Networked Audio Gets Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show On-Air The broadcast audio of the hip-hop event was mixed from a control room across the street By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Wednesday, February 23, 2022 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The Halftime Show at Super Bowl LVI was a moment to remember for a number of reasons, not least because it was the first time that all the headline performers - Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar - were hip-hop artists, reflecting the significant cultural and economic shift that has taken place over the past decade. But the event's audio also reflected how far remote audio mixing has come and where it might head in the future.
The broadcast audio for the halftime event was mixed from the NFL's new facility, which sits in the $5 billion, 298-acre Hollywood Park mixed-use development on the same Inglewood campus as - and literally across the road from - the Los Angeles Rams' SoFi Stadium. At the facility, five audio-control rooms are fitted with SSL S500 and S300 consoles, part of its System T broadcast range. One S500 was the main mixer for the halftime show (with an S300 in the room as backup), manned by A1 Tom Holmes.
The Pepsi Halftime Show was mixed from an Abbey Road-level control room in a nearby NFL facility.
Audio signals from the stadium were transported in the Dante format over single-mode fiber to the facility, which opened last September as an expansion of the league's production facility there. Pregame audio ( America the Beautiful, the National Anthem) was sent to NEP Super 8 game truck in the broadcast-production compound adjacent to the stadium. The Halftime Show's music mix was sent via direct-to-transmission path to NBC.
Getting Permission(s) Holmes, the longtime Grammy Awards' production mixer, was handling his second Super Bowl Halftime Show (his first time on the S500). He was impressed, even a little awed, by the league's new studio and office complex, particularly its vast 19,000-plus-I/O Dante network, which he describes as at the same time a really good thing and maybe not a really good thing.
His ambivalence has to do with the fact that a Dante network, like any other IT network, requires protocol-specific permissions for connection with external devices. For a project with as many inputs as the Super Bowl, that can be cumbersome, requiring the equivalent of a digital hall pass from the network administrator for each device, whether it's a printer in another office or a microphone preamp on a stage across the campus.
You have to query every device or patch, Holmes explains. A single patch can take literally up to 30 seconds. He points out that there were hundreds of such connections to be made over the fiber connection the Dante network rode on between the stadium and the NFL media center, using a total of 58 Focusrite RedNet interfaces, the equivalent of more than 1,700 available audio channels. (Specifically, RedNet A16R and RedNet D16R interfaces connected digital and analog sources and feeds to and from the NFL Network; RedNet D64R MADI bridges were deployed for connecting signals to and from the SSL and DiGiCo digital audio consoles in the system and for connections between production groups.)
If you want to take a patch from a new Dante box and patch it to your console, Holmes says, the console has to basically go and check with every other device on the Dante network and see who owns that patch. You have to sit there and wait for this query to be done over the entire network. You can moderate some of that lag time, but you would have to go into the SSL [operating] system and integrate all of the added physical devices as logic' devices, and then [each] patch gets a device label. This speeds up the query process by allowing the console to filter out and ignore all but the devices you want to use. But somebody needs to spend time typing each patch-point label into the system.
The permissions process and related efforts, such as implementing MADI-to-Dante conversions, were time-consuming but were mostly finalized two days before the show. Holmes credits the NFL's IT staff for making what was an extremely complex connectivity proposition manageable.
However, that complexity, along with the use of particular cameras and visual frame rates mandated by the producers, inevitably introduced a considerable amount of latency into the mix: 243.75 ms of delay, to be exact. If not corrected, that would have been enough to be very noticeable in the form of lip-synch problems. But it was corrected: by delaying all the audio except that not associated with a camera (for example, the EVS playbacks) by 243.75 ms prior to audio and video being embedded together for broadcast.
Other sources of latency, such as the difference between hard-wired and RF cameras, can delay picture by an additional several milliseconds, though usually not enough to be noticeable on screen, and are even less of an issue for quick-cut productions like music shows.
A Proper Recording Studio Previous Super Bowl Halftime Shows have been mixed on dedicated remote-production trucks, usually designed specifically for on-location music mixing and/or recording -and exceptionally good at their particular task. On more-conventional remote-production trucks, the audio is relegated to a small compartment at the rear of a trailer.
The Super Bowl LVI's halftime mix took place in essentially the equivalent of an Abbey Road-level environment, featuring a Genelec 7.1.4 monitoring system and as good as or even better than the studios the show's songs were originally recorded and mixed in. Like all first-time experiences, though, Holmes's was somewhat fraught with the exigencies of network connectivity overlaying the year's single biggest 12 minutes o
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...
Networked Audio Gets Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show On-Air The broadcast audio of the hip-hop event was mixed from a control room across the street By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
