Live From Daytona: Fox Sports Stresses Audio From the Loudest Sport on Earth 150+ mics, real-time remote commentary will be part of the mix By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Friday, February 14, 2020 - 10:38 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The Daytona 500 hits the track on Sunday, four years after the opening of Daytona Rising, NASCAR's $400 million reimagining of what a stock-car racing venue can look like. When the fans aren't in the Daytona International Speedway's 101,500 seats, they can enjoy a level of fan engagement that Fireball Roberts and Junior Johnson never dreamed of, including the UNOH Fanzone, where windows into the garage allow fans to watch race teams at work.
All the more reason that Fox Sports' Daytona 500 coverage continues to refine its game, emphasizing the audio from the loudest sport on earth to engage viewers.
Starting with qualifying runs earlier in the week and the Can-Am Duel at Daytona on Thursday - part of Fox's approximately 100 hours of multiplatform programming - A1 Kevin McCloskey and submixer Chip Weaver are working from Game Creek's Cleatus truck to balance more than 150 microphones on the track, on cameras, in cars and crews, and, new for this year, on cranes positioned at Turns 1 and 2, to create a mix unlike any other on televised sports. Much of that will also be heard on Crank It Up, the SFX drum solo that Fox inserts at some point during the race, made up of a live mix directly from Weaver's Calrec Artemis submix console sent through McCloskey's main mix, which has been done in surround for most of the century.
There is nothing better than Crank It Up,' says McCloskey, who is about to embark on his sixth consecutive turn as A1 on the show. It has become the signature sound of NASCAR on Fox. In the last few years, we've experimented with putting some of the radio chatter into it. It adds another flavor to it.
More Talk, More Action
Another wrinkle, introduced last year, will be real-time commentary by experts Larry McReynolds and Jamie McMurray from the bespoke-constructed multipurpose virtual-studio set housed in the Fox Sports studios in Charlotte, NC.
On Sunday, Kevin McCloskey will serve as A1 on his sixth consecutive Daytona 500.
The audio from Charlotte, where they also do the pre- and post-race shows from, is coming in over fiber, which gets transferred to MADI for us, McCloskey explains. There is, like, zero latency: [when] Larry and Jamie interject, it sounds like everyone is in the same booth.
Crew and driver chatter are also more present this year. In-car audio from all 38 cars and their pit crews is collected by Racing Electronics, which was acquired by NASCAR parent International Speedway Corp. in 2018. That is transported to the radio-broadcast studio in the Cleatus truck, where radio submixer A1 Mark Williams operates the Calrec Brio console over a fiber cable and radio editor Jeff Bratta is using a dual editing system with two Mac Minis and PreSonus Studio One 3 edit software to convert audio to USB for the computers.
McCloskey says the plan is to bring more of that sound into the television mix, some of it live with a 1.5-second delay but much of it through a special audio-editing unit created solely for driver-to-crew-chief communication. The unit takes the digital RF communications through an analog output to play back live interaction and get it to air within 30 seconds.
The Roar of the Crowd
There will be more than 100,000 fans in the stands, and the venue itself is wired for sound with 2,791 loudspeakers covering the huge back of house, plus 295 Community Sound R.5 and R.2 series speakers facing the track from atop the nearly mile-long grandstand. However, McCloskey notes that the crowd sounds that make up much, if not most, of the sports-broadcast mixes are heard only just before the start of a NASCAR race and just after it ends.
Once the race starts, he says, you'll never hear the crowd no matter how big it is. Those cars are just too loud.
Stay tuned for more of SVG's live coverage from Daytona throughout the weekend at sportsvideo.org
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...
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
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...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
Live From Daytona: Fox Sports Stresses Audio From the Loudest Sport on Earth 150+ mics, real-time remote commentary will be part of the mix By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
