AES leadership emphasized that this transition provides all the benefits of working with an association management company (AMC), including the ability to pivot staff resources to where they are most needed in an open collaboration between like-minded organizations.

“This arrangement empowers AES to focus squarely on serving its members and advancing audio innovation,” stated Harper. “By partnering with IES, we’re able to add new resources, and tap into the strength of a team that already has critical experience working with a highly technical society. It allows AES’s membership and volunteer leadership to focus on what AES does best: connecting our global audio community, supporting education and research, and creating world-class events. Most importantly, it ensures that members remain at the heart of every decision we make and every initiative we pursue.”

Kirk added that “I’m thrilled to work with AES again in this new partnership with IES. I have seen firsthand its passion and creativity of this community. I know how important it is to have the right team and resources in place to support our members and partners. This arrangement gives us the flexibility to expand opportunities, strengthen industry relationships, and deliver even more value to our members, whether through conferences or conventions, events or ongoing global engagement throughout the year.”

The Audio Engineering Society remains committed to its mission of promoting the science and practice of audio by bringing together engineers, researchers, manufacturers and practitioners worldwide. The partnership with IES ensures AES is strategically positioned to expand its influence, enhance member services, and continue hosting world-class events.

BURLINGTON, Mass.—Avid has today announced the release of Pro Tools 2025.10, a feature-rich update that the company said offers notable advances in immersive music creation and workflow efficiency.

Designed for music creators and postproduction professionals, the latest Pro Tools version introduces powerful new immersive audio capabilities with Sony’s 360 Reality Audio, integrated SoundFlow automation, in-app tutorials, and six new Inner Circle Rewards.

“This new version of Pro Tools is all about access and ease of use – making complex immersive audio more intuitive, workflow automation more seamless, and high-value creative tools more available to users,” said Chris Winsor, director of Pro Tools Product Management at Avid. “Whether you’re mixing spatial music, speeding up repetitive tasks, or exploring Pro Tools for the first time, this updated version delivers capabilities that help creators stay in their flow and elevate their work.”

The Pro Tools 2025.10 release continues Avid’s momentum in music and post innovation by streamlining creative workflows, accelerating routine tasks, and enhancing access to professional-grade tools that empower creators to deliver exceptional audio content from anywhere, the company explained.

Notably, Pro Tools 2025.10 delivers native support for 360 Reality Audio, enabling artists and producers to position sounds all around the listener – above, below, and on all sides – placing them at the center of an immersive musical experience. Built on Sony’s object-based 360 Spatial Sound technology, this integration enables seamless 360 Reality Audio content creation directly within a Pro Tools session, while offering:

The upgrade provides effortless format conversion from Dolby Atmos to 360 Reality Audio, with stems and settings carrying over automatically, which means that users can continue to mix and edit in both formats within the same session

Included limited versions of the Audio Futures WalkMix Panner and 360RA WalkMix Renderer for Pro Tools Studio and Ultimate subscribers and perpetual license holders with a current support and upgrade plan.

“By integrating Sony’s 360 Reality Audio directly into the Pro Tools environment, artists and producers can now explore new creative dimensions – all without switching out of their trusted workflow,” said Winsor. “This is a powerful step forward in delivering the immersive experiences today’s listeners are seeking.”

Jordy Freed, senior director, deputy head of Sony’s Personal Entertainment Business, added: “360 Reality Audio opens a bigger creative canvas inside Pro Tools – making immersive music creation more accessible and giving artists and producers the tools to push the boundaries of spatial sound and connect with listeners in bold new ways.”

The new version also allowed users to automate complex tasks with SoundFlow in Pro Tools

Avid has integrated SoundFlow, the industry’s leading workflow automation platform, directly into Pro Tools. All users now gain access to 1,700+ free prebuilt macros, allowing them to automate repetitive actions like bouncing stems, creating tracks, and navigating complex sessions.

Available in all versions of Pro Tools, the new SoundFlow panel keeps creators in the zone by enabling powerful shortcuts at a keystroke. Premium SoundFlow subscribers can unlock deeper functionality, including access to their full macro library, Flows, and an AI-powered Session Assistant – a natural language automation tool that understands context and runs complex tasks instantly at the user’s command.

“Avid’s integration of SoundFlow is a pivotal step toward a more intuitive studio future,” said Christian Scheuer, founder and CEO of SoundFlow. “Together, we’re putting world-class automation directly in the hands of every Pro Tools user – enhancing productivity and empowering creativity.”

A new “Learn” tab, powered by SoundFlow, offers interactive tutorials that walk users through key workflows such as audio recording, MIDI editing, and navigating the UI. These hands-on demos make Pro Tools more approachable for new users and faster to master for pros looking to expand their skills.

Pro Tools 2025.10 delivers six new Inner Circle Rewards from Avid’s top-tier plugin and content partners. Available to annual Pro Tools subscribers and perpetual customers on active upgrade plans, the latest rewards include:

• Acon Digital Verberate 2 – transparent reverb with realistic spatial simulation
• Acon Digital DeBleed:Snare – AI-powered snare bleed removal
• Nightfox Audio Rendition Lite – MIDI chord/arpeggio plugin for fast songwriting
• Three Leap Expansions for Kontakt Player – loops and samples to inspire new ideas

Other enhancements to Pro Tools 2025.10 include: speech-to-Text enhancements, including offline and batch transcription; and UI Customization, Dark Mode support, and MIDI workflow optimizations

Pro Tools 2025.10 is available to all Pro Tools Artist, Studio and Ultimate subscribers and perpetual license holders on active plans as well as Pro Tools Intro users. Learn more about the new features at www.avid.com/pro-tools.

