Live From Super Bowl LIX: FOX Plans Big Sound From Around the Big Easy

Audio for pregame, studio shows will be produced from Bourbon Street and Caesars Superdome

The sound for shows leading up to the Super Bowl on Sunday will be coming from a lot of places in New Orleans. FOX Super Bowl LIX Pregame — hosted by Curt Menefee, with four-time Super Bowl champ Terry Bradshaw alongside — will emanate from the broadcaster’s Bourbon Street set, part of a 5½-hour-long day that also includes FOX NFL Sunday and FOX NFL Kickoff.

And, by the way, there will be a football game, from Caesars Superdome.

FOX Sports’ Jamie McCombs will be managing the audio for pre/postgame and studio shows from Game Creek Video Encore.

Managing all that sound will be FOX Sports A1 Jamie McCombs, working from the Calrec Apollo console in the audio compartment on Game Creek Encore mobile unit. Next door will be submixer Eddie Verstraete on a Calrec Artemis console. The desks will be connected to the Artemis and Apollo consoles in Game Creek PrimeOne, which will handle the music and replay mixes for the studio show. The Apollo in Game Creek Varsity will manage audio for the red-carpet show. FOX’s Jewel Event System (FJES) will use an Artemis deck for any overflow from the EVS decks. The wireless field audio coming from ATK/Clair Global, as well as comms, will be managed by Andy Roston.

The 512 channels of audio will be connected over a Hydra network, with MADI between the trucks in the compound and to the HRP control room in FOX’s Pico facility in Los Angeles.

“It’s lot of AoIP for this show,” notes McCombs. “Everything is connected.”

The Action Starts on Bourbon Street

It’s also a production that’s using as much of the host city as it can to provide visual and aural flavor to the Big Game.

“A lot of it’s the moving parts and pieces throughout the city,” he explains. “We start out, our studio show is over in Bourbon Street, and they’re on the air for 2½ hours. Then they actually move this way, and we start doing more here with interviews throughout the stadium. We have a full set outside on Fan Plaza on top of a parking structure and a full set inside the stadium. And, of course, we have announcers that roam all over the place, between locker rooms and out on the field itself. There’s a good 40-45 minutes of very scripted, structured events going on even before the coin toss and kickoff.”

That field audio will have all the elements that NFL viewers have come to expect, including the NFL-controlled enhanced feed: microphones on either a guard or the center — the teams make those choices ahead of the game. There will also be eight parabolic mics, post mics to capture the plunk of the pigskin hitting the uprights, and tons of crowd mics. In addition, the Schoeps SuperCMIT digital microphone will be aboard the Skycam, which McCombs calls “a game-changer: when it’s right overhead of the centers and line, the booming kicks when we follow ’em for kickoffs, man, does it sound good!”

Through the Roof

One new microphonic wrinkle from the regular season is deployment of Voyage Audio’s 8-channel Spatial Mic, set to its discrete 5.1 configuration and mounted on the roof, adding an immersive layer to the ambient sound. It will be used to capture the sound of the military jets that synchronize with the end of the performance of the National Anthem.

“Since we’re in a domed stadium, [we] don’t really see them,” says McCombs. “But we’re going to show them on television, and we have to make sure we [pan] the sound in the same direction they’re flying. It’s an important detail for the game’s sound. It has to be right.”

And then some, he adds: “Just knowing you’re trying to bring something to the people watching at home that they’re going to be excited about makes you work hard on it. You want them to be excited and hear a really good game. And they will.”