Live From NBA All-Star 2022: Innovations Complement Custom Direct PA System Contact mics, steerable-line-array mics, robust live system promise clean on-air sound By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Friday, February 18, 2022 - 11:36 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
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 NBA Cavaliers' Rocket Mortgage Field House, which hosts the entire weekend's activities, and broadcast on ESPN. On the calendar for Saturday - or State Farm All-Star Saturday Night - are the Taco Bell Skills Challenge, the MTN Dew 3-Point Contest, and the AT&T Slam Dunk, all also on TNT. On Sunday, the Clorox Rising Stars event will be shown on TNT, which will also air the All-Star Game itself.
But the audio will come from one source: the seemingly infinitely innovative brain of Dave Grundtvig, who is serving as TNT's audio supervisor for the weekend.
He'll be working from NEP EN1 mobile unit for the Friday and Sunday shows, including the marquee match. Grundtvig says much of the weekend's audio will be conventional, but that's a term he has helped redefine during the pandemic. He engineered the NBA's famous Orlando bubble, 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.
Although he cannot wire the Cavs' 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 Dave Bjornson; RF supervisor Victor Victoria; Pat Thornton, 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.
Aboard NEP EN1 with Dave Bjornson (right), Dave Grundtvig holds one of the Shure MXA710 steerable linear-array microphones.
Another element that may one day become part of a conventional microphone complement is the implementation of Shure's MXA710 steerable linear array. Developed for corporate-boardroom-type applications, the array is a series of steerable transducers guided via Shure's proprietary IntelliMix DSP and Autofocus technology.
Using this, we can create steerable lobes and point them in different directions as needed, remotely, explains Grundtvig, who has also experimented with this type of array for baseball and NBA Summer League. We 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're in uncharted territory with this.
Viewers can expect to hear as many as a dozen NBA players wired for sound, along with two coaches and two referees - all wearing Q5X PlayerMic transmitters. Grundtvig says some of that player audio may be live, depending on NBA approvals.
A Beast of a System' 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, VP, Firehouse Productions - which also deployed a Riedel intercom system with 600+ endpoints, more than 100 of which are wireless users encompassing more than 1,000 frequencies - describes the installation as a beast of a system.
The reason we do that, he explains, is that the NBA operations manual very specifically states 86 dB as the maximum limit for any sound reinforcement at an NBA game. We're intending to rock the house by distributing the sound closer to the court, so we're 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.
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's 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.
That's a measure of direct vs. reflected sound, and it's spectacular, he says. It allows us to run the system at maybe 40%-50% of its potential power. That much headroom means it's plenty clear-sounding.
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.
If it was up at 100 dB and there were fewer speakers, Ditmar explains, it 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.
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
28/11/2025
Nadia Fall attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Brides at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Donyale West/...
28/11/2025
It's easy to ignore those little red update available badges. But when it ...
28/11/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 18, 2025 ...
28/11/2025
The Professional Fighters League is looking to super-serve fans of mixed martial...
28/11/2025
Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once....
28/11/2025
The WNBA playoffs and Week 4 of the NFL regular season highlight the list of live sports events airing on television this weekend....
28/11/2025
The 32nd class of honorees to the B+C Hall of Fame took to the stage at New York's Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 26 for a gala induction event. Click below...
28/11/2025
We hold in our hands the very last Next Text for Next TV, the weekly back-and-fo...
28/11/2025
DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar's video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus...
28/11/2025
The Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the premier industry event paying tribute to the influencers, innovators and shining lights of broadcast, cable and streami...
28/11/2025
Friday 28 November 2025
Sky Sports x Slawn drop limited-edition football jersey...
28/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz shows resilience in a challenging environment, revenue exceeds t...
28/11/2025
Unwrapped: The Toy Show Appeal - airing this Sunday on RT One and RT Player- s...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Marks a Grand...
27/11/2025
27 Nov 2025
GSMA brings M360 Eurasia 2026 to Samarkand in partnership with VEON...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
26/11/2025
A cinematic snow sculpture at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Randall Michelson...
26/11/2025
Book podcasts are booming. On Spotify, you'll find everything from celebrity book clubs to deep dives with bestselling authors. And in markets where audiobo...
26/11/2025
Mumbai, November 24, 2025: In a first-of-its-kind initiative, JioStar, in collab...
26/11/2025
LONDON Factual content producer ITN Productions has launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins....
26/11/2025
MIAMI TelevisaUnivision said it struck a new multiyear distribution agreement with YouTube TV that includes distribution of TelevisaUnivision's U.S. network...
26/11/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leader in software-defined data storage and data services, today announced the launch of the Atlas Corporate Creative Solution. This new Atl...
26/11/2025
Disguise, the industry-leading company powering the world's biggest live performances, is partnering with pioneering LED wall manufacturer DVS to give atten...
26/11/2025
HighField AI, the pioneer in agentic and multimodal automation for broadcast and media production, today announced the expansion of its global channel partner n...
26/11/2025
As high-stakes Premier League fixtures approach and additional premium content launches, with MONO positioning themselves to dominate Thailand's sports stre...
26/11/2025
Hosting a wide variety of events from high-intensity NHL games to complex live music concerts and major entertainment productions, Montreal's 21,000 capacit...
26/11/2025
Vizrt, the leader in live production technology revolutionizing viewer engagement and experience, releases AI-driven advances focusing on speed, intelligence, a...
26/11/2025
ITN Productions, an award-winning factual content producer, today launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins. Responsible for delivering a leading...
26/11/2025
Ikegami reports ongoing advances throughout 2025 in developing and delivering coordinated television production solutions that maximize quality, versatility and...
26/11/2025
Following the Nov. 21 blackout of NBCUniversal channels on Fubo, the two sides have traded barbs about their inability to reach a new carriage deal....
26/11/2025
LONDON As TV sports rights become increasingly important for both broadcasters and streamers, Ampere Analysis predicts global investment in the genre will surpa...
26/11/2025
LOS ANGELES Vubiquity said it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Media & Entertainment Competency as part of the AWS Partner Network (APN). This designa...
26/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau said it has entered into a consent decree with Comcast calling for the cable company t...
26/11/2025
Berklee Named to the Hollywood Reporters Top Music Schools List The publication highlights the college's screen scoring program, industry partnerships, and ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
Animated Series Love Through a Prism' Casts New Light on ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
NALIP Unveils Fifth Cohort of Director Incubator
Social Impact
26 November 2025
United States
Link copied to clipboard
The National Assoc...
26/11/2025
YouView Achieves Greenly Gold Certification for SustainabilityNov 26, 2025
YouView is proud to announce a Gold Certification award from Greenly for our perform...
Live From NBA All-Star 2022: Innovations Complement Custom Direct PA System Contact mics, steerable-line-array mics, robust live system promise clean on-air sound By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