VIENNA—With the 2025-26 concert season already underway, Austrian broadcaster ORF has inaugurated its newly upgraded sound-control room at the Vienna Musikverein concert hall, which is now fully equipped with IP-based audio technology from Lawo.

The upgrade marks a significant step forward in enhancing live broadcast workflows, capturing the intricate soundscapes of orchestral performances with even greater precision and ensuring robust operational reliability for high-profile live productions, Lawo and the broadcaster said.

The smooth functioning of the control room plays a central role in mixing not only numerous concerts and live broadcasts throughout the year, but also the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert, viewed by millions around the world.

The decision to implement Lawo technology was driven by the need to improve system compatibility and foster synergies across ORF’s production infrastructure.

“This new setup is more than just an upgrade—it’s our gateway into next-generation audio IP technology,” says Reinhard Tomek, project manager audio technology at ORF. “It offers us tremendous flexibility for future expansions and seamless integration of external devices. The incorporation of Lawo’s HOME platform simplifies system management, while keeping interfaces to external IP-enabled systems open and adaptable.”

At the heart of the new infrastructure is an mc²56 MkIII production console featuring 48 faders, powered by an A_UHD Core audio engine licensed for 256 DSP channels.

Two A_stage80 stageboxes provide connectivity, while the signal architecture is managed via Lawo’s HOME platform, designed for IP-based production environments. The console runs the latest software version 12.2, which introduces several key enhancements.

Notably, a new 7-band EQ with three dynamic bands enables sound engineers to shape orchestral audio with exceptional precision. Additional improvements include optimized channel displays, more intuitive operation of audio crosspoints via the HOME API, and the ability to switch banks and layers directly from the fader panel, the two companies explained.

Previous software versions such as 10.12 and 12.0 laid the foundation for deeper integration between console, DSP, and network. With the HOME mc² DSP app, CPU-based processing resources are now also available, Lawo said.

Another major highlight of the upgrade is the full integration of Waves SuperRack V15. Extensive Waves plug-in bundles can be loaded into the Immersive Wrapper and operated directly from the console—ideal for immersive formats such as 5.1.4, 7.1.4, or 9.1.4.

“Native control of Waves processing within the console streamlines live operations significantly,” Tomek said. “It allows complex sound processing to be embedded directly into the workflow, eliminating the need for external workstations or workaround solutions.”

Following commissioning in August, Lawo conducted a three-day, hands-on training session for ORF’s sound engineers, focusing on the practical application of the new features.

The system made its debut on Sept. 20,. during the season-opening concert featuring the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Lahav Shani. “Despite the new technology, it was a routine production for our team—a clear sign that the system is intuitive, and the transition went smoothly,” Tomek said.

With this renovation, ORF ensures that future productions at the Vienna Musikverein can be realized with maximum reliability and cutting-edge technical capabilities. At the same time, the new infrastructure enables the exceptional acoustics of the Musikverein’s Great Hall to be captured with unmatched precision and brought vividly to life for radio audiences, Lawo said.

For additional information, visit www.lawo.com.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital will feature its Aria series of audio solutions designed to simplify monitoring, embedding and routing at NAB Show New York, set for Oct. 22-23 at the Javits Center in New York City.

The company will showcase the Aria AUD-MON audio monitors alongside its full line of routers, multiviewers, converters and control panels. Cobalt Digital will also stage live demos of its new hybrid satellite solution built around its Pacific compression products working with the Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST).

The Aria family of Aria AUD-MON audio monitors provides sound monitoring in a compact, rackmount unit well-suited to places where space is limited.

ARIA monitors are available with either horizontal (AUD-MON-H) or vertical (AUD-MON-V) button layouts. The intuitive, customizable touch display front panel features eight individual volume controls for mixing. The series supports a wide range of inputs including ST 2110, 2xSDI up to 12G or MADI, 2xSFP for SDI over fiber, AES, balanced analog audio and GPI for automation, as well as external redundant power supplies for reliability.

An efficient Class-D amplifier with DSP and specially selected speaker components delivers clear, dynamic sound.

The Cobalt Aria OG-AUD-DANTE series consists of Dante cards in openGear form factor. They simultaneously embed and de-embed audio between SDI, Dante, AES and MADI with flexible routing and mixing.

Available as either quad- or dual-path units, these high-density, compact solutions offer built-in frame syncs, two gigabit Ethernet ports, with redundant hot-swappable power supplies and cards.

The company will also show its UltraBlue MV-SW multiviewer with support for all compressed and uncompressed IP/SDI inputs and scalable output options. This software-based multiviewer, available as a turnkey package or as software-only, is capable of receiving audio/video content over IP across a variety of protocols and formats with highly flexible audio routing.

Users can create fully customizable mosaic layouts with arbitrary sizes and orientations, graphic overlays, ancillary data, tallies, UMDs and IDs. PIPs can also be positioned, rotated and easily copied. Setups can be saved and restored. 

