Live From 2022 NFL Draft: Wrangling Audio Challenges Live on the Air and on the Strip Production manages feeds from mics on stage, in the green room, at team facilities and prospects' homes, even around Las Vegas By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Thursday, April 28, 2022 - 3:51 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The first NFL Draft took place on Feb. 8, 1936, when representatives of the then-nine NFL franchises assembled at Philadelphia's Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Today, it's a three-day extravaganza across 15 hours of television. This year, it's the hub of the largest party so far, one whose scale is suited to Las Vegas, where it takes place starting Thursday, April 28 across multiple networks - ESPN, ABC, and the NFL Network - and streamed live through NFL digital properties as well via Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
The main stage for the 2022 NFL Draft
When it comes to sound, there'll be plenty of it, both on the air and live in the streets. A1 Justin Blackwood is mixing the ESPN shows from NEP EN-1; his counterpart, Florian Brown, is A1 for the ABC broadcasts aboard NEP SuperShooter 5. The main challenge of the event's audio, says Blackwood, is the sheer number of sources. These include microphones on the podiums (there are two podiums this year), which, with backups, means eight sources just for that. Then there are remote camera mics and handhelds in the green room, the teams' war rooms, ESPN's SportsCenter show onsite, and in the players' homes, where they'll capture the whoops of family members as their sons are selected.
MORE FROM THE 2022 NFL DRAFT
NFL Media Stitches Together City-Wide Canvas With Powerful Connectivity, Broadcast Tech
ESPN Goes All-In on Three-Day Party in Las Vegas
Van Wagner Looks to Bring Vegas Style to On-Site Show on the Strip
Bleacher Report Streams Live From Newly-Design Set at New York City Headquarters
NEP Is Out in Force With U.S. Mobile Units, AVS, Bexel, BSI, Fletcher
Game Creek Video To Support NFL Network's Studio, Flashy Red-Carpet Programming
Connecting all these sources creates a large-scale matrix that both Blackwood and Brown have to navigate, keeping up with scene and picture shifts as the events heat up.
Just sharing all of these resources is the biggest challenge, says Blackwood, who is on his second stint as lead A1 for the NFL Draft and has worked nearly a half dozen times as SportsCenter A1. We have connectivity to the NFL Network via MADI, and, between ESPN, ABC live, and the NFL Network, we're passing all those resources around. It's really just about getting a grasp on who needs what, when, and where and how we're going to get it to them.
The overarching goal for sound is to support the video, including keeping some common ambience in the mix to avoid abrupt tonal shifts, with background crowd sounds as aural continuity for transitions to quieter environments.
I think the biggest thing is trying to just have the audio match the cameras, which is challenging because it's very spread out, Blackwood explains. We've especially got a lot of crowd mics out there - in the theater, at the College GameDay set, at the beer garden - so it's really just trying to bring all that and have it match what they're cutting around on screen, because they're all very different environments.
When you go out to the beer garden on the Las Vegas strip, he continues, it's totally different sound, with all the crowd mics open, than when you're in the green room, where you've got players and their families and it can be very quiet. You want to make sure you're bringing up the handheld-camera mics to get those family reactions and cheers. You can be going from a hundred thousand people one minute to a few people in a green room the next, so it's really just trying to figure out where to put all the crowd mics and have it match what they're cutting around on.
Blackwood deploys a neat trick to manage the sea of noise that's inevitable in a show of this scale, using several Waves plug-ins in an unusual manner.
I use the WNS and NS-1 plug-ins on our Waves server for noise suppression, kind of like a Cedar[-type] emulator, he explains. What that does is help me drown out everything but the talking heads. I've used them on Countdown the last couple years, and it really helps. You know, the PA's blasting, and you've got a bunch of [commentary] mics open that pick up a lot of that noise.
I first started using them on tennis, on the serve mics, to keep the crowd noise out of them, he continues. Then, when we were [doing the 2019 NFL Draft] in Nashville, I was doing a morning talk show as they did a PA check for some country artists, but, because of those plug-ins, you were able to hear the talent just fine. It cuts down the PA a lot. So now I use those plug-ins often on talent. You do have to try to find a balance [between the direct signal and the processing], because you don't want to hear the plug-in pumping, but it gives me enough of an edge that it helps isolate those microphones, drown out some of that PA noise, and give me a little more control.
All the Sound We Need The scale of the event's audio is graphically illustrated on Brown's Calrec Apollo console aboard SuperShooter 5. On it, 128 faders are connected to input sources ranging from the main set to the beer garden to the Las Vegas Strip, with room for remote and sideline interviews as well as behind-the-scenes looks at the action, all mixed onsite and shipped to Bristol, CT, and New York.
Then there's all the integration with SportsCenter and NFL Live and the other platforms, says Brown, who also mixed the 2021 NFL Draft in Cleveland. There are tons of sources, far more than a game and more like an awards show. But the crow
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Live From 2022 NFL Draft: Wrangling Audio Challenges Live on the Air and on the Strip Production manages feeds from mics on stage, in the green room, at team facilities and prospects' homes, even around Las Vegas By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
