He\u2019ll be working from NEP EN1 mobile unit for the Friday and Sunday shows, including the marquee match. Grundtvig says much of the weekend\u2019s audio will be \u201cconventional,\u201d but that\u2019s a term he has helped redefine during the pandemic. He engineered the NBA\u2019s famous Orlando \u201cbubble,\u201d for which he designed and hand-built an array of 32 custom contact microphones placed beneath each of the three courts at the venue there.<\/p>\n
Although he cannot wire the Cavs\u2019 court floor, Grundtvig will deploy several contact mics in key locations, such as the backboard glass and on the support poles under the baskets. He will be working with audio guarantee<\/strong> Dave Bjornson<\/strong>; RF supervisor<\/strong> Victor Victoria<\/strong>; Pat Thornton<\/strong>, who will be handling A1 duties for the State Farm All-Star Saturday Night events (from NEP Supershooter 24); and his son, A2 Nicholas Grundtvig<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Aboard NEP EN1 with Dave Bjornson (right), Dave Grundtvig holds one of the Shure MXA710 steerable linear-array microphones.<\/p><\/div>\n Another element that may one day become part of a \u201cconventional\u201d microphone complement is the implementation of Shure\u2019s MXA710<\/a> steerable linear array. Developed for corporate-boardroom\u2013type applications, the array is a series of steerable transducers guided via Shure\u2019s proprietary IntelliMix DSP and Autofocus technology.<\/p>\n \u201cUsing this, we can create steerable lobes and point them in different directions as needed, remotely,\u201d explains Grundtvig, who has also experimented with this type of array for baseball and NBA Summer League. \u201cWe can do gating, noise reduction, and automix all internally within the device using its DSP. This is a whole new category of microphone for broadcast applications. We\u2019re in uncharted territory with this.\u201d<\/p>\n Viewers can expect to hear as many as a dozen NBA players wired for sound, along with two coaches and two referees \u2014 all wearing Q5X PlayerMic transmitters. Grundtvig says some of that player audio may be live, depending on NBA approvals.<\/p>\n Live sound for NBA All-Star Weekend will get the full treatment. A separate house PA system has been installed, comprising 114 boxes of JBL VTX 2025 PA systems. Mark Dittmar<\/strong>, VP, Firehouse Productions<\/strong> \u2014 which also deployed a Riedel intercom system with 600+ endpoints, more than 100 of which are wireless users encompassing more than 1,000 frequencies \u2014 describes the installation as \u201ca beast of a system.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason we do that,\u201d he explains, \u201cis that the NBA operations manual very specifically states 86 dB as the maximum limit for any sound reinforcement at an NBA game. We\u2019re intending to rock the house by distributing the sound closer to the court, so we\u2019re not pushing it up to 100 dB, which helps make sure we have good intelligibility and coverage. It is a very large PA system because the longer the line of the line array, the more directivity you have off that line array. We are getting very controlled patterns, and it gives us excellent intelligibility, even at 86 dB with a game playing.\u201d<\/p>\n Interestingly for an NBA game, there are only nine subwoofers in the entire system, and most are floor-mounted as fills. According to Ditmar, the proximity to the court of full-range speakers that can reach down to 32 Hz minimizes the need for subs. Measuring the system\u2019s sound-transmission index (STI, a measure of speech intelligibility) produced a value of 0.9 on a scale in which 1.0 is considered perfect.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a measure of direct vs. reflected sound, and it\u2019s spectacular,\u201d he says. \u201cIt allows us to run the system at maybe 40%-50% of its potential power. That much headroom means it\u2019s plenty clear-sounding.\u201d<\/p>\n It also means that almost none of the PA sound ends up in the broadcast audio, because of the high level of directivity and the lower output levels.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it was up at 100 dB and there were fewer speakers,\u201d Ditmar explains, \u201cit would absolutely be all over the broadcast. But this is one of the cleanest shows you can imagine. And Dave [Grundtvig] is always happy as a clam because of how clean it sounds on-air for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The NBA All-Star Weekend (Feb. 18-20 in Cleveland) is pretty much 72 hours of nonstop B-ball action. On Friday, the Ruffles NBA All-Star Celebrity Game will be played at the […]\n More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":217710,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9248,33],"tags":[58,6168],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217709"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217790,"href":"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217709\/revisions\/217790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/staging.sportsvideo.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/NBA-AllStar-audio-Grundvig.jpg\")
<\/a>\u2018A Beast of a System\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n