The company also will spotlight its Wave series of routers available as both standalone units and openGear cards as well as its Sapphire BBG compact converters offering low-latency IP conversion, 10G/25G Ethernet support, audio sample rate conversion, and asynchronous audio mixing.

Cobalt will also demo a new hybrid solution that combines satellite transmission with Internet recovery to bridge the gap created by C-band spectrum reallocation.

Built around Cobalt Pacific compression products and leveraging the RIST, this approach uses Ku-band and follows the recently released Video Services Forum Technical Recommendation (TR-06-4 Part 7). Satellite is used for heavy lifting, and the Internet is used to fix any drops.

See Cobalt Digital at NAB Show New York booth 607.

More information is available on the company’s website.

At NAB Show New York 2025, Calrec has announced that it will showcase how its interconnected suite of broadcast audio products is reshaping the future of live production.

Calrec said that visitors to its booth during the show, which takes place Oct. 21-23, at the Javits Center in New York City. will experience a live ecosystem featuring the 36-fader Argo M (with integrated DSP), 36-fader Argo S, the versatile Type R mixing system and the powerful ImPulse processing core, all seamlessly controlled via Calrec’s True Control 2.0, the company reported.

Demos in its booth will show how True Control 2.0 is transforming broadcast workflows, driving the shift to fully remote and distributed production. With the power to control any Calrec system from any location, it unlocks access to more cores, more faders, more surfaces, and more flexibility so broadcasters can adapt instantly to changing production demands, the company said.

Unlike basic mirroring or parallel control, True Control 2.0 delivers complete functionality from EQ and dynamics to routing, direct outputs and delay. This enables broadcasters to scale production ecosystems on demand, orchestrating any combination of distributed production workflows and a deep level of remote control. A single controller can manage up to five other consoles or processing cores simultaneously, dramatically increasing flexibility and expanding functionality without the need for additional hardware, the company said.

Available across Argo Q, Argo S, Argo M, Type R, the ImPulse and ImPulse1 cores, and the cloud-based ImPulseV audio mixing solution, True Control 2.0 creates an interconnected ecosystem where any enabled device can control another. With Apollo+ and Artemis+ also joining the platform, broadcasters can achieve new levels of adaptability, efficiency, and creative freedom, the company explained.

At NAB Show New York, Calrec also said that it will showcase the compact 36-fader Argo M, which is also available in a 24 and new 48-fader footprint. Designed to maximize desk space, without sacrificing power, Argo M combines full-sized fader strips with wild controls to handle even the most demanding productions in tight environments. This high-performance plug-and-play control surface offers a full range of ST 2110 and cloud connectivity, allowing broadcasters to focus on creating great content at scale. With up to 356 channels of internal DSP, Argo M features built-in analogue and digital audio I/O and GPIO, 3 x modular I/O expansion slots, and MADI via SFP, the company said.

The ability to connect to an ST 2110 networked environment and to an existing Calrec ImPulse core alongside other Argo surfaces means it can quickly create multi-console IP environments, while connectivity to ImPulse, ImPulse1 and ImPulseV means additional external DSP paths can be easily added as production demands change, Calrec reported.

With seamless ST 2110 integration, touchscreens that can switch between metering and intuitive UI control, and support for immersive formats up to 7.1.4, Argo M addresses the industry’s need for super-compact and portable IP mixing solutions designed to meet the full spectrum of live broadcast production demands, it said.

Calrec is also bringing its award-winning 36-fader Argo S console to NAB Show New York, now powered by a major software update. Designed for the most demanding live broadcast environments, Argo S pairs with an ImPulse DSP core to deliver a modular, IP-native audio console available in two height variants. With enough customizable hands-on real estate to deliver control over every parameter of the audio mix, Argo S gives broadcasters everything they need to adapt without compromising resilience or precision.

The new v1.4 Argo software unlocks even more flexibility. An enhanced routing strip functionality allows users to see every fader’s routing simultaneously on the touchscreen. It also enables users to switch rows of physical controls to other strip modes such as EQ, Dyn or Pan, and enables Argo Q to support two sets of custom wild panels per section. A new Tiles feature allows users to customize their up-stand meter layouts to add thumbnails, and Argo now supports a streamlined new workflow for Mix Minus that allows users to select any bus to send to a channel’s mix minus output rather than just the auto-minus. It also adds the ability to select a different output when fader closed to when it’s open and allows users to “interrogate” the console to access routing information of buses being used for a path’s main output.

The update also supports DAW control of MIDI on the Argo platform and makes improvements to NMOS Control, status updates and monitoring, and interfacing with Calrec Connect.

In addition, Calrec will showcase its Type R modular, expandable IP mixing system, controlled by True Control 2.0. It too is designed to encourage customers to take advantage of distributed production and flexible workflows. Type R’s fully 5.1 capable IP core enables broadcasters to benefit from virtual working practices and automated broadcast workflows on a cost-effective SMPTE 2110-compliant IP backbone.

Calrec said that Type R now provides the following key features: off air record, enhanced GPIO talkback, monitor selector follow, mix minus bus user labels and a large DSP pack with 32 aux buses.

Visit Calrec at NAB Show New York on Booth: #544

SINGAPORE—The Toyota World Para Swimming Championships, which concludes here Sept. 26 at the OCBC Aquatic Centre, is not only a celebration of sporting excellence but also a showcase of technical innovation.

