The NFL’s On Location games in global cities like London and Mexico City are excellent opportunities to widen the visibility of pro football, but they also present some unique challenges for audio professionals in setting up broadcast-quality coverage.
“It can be a struggle to find ‘clean air’ to provide clear audio,” said Andrew Hall, the audio engineer managing elements of the Mexico City game broadcast for IHS Productions.
To help overcome those issues, Hall used Shure Axient Digital with Quadversity. It allowed him to use four antennas and Axient Digital is able to use the best antenna. This is twice the antenna capacity from typical systems. It also allowed him to place four antennas on the sideline to minimize the distance between an antenna and a referee — no matter where the game official was located on the field.
For the referees, they used Shure TwinPlex TL47 microphones, the newest technology in omni-directional subminiature mics that have already won several industry awards. With twice the surface area of other 5 mm microphones, TwinPlex’s dual-diaphragm cartridge offers warmer low frequency response, better off-axis consistency and ultra-low noise floor. The refs were also outfitted with Shure’s referee splitter switch so the broadcast team could rely on dual redundant ADX bodypacks for reliable on-air broadcasting of game calls.
Hall set up Axient Digital’s Interference Avoidance feature set by pairing the receiver with the AXT600 Spectrum Manager and three AD610 ShowLink Access Points. This allowed programming an inventory of frequencies into the spectrum manager which continuously checked the frequencies and ranked them from best to worst. If one frequency became an issue, Hall used the audio from the other belt pack and the Axient Digital system sent a new frequency over ShowLink to the belt-pack while the ref was still using the mic.
Hall brought in an additional onsite audio mixer system to help manage the audio for the game.
