NBA All-Star: More Games, More Teams, More Music, More Sound From the Court Turner Sports' team will deploy familiar tech to capture all the audio By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Friday, February 14, 2025 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Almost everything about the NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco on Sunday (Chase Center, 8 p.m. ET, TNT, TruTV, and MAX) will be different. The game will take the form of a mini-tournament, with four teams and three games. Two teams of eight players each will meet in one semifinal; the remaining two teams, in the other semifinal. The winning teams from the matches - the first to reach or surpass 40 points in each game - will advance to face each other in the championship game.
The format may be unconventional, but the sound will be quite familiar, with all the sneaker squeaks, ball thumps, and hoop clangs that NBA viewers have come to expect and enjoy.
That's largely due to the presence of Dave Grundtvig, senior audio supervisor, remote operations, Turner Sports. The longtime audio guru has been fine-tuning the sound and its capture for TNT Sports for much of the broadcaster's 35 years as the NBA's TV home, a run that ends with this season. (Disney's ABC and ESPN, Comcast's NBA and Peacock, and Amazon will be airing all NBA nationally televised games from the 2025-26 season through the 2035-36 season, an 11-year deal worth an estimated $76 billion.)
Submixer Alex Rohr (left) with the MXA901 mic array and Audio Supervisor Dave Grundtvig holding a Shure KSM313/NE bi-directional ribbon microphone used to create TNT Sports' NBA All-Star Game broadcast's 5.1 ambience channels
The [All-Star] format has changed to these mini games and four teams, but that doesn't necessarily affect our coverage, he says. We're trying to capture basketball sounds, and we're trying to capture audience reaction. That is front and center. And foremost, the formula hasn't changed for the tools we use to capture all that.
Standard and Bespoke Mics Those tools include the usual microphones in the broadcast-sports arsenal - long shotguns to pick up crowd noise, short shotguns aimed around the court floor for close-in sound - as well as more-specialized ones for basketball. Among the last are the custom-made contact microphones that Grundtvig developed to capture court effects during the NBA's COVID bubble in Orlando in 2020 and '21 and places under floor openings to pick up the action near each basket.
He has been deploying one other specialty transducer for NBA games, one originally developed for a very different application: microphone arrays designed for use in corporate conference rooms. Specifically, Shure's MXA710 linear microphone array, which he deployed initially for the 2022 NBA Summer League and has since deployed for NBA regular-season games and other events on TNT Sports. For the 2023 and 2024 Summer League, Grundtvig moved up to the MXA910, a planar array with more lobes and a wider pickup range, covering as much as a 20- x 20-ft. space around it. As with the 710 model, he uses Shure's firmware and software enabling the output to be grouped into separate lobes and controlled wirelessly and remotely. A pair of the units mounted vertically on the basket stanchion picks up sounds around the goal and as much as another fifth of a 94- x 50-ft. NBA court.
It's like a parabolic, but on steroids, he quips. A parabolic gives you one [microphone] output; this gives you eight. Take just the three-point [shot] arc: everything inside that three-point circle I can designate a lobe for, and it can be automixed and manipulated to capture squeaks and bounces.
Both MXA units integrate Shure's IntelliMix digital-signal processing for such applications as acoustic echo cancellation, noise reduction, automatic mixing, automatic gain control (AGC), compression, delay, and equalization. The software can also look for steady-state noise and remove it. Audio routing is controlled through a remote device on a Dante or AES67 network, and digital-signal processing is controllable from any computer on the network.
Conventional microphones are much more narrowly focused, he explains. You pick your spots where you think the action is going to be and get pretty good coverage, but you don't get the coverage that the array gives you. The auto-mix output is much faster than the human can open a mic: essentially, the array constantly has a lobe open and ready versus a human trying to open four or five microphones. The mix is definitely smoother.
Sound and Safety In addition to the extra range, the array units offer a player-safety benefit: their location about 9 ft. above the goal area and back from the basket itself means that Grundtvig can capture a of close-up sound without putting any hardware near lunging ballplayers.
That same reasoning is behind the use of Q5X's PlayerMics at the All-Star Game. Their small, padded form factors are designed to minimize injury in case of falls. They will be worn by a total of eight players during the various games, and the company's RefMics and CoachMics will be worn by two officials and two coaches.
Cue the Music Some audio novelties will be deployed. Increasingly, the emphasis at All-Star Weekend is on entertainment, and this edition will feature music performances by hip-hop artists Too $hort and Saweetie, multi-platinum vocal group En Vogue, five-time Grammy winner H.E.R., and rapper LiAngelo GELO Ball on the arena stage and Noah Kahan, The Chainsmokers, Zedd and 2 Chainz, and Flo Rida at Pier 48 throughout the weekend as part of the NBA All-Star Concert Series. Grundtvig, A1s Jason Blood (Friday and Sunday) and Jeff Walker (Saturday), submixer Alex Rohr, audio guarantee Dave Bjornson, and A2s Shaun Studevent and Jay Davis will ha
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
07/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/07/2026
New appointments to Screen Australia board 7 July 2026
The Albanese Labor Government has made new appointments to the Screen Australia board.