A leading national broadcaster has chosen Lawo’s mc²56 MkIII production console to deliver the official audio mix for the championships, ensuring a sound experience that matches the event’s high profile, the company said.

The event brings together more than 600 of the leading para athlete swimmers from around the world to compete.

The mc²56 MkIII—backed by a 16-fader mc²36 as a standby mixer—was installed a few months ago in the broadcaster’s fully IP-based new OB van as the centerpiece of audio production. Compact in design yet powerful in performance, the console offers 48 physical faders, full native support for immersive audio formats and integrated auto-mix functions, the company said.

Designed for fast-paced live environments, it combines pristine sound with intuitive operation, enabling engineers to balance crowd ambience, commentator feeds and underwater microphones, it said.

Flexible configuration options allow seamless adaptation to the specific needs of each competition session, while advanced workflow tools such as snapshot recall accelerate production tasks and ensure consistent output, it said.

At the heart of the system is Lawo’s A__UHD Core, a software-defined IP audio engine that provides up to 1,024 mc²-grade DSP channels within a compact 1RU unit. In addition to its pristine DSP processing, the A__UHD Core features Lawo’s HOME functionality, which makes IP setups for Lawo mc² consoles as simple as analog. With native RAVENNA/AES67 and SMPTE ST 2110 support, it offers wide interoperability in IP-based broadcast infrastructures, it said.

Full hardware and network redundancy, coupled with Lawo’s resource-pooling concept, deliver reliable, scalable and flexible performance in demanding live sports environments. The A__UHD Core also delivers ultra-low latency for real-time performance and is highly energy-efficient — an important factor for mobile production units, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—The “MTV Video Music Awards” on Sept. 7 set a record for the most-viewed and engaged “VMAs” in history with more than 5.5 million viewers watching on CBS, MTV and Paramount+, a 42% jump in viewers from 2024.

A team of audio engineering professionals from Firehouse Productions contributed to the success of the awards show, held at UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., turning to Shure wireless audio technology to ensure the evening’s production was as iconic as the artists performing.

Audio coordinator Mark Dittmar, broadcast production mixer Sean Prickett, music mixers Eric Schilling and John Harris, RF coordinator Cameron Stuckey, front-of-house mixers Dan Gerhard, Adam Armstrong, Simon Welch and Mike Bové and monitor mixers Chris Prinzivalli, Brett Taylor and Tom Pesa made up the Firehouse Productions audio team.Firehouse Productions provided equipment for the event. The team deployed 56 channels of the Shure Axient Digital Wireless Microphone System and 52 channels of the Shure PSM 1000 In-Ear Personal Monitoring System, including 110 P10R receivers.

“Even with the huge differences in artists and their performances, the Axient Digital system, coupled with ultrareliable Shure capsules, made every vocal performance predictable and rock solid,” said music mixer Harris. “From Busta Rhymes’ hip-hop to Alex Warren’s massive pop vocals, and from reggaeton with J Balvin to country rock with Bailey Zimmerman, I always had the control and sound that I needed.”

Added audio coordinator Dittmar: "Shure wireless provides us with the seamless technology to execute a large show like this, and of course, the sound quality is amazing.”

Shure microphone capsules graced the stage with a myriad of the award show’s performers, including Doja Cat on a Beta 54 headset mic, and Alex Warren, Sombr, Bailey Zimmerman and Busta Rhymes on SM58 capsules. Notably, J Balvin and Mariah Carey, recipients of the 2025 Video Vanguard award, both sang into new Nexadyne 8 vocal microphone capsules, with Carey’s mic featuring a custom gold Shure Axient Digital handheld transmitter. Lady Gaga, Artist of the Year winner, shared a prerecorded performance where she was singing into the new Shure SM39 headset microphone.

“For the MTV VMAs we debuted the Shure Nexadyne capsule with J Balvin, and it was a game-changer. Right out of the box, the capsule delivered a crystal-clear vocal that sat perfectly in the mix; we barely touched the EQ on his channel strip. Huge clarity, great rejection and broadcast-ready tone without extra work,” said Hugo Pinzon, monitor and broadcast engineer.

Each of these artists, in addition to Lola Young, Tate McRae, Sabrina Carpenter and Conan Gray, all relied on Shure Axient Digital wireless handheld transmitters.

AMSTERDAM—Calrec introduced a 48-faced Argo M and showcased its largest Argo software updates at the recently concluded IBC2025.

Completing the Argo M range and the Argo family, the new console enables broadcasters to use the extra fader count while embracing its space-saving design, the company said.

Argo M delivers the performance of the company’s Argo platform in a streamlined 24, 36 and new 48-fader footprint. Compact yet uncompromising, it maximizes desk space with full-sized fader strips and intuitive controls built for the most demanding productions.

With plug-and-play SMPTE ST 2110 and cloud connectivity, Argo M offers immediate high-performance control, so broadcasters can focus on creating outstanding content at scale, it said.

With up to 356 channels of internal DSP, Argo M features built-in analog and digital audio I/O and GPIO, 3x modular I/O expansion slots and a MADI I/O port via SFP. The ability to connect to an ST 2110-networked environment and to an existing Calrec ImPulse core alongside other Argo surfaces means it can quickly create multi-console IP environments, while connectivity to ImPulse, ImPulse1 and ImPulseV means additional external DSP paths can be added easily as production demands change, it said.

The Argo M offers touchscreens that can switch between metering and intuitive UI control and support for immersive formats up to 7.1.4.

The company also unveiled its new v1.4 Argo software with enhanced routing strip functions that allow users to see every fader’s routing simultaneously on the touchscreen and switch rows of physical controls to other script modes, such as EQ, Dyn and Pan, Calrec said.

It also enables Argo Q to support two sets of custom wild panels per section. A new Tiles feature allows fully customizable up-stand meter layouts with thumbnails, while the mix-minus workflow has been streamlined, enabling any bus to feed a channel’s mix-minus output rather than just the auto-minus, it said.

The company also highlighted True Control 2.0’s power and versatility across its product range. True Control 2.0 delivers full feature-set control parameters over EQ, dynamics, routing, direct outputs and delay. Broadcasters can scale production ecosystems quickly, supporting distributed workflows with a deep level of remote control. A single controller can manage up to five other consoles or processing cores simultaneously, expanding functionality without extra hardware investment, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Sport Nation in Auckland has unveiled a brand-new, state-of-the-art broadcast studio that includes a variety of solutions and technologies from Lawo and Densitron.

Professional Audio & Television (PAT) designed and delivered the technical backbone for the studio that combines a cutting-edge audio infrastructure with intuitive studio control and a sleek new look for multiplatform broadcasting.

Sport Nation is a dedicated sports radio and digital media platform based in Auckland, New Zealand that broadcasts live shows, podcasts and video content. The new studios strengthen Sport Nation’s radio operations and its ability to create content across multiple platforms – from live radio and social media to on-demand video and television.

At the heart of the new installation are Lawo’s diamond radio consoles. The 18-fader desks offer motorized precision, high-resolution displays and flexible configuration options that provide operators and presenters with customizable workflows.

These consoles are supported by Lawo’s Power Cores, which provide the DSP horsepower and extensive I/O to handle mixing, routing and audio processing across the facility. For maximum flexibility, the studios also feature Lawo’s VisTool touchscreen interfaces and crystal Clear virtual consoles, enabling intuitive control and remote-ready operations from any workstation, Lawo reported.

Studio control and branding feature a Densitron IDS system, which manages everything from studio signage and lighting to clocks, countdowns and camera triggers. To give presenters fast and tactile control, Densitron ProDecks were installed, allowing on-air talent to adjust microphones, headphones and talkback channels instantly, without breaking the flow of a live show.

Behind the scenes, PAT designed and delivered the technical backbone that ensures the new studios are future-ready. Arista switch fabric now underpins the IP infrastructure, providing resilient, high-bandwidth connectivity. And iHSE KVM systems give operators seamless, low-latency access to critical computers and applications from anywhere in the facility.

“We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this project and the collaboration with Professional Audio & Television and its manufacturers,” explained Michael Tompkins, head of technology at Entain Media, the operators of Sport Nation. “Having a trusted local technology partner on the ground in New Zealand who understands both our requirements and the solutions has been invaluable in ensuring a smooth and successful implementation.”

Riccardo Ball, radio host and executive producer at Sport Nation, added that "Mike, Steve and the crew at PAT have done an amazing job in our new studios, such an upgrade to our previous facilities. Not only does it look killer but it enables us to create content that wouldn’t have been possible before. The content we're creating, and the technology solutions we're using are on-par with any studio anywhere. Seamless integration between traditional radio, social media and even TV content, is now possible. This is huge for the brands we represent in New Zealand."

For PAT, the project is another milestone in their ongoing collaboration with Entain. “This project represents yet another chapter in the highly successful collaboration between Entain and PAT,” explained Mike Heard, head of technology at PAT. “We are proud to have supported Sport Nation with world-class technology and services that will enhance their broadcasting capabilities for years to come.”

CLEVELAND—Cam Eicher has been promoted to executive vice president of audio production at broadcast audio firm Telos Alliance.

The newly created role calls for Eicher to leverage his more than 35 years of broadcast experience, his deep understanding of customer needs and his strong industry relationships to bring a more unified Telos product portfolio to market more quickly and ensure a cohesive and consistent user experience across products and brand families, the company said.

“The medium we historically refer to as ‘radio’ is so much more than a tuner picking up an over-the-air AM or FM signal,” Eicher said. “Today’s audience chooses the content they want to hear and how they want to hear it, whether that means a radio, their smartphone or their car’s dashboard. Telos Alliance is uniquely positioned to provide content creators with an ecosystem of products that seamlessly work together to meet those needs.”

Telos said Eicher’s advancement reinforces its commitment to evolving alongside the broadcast industry and providing clients with the products and solutions needed to create the best possible content for their audience, no matter where and how they listen.

Executives were unanimous in choosing Eicher for this role, said Telos Alliance CEO Scott Stiefel.

“We knew we needed a leader with the vision, experience, and authority to bring all of the company’s resources together to support this mission,” he said. “Cam’s understanding of our changing industry, his passion for audio technology, and the respect he has earned from our customers, channel partners and his Telos Alliance colleagues is unmatched. We are fortunate that the person best suited to lead us forward is already a valued and respected member of the Telos Alliance family.”

