Last Sunday February 9 was held one of the biggest annual television event, the Super Bowl LIX. Jamie McCombs, Fox Sports Audio Consultant / Sr. Audio discusses sound capturing to create a dynamic fan experience using Calrec consoles.
   

Tell us about your audio setup.

The Super Bowl is a hybrid IP setup this year; we rely on three Calrec Apollo consoles in Encore, PrimeOne and Varsity Game Creek trucks and four Calrec Artemis consoles across Encore, PrimeOne, Edit 4 and FSJE in the compound. All Calrec consoles are interconnected with ImPulse cores or Hydra2 cores via AoIP Gateways, and some via MADI streams.

Encore, which is being used to mix the game and PrimeOne, which is used to mix studio shows, both use Calrec Apollo and Artemis consoles and are connected to the AoIP network, and Hydra2 network via Gateways and MADI streams. The Artemis consoles in the Edit 4 truck do all the early shows from Bourbon Street. Our studio show called ‘Purple Carpet’ where all the celebrities come in, is mixed on a Calrec Apollo in Game Creek’s Varsity truck and Fox Sports FSJE truck uses a Calrec Artemis to operate tape release.

Being able to share between all the consoles is fantastic. Right now, we’re running AoIP through an AoIP Gateway so we can share stuff back and forth between each console. The MADI streams make it really easy – we share a lot of information throughout the whole compound with all the different entities.

Do you think we’ve reached a plateau with flexible workflows, or do you think they will continue to develop?

I’m sure there’s ways to develop. As an industry leader, Calrec definitely makes connectivity easy, and the products are very user friendly, but I’m sure there’s something coming that I don’t know about yet that would make it easier. Every time I think we’ve hit a plateau, there’s improvement, so it’s very exciting.

How long have you been using Calrec products and what are the benefits?

I started working on Calrec’s Q and S series back in the analogue days, so it’s been quite a while. I would definitely say Calrec is an industry standard. Any time we walk into a truck and there’s a Calrec, you always feel comfortable, like you’re going to have a great show. It definitely makes it easy, just sharing and working the workflows with other consoles in the compound.

With a Calrec it’s muscle memory, we’ve used them for so long and we’re very familiar with them. They’re very user-friendly and have all the screens that you need to do the show in front of you. They’re also very easy to set up quickly; I really enjoy working on them.