Music City Is Set To Make Some Real Noise With IndyCar Street Race Big Machine Music City Grand Prix roars into Nashville with lots of mics and music By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Thursday, August 3, 2023 - 10:54 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Eighty laps, 168 winding street miles, and more music than you can shake a guitar at. That's the third edition of the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix (Sunday, Aug. 6, NBC Sports) in Nashville, where both IndyCar and the city are looking to what's becoming an annual event to burnish both brands.
The temporary 2.17-mile street circuit takes 26 NTT IndyCar Series racers by the Tennessee Titans' Nissan Stadium, through 11 twisty turns, and over the Korean War Veterans Memorial Bridge above the Cumberland River (the first motorsports course of its kind in the world to cross a major body of water), and into downtown Nashville. All done to a soundtrack that will feature Florida-Georgia Line's Brian Kelley, Chris Janson, M tley Cr e's Vince Neil, Gavin Degraw, and other special guests.
Upshift, Downshift, Crowds, Roar If negotiating those turns are tricky, so is capturing the race's signature sounds. That's the job of A1 Mike Pope, aided by submixer Rob Sweeney. Some of the music might sneak into the broadcast here and there, but most of it will be that characteristic effects mix of upshift, downshift, crowds, and roar.
Street courses are obviously always a little more difficult, mainly in terms of access, explains Pope, who has mixed IndyCar races for 13 years. Of course, on this course here in Nashville, we've got some experience. This is our third year here.
Getting the audio signals around the sprawling downtown campus involves an infrastructure of eight Calrec Hydra network boxes daisy-chained into the Artemis submix console aboard the B unit of IMS Productions' three-trailer production rig (which also handles robos and graphics), buttressed by a parallel Dante network in spots.
The cameras on the truck still have two audio analog inputs, but they also have network connections, Pope explains. Those network connections are what we use for Dante boxes, which also can be configured for intercom. We've done that in the past, but, for this race, we're also using the Dante to bring microphone signals back, primarily for the upshifts or downshifts and maybe a roar - whatever is needed to get the signal back to the submix console.
With more than 50 microphones deployed in total, he can call on Audio-Technica BP4027 long stereo shotgun mics on hard cameras and shorter BP4029 mics for crowd capture and other applications. Sennheiser 416 super-cardioid shotguns have become indispensable for up/downshift sounds and for use on robo cams. A Shure VP88 rounds out the main four-pack of the various transducers that Pope and Sweeney use to cover the vast majority of the race.
All of those are workhorse mics, Pope says.
The camera audio inputs have become a valuable resource for racing effects capture, with improved pre-amps that can collect the full-range audio needed for motorsports. And, because the track is dedicated to IndyCar, the console gain and trim structures are already tuned for the sport.
A lot of the show is already dialed in for us, notes Pope, who mixes it on a Calrec Apollo desk.
Radio, Comms Are Complicated A pair of Calrec Brio consoles are used to mix the audio for the big-screen video around the track, some of which will make its way into the broadcast sound via direct feeds to the main mix desk. According to Pope, the radio mix, mixed by Pat Sellers, is perhaps the most complicated part of the event's audio due to the unpredictability of sources and is on a scant 1.5-second profanity delay.
You're a cat on a wire out there with the radios, he says of the occasionally salty audio nuggets that come across the RF infrastructure provided by BSI. But they're critical because, whenever audio leads the narrative, it's usually because of what's coming through the radios.
The show's comms are conventional but also complicated, built around an RTS ADAM platform with nearly 600 ports spanning seven trailers. It's a fairly standard configuration but made notable by its scale, says Pope.
Not all of them are active, he points out, but they're there. I would say we would have at least 12-16 external panels that we use. In general, it's structured mostly the same, but the comms load can change from a street course or an oval or a road course.
The Big Machine Music City Grand Prix has become somewhat notorious for its crashes - the track varies in width from 37 ft. to 80 ft. - and that takes a toll on the audio infrastructure, from the loss of the occasional microphone to destruction of some of the fiber cabling.
Sometimes a car can hit the concrete barriers and move it, and it can cut fiber, says Pope. We've had it happen.
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...
Music City Is Set To Make Some Real Noise With IndyCar Street Race Big Machine Music City Grand Prix roars into Nashville with lots of mics and music By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
