What is your background and how did you get into broadcast sound?I have been in live broadcast television since I was 17 and just about to graduate high school. I knew I wanted to be involved in audio, and at first I wanted to be in music. I wanted to tour with a band or work in a studio. After talking with some locals in the industry, they all basically steered me towards television. I started off volunteering with a local production company in Edmonton, and the owner Dave Benson recommended me as a Utility for CFL (Canadian Football). I started working freelance with Dome Productions in 2001 as a teenager and worked my way up to being an A1 around 2010.
What was it about live broadcast sound that attracted you and what keeps you interested?
I really enjoy the variety and challenges that live broadcast sound affords. Looking back, I'm sure I would have been bored working in a studio or with the same band/show every night.
Live television feels like the wild west of audio sometimes, in that some days we're rushing just to get a show to air and having time to make it sound amazing is second to just getting it heard!
I like that intensity and rush. I need that stress and time crunch in order to perform as best as I can. While music or studio work definitely has its own challenges, I feel live broadcast sound is the thrill I need to stay focused.
When did you join Dome Productions and what was your initial role?
I started freelancing with Dome in 2001, and then was hired as a Staff A1 in 2013. While freelancing I started as a utility pulling cable, moving to an A2 position, and then A1. Once hired as an employee, my role was to work on some of Dome's biggest shows as an audio mixer, comms person, and/or guarantor.
Can you give us a bit of background about Dome and its main work?
Dome Productions is one of North America's leading production facilities providers, offering mobile production facilities, transmission services, studio facilities and full turnkey host broadcast services. Traditionally, most of our work has come from live sporting events, but lately the world of eSports and other entertainment-style productions have been serviced by Dome Productions.
How has that role evolved?
As I've become more proficient with new equipment, I've found myself on larger shows that require a good knowledge in the world of audio-over-IP and large-scale routing. I went from mainly mixing sports to building and engineering larger setups for entertainment style shows and especially eSports. We're involved in so much more networking now as audio engineers. It used to be analog audio and party lines, but now we're dealing with IP addresses and VLANs. It's adopting more aspects of a network engineer's role.
When did you first start working with Calrec equipment?
I had the amazing opportunity to mix a morning news show for several years, and it was a great training ground for the world of live television mixing. While I was there the station purchased a new Calrec Omega console and I had the chance to be involved in the setup and integration of the console. During my long morning shifts, I touched every button, investigated every menu setting and option, and learned the console as best I could. Being comfortable with it became a huge advantage when I started doing freelance A1 work. Since then I've made a point of reading manuals and exploring every screen and menu when I'm working on new equipment.
What Calrec consoles and related technologies have you used over the years?
I think I've had the chance to work on most of Calrec's consoles over the years. I've used the analog S2, and it's actually still used in one of our trucks! I've used the Omega, Sigma, Alpha, Artemis, Apollo, and Brio. I've used many Hydra stage boxes and have become familiar with the setup software as well as the Waves Soundgrid and Dante cards that Calrec offers.
What was your role in the recent AT&T Super Saturday Night with Lady Gaga' production?
I was hired as the Audio Guarantor for the Saturday Night with Lady Gaga production. We were using Dome Productions' newest 4K truck called Vista , outfitted with the Calrec Apollo console.
It was my job to build and engineer all the technical aspects of the audio components of the show. We had two A1s mixing the event, and I was there to basically guarantee that everything they needed to use would work. With such a high channel count, multiple multi-track record machines, and a Waves Soundgrid server running multiple racks of plugins, I was responsible for getting everything setup, routed, and working.
For this event, we received three 56-channel MADI streams from the FOH DiGiCo console over coax, 32 analogue stems via a Calrec Hydra2 48 16 stage box over fibre, and a 2-channel board mix via analogue DT-12. The total count from FOH was 202 channels of audio. We added our own audience response mics to complement the ones provided by FOH, and had microphones on three cameras, two EVS machines for the open and close videos, and a stereo return feed from Twitter for monitoring. We landed 128 channels of MADI and 32 stem channels from the Hydra2 Stage Box in the Calrec.
We built our own groups for mixing/processing and using direct outs of everything we sent three 64-channel MADI streams into an M.1K2 MADI Router to be distributed to the main and backup multi-track recorders. Multi-track recordings were done with two MacBook Pro laptops running Reaper and two RME MadiFace XT interfaces. We recorded 164 channels into each as a main and backup record. All the individual mics, the FOH stems, the stems we created in the truck, our two mixes, and timecode from the truck was recorded. All of these channels were available to play back instantly for virtual soundchecks.
What were the workflow challenge