Dr Tania Chamber...
07/07/2026
The right team. The right time.' How The Killings at Parrish Station stuck t...
07/07/2026
Berklee College of Music Alum and Faculty Perform at Boston Public Library's...
07/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists train the immune system to make antibodies against numerous HIV strains Preclinical findings mark progress toward a long-sought vacc...
06/07/2026
Long-developed relationships and informal access, three production models, and c...
06/07/2026
The deal follows Lumine's recent acquisition of Synamedia's video-networ...
06/07/2026
This former SportsCenter producer is shaping local-team studio coverage to surro...
06/07/2026
IMS Productions and FOX Sports deployed more than 100 cameras, 32 onboard feeds,...
06/07/2026
Lumine Group Inc. has announced the completion of its acquisition of the Video Network Business from Synamedia. The business will operate as a standalone compan...
06/07/2026
NASCAR has announced a content and commercial partnership with Motorsport Network, a motorsports and automotive media platform, to distribute NASCAR original co...
06/07/2026
Versant Media Group has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Full Swing, a sports technology company, from Bruin Capital and a group of minority investor...
06/07/2026
DAZN has announced global broadcast rights to 3ICE, a professional hockey format featuring three skaters and a goalkeeper per side, with no power plays or offsi...
06/07/2026
Bundle gains 100 new synths & more
Synth Anthology 5 the largest and most feature-packed edition of UVI's hardware synth emulation bundle, bringing toge...
06/07/2026
Available now via free firmware update
MOTU have just announced that three of their popular audio interfaces now boast official Milan Certification. The 16A...
06/07/2026
Rohde & Schwarz completes Hunter Preliminary Design Review for the Integrated Co...
06/07/2026
The R&S IMAGER from Rohde & Schwarz uses millimeter wave imaging to inspect the ...
06/07/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
06/07/2026
Digital Domain Appoints Industry Veteran Patrick Davenport as Executive Vice Pre...
06/07/2026
Gravity Media USA appoints Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development
Brie Clayton July 6, 2026
0 Comments
The strategic new appointment supports...
06/07/2026
Remote Editing Without Cloud Storage in Resolve
Michael Cioni July 6, 2026
0 Comments
This is a step-by-step guide that demonstrates how to setup your...
06/07/2026
Automatic Caption Translation in Adobe Premiere Pro
Colin Smith July 6, 2026
0 Comments
Here I showcase the innovative automatic caption translation f...
06/07/2026
Flavor's First Ever Managing Director Neal Cohen Retires; Longstanding Execu...
06/07/2026
How Adam Rosenwach Pivoted from Music to Medtech Without Missing a Beat What do the rehearsal room and the boardroom have in common? More than you might think...
06/07/2026
Zhongyi Optics unveils the Dreamy Zone T1 FF Cine Lens Series on Indiegogo with ...
06/07/2026
Open source AI has shown how quickly developers can innovate when models, data a...
06/07/2026
Techtel debuts insyght: making ST 2110 media discovery easy
intellisphereinsyght2026
6 July Written By Suzanne Costello
Sydney, Australia - 06 July 2026 T...
06/07/2026
Monday 6 July 2026
Sky agrees to acquire ITV Media & Entertainment, creating a ...
06/07/2026
Fresh from his World Cup heroics with Cabo Verde, Roberto Pico' Lopes will join the RT panel for Argentina v Egypt tomorrow and for the England v Norway q...
06/07/2026
Nations have long invested in domestic infrastructure to advance their economies, protect and use their data, and take advantage of technology opportunities in ...
06/07/2026
Every year, the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) reveals where thousands of AI researchers have decided to put their work.
This year's ...
06/07/2026
A death can be unsuspicious, but it has to be explained
What happened to Ke...
05/07/2026
We've gone to another level of integrating the graphics into the set architecture' - Zac Fields, SVP, Graphic Technology and Integration, FOX Sports...
05/07/2026
Browser-based and desktop apps available
Digital Sunset Studios have been busy working on an interesting project: a free software tool that provides compute...
04/07/2026
When Canada qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026, OneSoccer knew this wasn'...
04/07/2026
Celebrates company's 80th anniversary
Rhodes have recently revealed that they will be producing a limited run of electric pianos in celebration of their...
04/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Cameras Empower Youth Broadcasting Program
Brie Clayton July 3, 2026
0 Comments
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagi...
04/07/2026
iZotope Joins Boris FX
Boris Yamnitsky July 3, 2026
0 Comments
iZotope, the team behind RX and Ozone, is joining Boris FX. A letter from founder Boris...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
NBA All-Star: More Games, More Teams, More Music, More Sound From the Court Turner Sports' team will deploy familiar tech to capture all the audio By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