LOS ANGELES—Working on the 97th Academy Awards this past March as the broadcast mixer inside NEP Denali’s Summit unit was a massive but deeply rewarding undertaking. This is one of the most complex shows on television, a global broadcast with countless moving parts, and the Calrec Apollo is at the center of our workflow.

The routing alone is staggering—it includes international feeds, audience microphones, podiums, RF mics and playback elements from multiple audio and video sources. While the orchestra and live performances are handled in the music truck, those feeds are integrated into our final broadcast mix.

Total Recall
What made it manageable was the Apollo’s ability to recall last year’s setup with a single press of a button. When I walked in, Hugh Healy, our longtime chief technical engineer, loaded last year’s configuration, giving me a fully mapped session to build on. From there, I could focus on refining, adjusting levels, EQ, panning, reverbs and microphone gains, rather than reinventing the wheel.

The familiarity of the setup was a huge advantage. We’d been in the same venue for years, working with the same Calrec console, the same outboard gear and, most importantly, the same amazing team. Pablo Munguia handles Pro Tools, Biff Dawes and Tommy Vicari mix the music and orchestra, Patrick Baltzel runs front of house, and Mike Parker and Tom Pesa manage artist monitor mixes. Many of us have been doing this show for decades and that consistency allows us to hit the ground running.

Getting ready for a show of this scale was a finely tuned process, kicking off with two intense days of technical setup, which included wiring the stage, deploying RF systems, assembling the orchestra’s space and ensuring that every microphone and audio feed synced perfectly between us, front of house, monitors and the music truck.

By midweek, rehearsals took center stage, first with stand-ins to nail down timing and movement, then with the actual performers to perfect everything from traffic flow to camera angles. Friday transformed into “music day,” where the orchestra and performers came together for full run-throughs of every performance. On Saturday, the focus shifted to the presenters, wardrobe checks for RF mic placements and a complete production rehearsal. After a final dress rehearsal on Sunday, the stage was set and we were ready to go live.

It was a far cry from when I first mixed the Oscars in the early ’90s, after working my way up from a maintenance engineer at Wally Heider Recording in the late ’70s. Back then, it was all analog, no Pro Tools, very few RF mics and far less I/O to manage.

The jump to digital has been transformative. The Calrec Apollo desk handles the insane number of inputs and outputs with ease, and its layers allow me to access everything without taking myself out of the mix sweet spot. I can preview RFs and line up the next act while mixing the current one, which is critical for live television.

Water-Cooler Moments
Of course, the job isn’t without challenges. Today’s stages generate significant noise from screens, lighting elements and fans, making it harder to maintain a clean, consistent room tone. The proliferation of RF devices requires constant spectrum management. And with streaming shows reducing or eliminating commercial breaks, there’s less time to breathe between acts, which means more operators handling things silently in the background.

But it’s still a thrill. Mixing this show gave me those “water-cooler moments,” the great speeches, stunning performances and elegant old-school presentation that make the Oscars special. The technology has evolved, but the goal remains the same: deliver a beautiful, seamless mix for a worldwide audience. After all these years, there’s still nothing like it.

More information is available at calrec.com.

ROWLETT, Texas—Specializing in high-end events, CineLive covers everything from multicam live music shows to one-day events for Netflix Live, Amazon Music, etc., and “the three-letter networks,” to red carpets for big film studios, captures for theaters, corporate as well as creative YouTube events in cinematic 4K HDR and immersive audio.

We designed the audio suite of our truck to be flexible for typical broadcast applications, multicam shoots, corporate events, etc., and there is absolutely nothing that our Lawo mc²-based mixing system cannot do. It is part of the HOME platform that sits at the heart of our infrastructure.

Licensed for 256 Channels
Every freelance engineer who sits down at our mc²56 desk acknowledges that it sounds superior, even for the simplest of shows, like stand-up comedy with audience mics. We recently had our lowest channel count ever, with 20 channels for a movie release. In this high-value project, everything had to shine, and we delivered. For festival shoots, on the other hand, we often use 18 cameras and 196 audio channels.

We’re licensed for 256 audio channels and occasionally add temporary licenses for larger projects. Although we have a 7.1.4-capable audio suite in our truck, stereo and 5.1 still make up the bulk of our projects. My team and I took a mere two weeks to master the mc²56 console, as its layout is highly intuitive.

While making our decision on whose audio platform to adopt, we kept looking at the bigger picture, knowing that someone else would be sitting at the console for each project. We decided against a console from a brand that supplies most OB trucks in the United States, even though some people told us that this would make it more difficult to find freelancers.

Luckily, the number of people who want to learn to work with a Lawo console has grown exponentially. Additionally, none of our clients ever objected to our console.

Before we decided on the mc²56, we A/B’d several brands that used exactly the same signals and the sonic difference was obvious. The preamps are superb and our A__UHD Core DSP infrastructure is deep and complex, yet intuitive. We use two of them for full redundancy to eliminate any single point of failure.

We’ve also begun using the Lawo VSC software to record Ravenna streams directly to ProTools on our two Macs. Our inputs and outputs are provided by two Power Cores and a bunch of A__stage stageboxes. One Power Core is used for all analog I/O signals inside the truck, which are broken out to patchbays, as these are still mandatory for some customers.

The other Power Core is equipped with four Dante cards for our outboard equipment.

My advice to other users would be to stop clinging to the misconception that Lawo consoles are only for entertainment—we use our mc²56 for everything we do.

Immersive Audio
Some people think Lawo is expensive, yet for smaller outfits like CineLive, consoles from other brands cost either the same or substantially more. In the end, I’m glad I didn’t listen to the naysayers: We are immensely happy with our mc²56, whose specifications and price are difficult to match. It allows us to deliver 96-kilohertz immersive audio at a highly competitive price.

Lawo immediately understood our vision for the first CineLive truck, and Tony Staires and the team were there throughout the whole process, encouraging me to take our project to the next level.

If someone tells you that something cannot be done with a Lawo console, question and doubt them, and remember that the service we receive from Lawo is simply outstanding. I have been in the business long enough to know that this is a major pro.

More information is available at lawo.com.

There’s a moment in fly fishing when you spot a new bend in the river for the first time. The current moves differently here. It’s deeper, faster, with little eddies and pockets where something might be waiting. Standing there, you realize that finding success is more than just showing up. You have to read the water, pick the right fly and cast just right.

Like a river, a live broadcast is in constant motion. The pace changes from slow stretches to sudden bursts and the flow can turn without warning. Cameras have to be in position before the play unfolds. The replay team has to grab the perfect angles in seconds. Graphics have to update in an instant. The audio mix needs to capture the roar of the stadium without drowning out the announcers. A single missed cue can ripple through the entire show. As a technical manager, I’m the one watching the whole current, making sure every part of the system is moving in harmony.

I’ve seen just about everything that can happen on a live production: power failures; cables going bad; graphics systems locking up moments before going to air. The challenge isn’t just fixing the issue; it’s doing it without breaking the rhythm of the show. In fly fishing, if a tangle forms in your line mid-drift, you don’t freeze or throw your hands up. You work it out quickly and get back to fishing before you miss your window. Broadcasting is the same way.

Knowing When It’s Flowing
When a crew is in sync, the production takes on a rhythm you can feel. Everyone knows their role, but more importantly, they know how their actions affect the people around them. A camera operator frames a shot with the replay team in mind. An A1 rides the crowd noise just right so the announcer’s words cut through. The coordination is almost invisible to the audience, but to those who live and breathe production, it’s the difference between simply getting the show on air and creating something that pulls people in.

Technology has reshaped the craft in ways that were hard to imagine when I started. We’ve gone from analog boards and fixed-truck setups to IP-based workflows, 4K resolution and fully remote productions. Some of those changes have made life easier. What used to take hours of patching can now be done with a few clicks. But new tools bring new kinds of problems. The day you assume everything will work perfectly is the day you get blindsided.

Being There
Nowhere has that evolution been more dramatic than in audio. Today, it’s about creating an immersive, almost cinematic soundscape. Viewers expect to feel like they’re in the building, on the field, even inside the huddle. That means capturing more than just the obvious. It’s not enough to hear the crack of the bat. You need to hear the chatter from the dugout, the sharp intake of breath right before the pitch, and the eruption after contact.

We’ve seen a huge shift toward spatial audio and object-based mixing, where sounds aren’t just panned left or right, but placed in a three-dimensional space. For sports especially, this opens up new ways to tell the story: The mix captures the full story from the quarterback’s calls, the sideline voices and the crowd’s energy, all working together to bring the game to life. It’s not just a mix, it’s an experience.

Microphone technology has also advanced in ways that make a difference on every show. From wireless lavaliers that give athletes mobility without losing clarity to mics that can survive being buried in ice without compromise, the tools we have now let us grab sound that would have been impossible decades ago. Wireless reliability has improved dramatically, but with that comes the challenge of managing dozens of channels in a congested RF environment. That’s a part of the job the audience never sees, but it’s as critical as any camera angle.

Flexibility Is Expected
As productions get more complex, so do the expectations for flexibility. IP audio networking has given us the ability to route and reroute sources anywhere in the world in real time. That means an A1 mixing from a facility hundreds of miles away can have the same control as they would in a truck on site. It’s efficient, but it also demands a higher level of planning. If there’s a hiccup in the network, it’s not just an inconvenience—it can take your entire show down.

The future of broadcast audio is going to be shaped by two competing forces: the drive for ever-greater immersion and the demand for leaner, more remote-friendly workflows. On one side, you’ll have technology pushing us toward hyperrealistic sound environments that rival live attendance. On the other, you’ll have budget and logistical realities pushing productions to do more with less resulting in fewer people on site, smaller crews and more automation. The winners will be the teams that can balance both without losing the soul of the show.

For me, the audio side has always been about authenticity. You can have the sharpest 4K picture in the world, but if the sound doesn’t match the moment, the emotional impact is gone. The excitement of a game-winning play comes alive when the sound matches the energy of the moment. Like reading a river, capturing that moment is a mix of skill, preparation and instinct. You can’t always predict when the big fish will strike or when the perfect crowd swell will happen, but you can be ready for it.

SANTA CLARITA, Calif.—Migrate Sound is a recording and audio postproduction studio specializing in all aspects of audio production, including voiceover, dialogue, group and sound effects recording, sound designing and mixing, remote and on-the-go (OTG) recording, mix to picture (stereo and surround), copywriting, translation and adaptation.

