NBC Sports improves audio production with Dante

Sports broadcasts demand precision, reliability and innovation, notes Vince Lepore, global training director Audinate, who analyzes Dante's contribution to this sports network and how its evolution has been.

Over the years, the chain NBC Sports has adopted cutting-edge technology to improve its productions, offering optimal coverage to millions of viewers. One of the most transformative in your workflow has been Dante, an AV over IP platform designed by Audinate to offer compatibility between brands, reliability and efficiency.

Featured on NBC Sports in 2016, Dante has become the backbone of your audio and communication systems, revolutionizing the way the chain manages complex large scale productions.

Dante allows the network to expand the limits of live broadcasting, from intercom systems to audio mixing, playing a crucial role in the supply of Seamless sound experiences.

Dante networking at the core

In 2016, NBC Sports communications team made the decision to implement an entirely new system for its intercom backbone network. The technology Everything, developed by RTS Intercom Systems, combined Dante for audio networks and AES70 for control data.

At that time, Omneo was cutting-edge technology and using it at high-profile events posed considerable risk., but it paid off in this chain.

Later, the communications team, directed by John Pastore, senior director of broadcast communications at NBC Sports, started integrating Dante more into their workflows, not only in your intercom systems, but also in your audio systems.

“Regarding the incorporation of new technologies at NBC Sports, a very slow and cautious approach is followed, which is typically how we like to do things.”, Pastore stated.. Currently, the chain has implemented ten Dante-compatible audio systems, designed for reliability, flexibility and ease of installation for certain events.

Configuration for this type of event has included more than 350 Dante compatible devices, as voiceover consoles, analog to Dante converters and high-density audio console I/O units. On the whole, