NBA Summer League Tests Out, Refines Audio Workflows

NBA Summer League Tests Out, Refines Audio Workflows New mic arrays and ways of mixing them are a focus By Dan Daley, Audio Editor

Tuesday, July 29, 2025 - 7:00 am

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For years, the NBA's Summer League has been the organization's Skunk Works: a place to develop new broadcast techniques and technologies relatively free of formal contractual constraints. Among the innovations trialed have been Noah Basketball's shot-tracking system and Sony Sports' Hawk-Eye tracking system.

Lately, the experimentation has reached into virtual territory, with the NBA testing cloud-based production workflows for alternative feeds and multi-language broadcasts, using such platforms as Microsoft Azure and Evertz DreamCatcher BRAVO. Over time, various camera, sensor, and microphone technologies have been tested and refined during Summer League events, intended to improve broadcasts, officiating, player training, and game-data analysis.

This year's edition, which finished up recently at the Thomas & Mack Center and Cox Pavilion on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus, was no different. And when it came to audio, there were at least a couple of technical three-pointers.

Array Microphones Shure was able to further refine its multichannel mic-array system, which it has been developing at the Summer Leagues over the past several years. An evolution of its corporate-meeting products, the planar arrays allow placement of multiple transducers in a fixed arrangement but with each transducer lobe able to be remotely steered over a digital network - in the case of Summer League, a Dante network. The units were deployed on each of the basket stanchions, providing near full-court coverage. Audio was piped to the production truck but were recorded to multitrack and not used as part of ESPN's broadcasts. The recordings, notes Shure Associate Director, Global Product Management, Pro Audio, Bill Oakley, can be used later for further research into creating more immersive audio mixes for basketball broadcasts.

Shure's Bill Oakley: The [mic-array system] is a digitally controlled product on a Dante or other digital audio network, which opens up a slew of options and possibilities.

Although the new sports-focused array has form factors similar to Shure's MXA901 array, which is intended for the corporate-audio market, the new iteration has significantly refined software. We have completely changed the software/firmware that goes on it, which has been tailored for broadcast [applications], Oakley says. For example, we have dedicated, individual lobe control; a stereo auto mix out; and a PFL mix out. The MXA had only an automix out for that market, as well as some DSP tools that were specific to conferencing but are not needed in the pro space. We also have different types of noise reductions.

Basically, he continues, we wrote the software platform to be specific for this application, this market, while reutilizing the mechanical aspects as a way to be quicker to market.

Expected to be released this fall, by the late-October start of the new NBA season, the broadcast version will have versions of Shure's IntelliMix DSP, which offers echo-cancellation and noise reduction. They have been tweaked to add more functionality and control.

It's still a work in development, Oakley explains. As you can imagine, in the broadcast or live space, the noises are much more variable [than in corporate-meeting environments], and it's not going to be the same constant tone, per se. We have our initial offering in the array today, but there are more plans and development happening to improve that and tailor it for [sports] applications.

Array-type sound capture is certainly broader in its range than the typical shotgun-mic assembly used for end-zone capture. Although the specifications of the broadcast version are still under wraps, Oakley notes that the audio quality comes from the ability of a planar array to make a tight directional lobe, with better side/rear rejection than a long shotgun offers, and from having eight in a compact form factor, versus the physical space occupied by an equal number of shotguns, on a single network cable.

By reducing the ambient sound contributing to the noise floor, he explains, the lobe channel ends up with the targeted sound being more present.

Automation Is Key Much of the potential for these systems, however, lies in their capacity for automation. Automixing is already in common use for specific broadcast-sports applications, such as managing multiple announcers, either via dedicated units, such as the Dan Dugan automixer plugin from Waves, or integrated into consoles, such as Calrec Artemis and Apollo desks.

A new Shure sports-focused array mic was deployed in a test during NBA Summer League.

The concept can be taken beyond its current use cases for broadcast sports. Instead of having one shotgun that picks up the entire key (and of course all the ambient noise that comes with it), Oakley explains, you can fan out five, six, or seven virtual shotguns that have a tighter pattern, higher ambient rejection, and then you can leverage the auto mixers.

He notes how that combination of arrays and automation can exponentially increase their combined leverage, while also trying [to minimize] the number of faders A1s need to manage. Engineers already have enough inputs to deal with; they don't need more. As action moves between the different virtual shotguns, only those tiny lobe shotguns are being turned on, and you still have that one fader hitting the desk and controlling your levels accordingly.

At a time when broadcast budgets are in flux, automation's potential is being eyed carefully. But even beyond that, the shift to immersive audio formats is increasing channel counts, a

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