With clients ranging from television and streaming networks to movie studios and advertising agencies, the majority of my projects include radio promos for Fox, Amazon Prime, Hallmark, Audible and more. I produce about 30 to 40 promos per year across a variety of genres, including comedy, drama, reality television and entertainment, or contest-based shows.

Sweeps are a notoriously busy time and as they happen four times a year, efficiency and ways to streamline and advance my workflow are always top of mind. I recently upgraded my studio, migrating from legacy Fairlight to DaVinci Resolve Studio for audio post just in time to tackle Fox’s February sweeps promos, which had me creating numerous radio spots for a variety of shows. Armed with the Fairlight Desktop Audio Editor and Fairlight Console Channel Fader hardware, I went to work.

Compressed Voiceover
Having done this for the better part of 30 years, it comes very naturally to me, but the promo is an art that requires fine instincts and the ability to condense an entire episode of a show into 30 seconds. Producing a radio promo means capturing the listener’s attention quickly and delivering a clear, compelling message within a very short time frame, all while maintaining high audio quality and adhering to branding guidelines.

Trying to fit the entire message into less than 30 seconds gets very tricky. The network gives us creative mandates, which include phrases that cannot be cut no matter what. DaVinci Resolve Studio’s ability to time-compress voiceover bits and soundbites from a show is a godsend. It’s done on the fly, it’s very fast and accurate and it doesn’t require the need to create a new clip.

DaVinci Resolve Studio’s AI-based noise reduction and voice isolation tools are like magic wands. Sound bites from TV shows can sometimes be noisy; with outdoor scenes comes background noise. While it makes sense on television because the visuals are there, it’s just confusing when used for radio. Though I’ve gotten rather skilled at filtering out distracting noises manually, the voice-isolation tools have made my job so much easier.

I was a bit hesitant to upgrade my studio as my original Fairlight system was still working great, so why rush? But I realized that staying up to date with technology is crucial for my business, or any business for that matter. I wanted to make sure my studio had the latest equipment, features and compatibility within our industry, so I can deliver to my clients and stay competitive.

As a business owner, a studio upgrade needs to deliver a return on investment and give me peace of mind that it’ll start up in the morning. I don’t have the luxury of moving to another room when there’s a problem with the one I’m working in. If my studio is down, my business is down. So, the most important thing to me is reliability and support, which comes seamlessly with Blackmagic Design.

For more information, contact Blackmagic Design at 408-954-0500 or visit www.blackmagicdesign.com.

OXFORD, U.K.—Solid State Logic will unveil its System T plug-and-play IP-native MPL 16-8 stagebox offering cost-effective connectivity for touring flypack and installed systems during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

The MPL 16-8 is a Dante-enabled stagebox that delivers streamlined audio connectivity for the SSL System T platform. It is well-suited to budget-conscious applications requiring SSL performance as well as applications with System T’s TCA-based systems, the company said.

The new stagebox offers 16 mic/line inputs and eight line outputs in a compact two-rack-unit format. With both primary and secondary Dante ports using robust etherCON RJ45 connectors, it delivers stress-free performance and redundant network support in mission-critical environments.

High-density SSL mic preamps give the stagebox a gain range of +5 dB to +60 dB in precise 1-dB steps, and it can be adapted to either 48-kHz or 96-kHz operation for integration into a wide range of installations, it said.

“The MPL 16-8 stagebox broadens access to SSL digital consoles and is a perfect fit for setups that require the sound quality of SSL but not necessarily the full comprehensive feature set other SSL I/O boxes offer,” said SSL director of product management Tom Knowles. “Its single-console control support simplifies operation for dedicated systems and means the MPL 16-8 is hyper-focused on more cost-efficient and specific applications.

“The simplified MPL 16-8 sits apart from SSL’s Network range of I/O stageboxes,” he said. “It makes it a great option for live sound engineers and broadcast teams working with the TCA system who want a more economical and straightforward way to expand their I/O.”

The company will also make the IBC debut of its native SMPTE ST 2110 card to bring greater flexibility and IP connectivity with automated signal discovery and management to audio workflows.

Designed to streamline ST 2110 workflows and simplify the management of flexible and remote infrastructures, the card enables SSL’s customers to take advantage of the benefits of ST 2110-based environments as well as hybrid ST 2110/Dante setups, with minimal investment in hardware. SSL’s native implementation also simplifies integration, leveraging NMOS IS-04 and IS-05 for automated discovery and signal management, SSL said.

SSL will also showcase its System T Cloud NDI update for the first time at IBC2025. The update supplements System T Cloud’s established Dante Connect audio transport with native support for NDI to enhance agility in virtualized production.

It allows broadcasters to process audio natively from a range of NDI-enabled devices, such as cameras and replay sources, lowering deployment costs and expanding the range of connectivity options available to SSL customers operating in the cloud, it said.

Furthermore, enhanced support for NDI simplifies signal acquisition by adopting an array of NDI-enabled devices, as well as enabling broadcasters to service content tiers that may have previously been cost-prohibitive.

SSL will also feature the new System T v4.2 upgrade with updates including new integrations with Jünger Audio, Dolby, New Audio Technology and TiMax. With the latest version, SSL is combining its established System T user interface with external processing platforms to simplify a variety of complex Next Generation Audio production tasks, it said.

See SSL at IBC2025 Stand 8.B73.

More information is available on the company’s website.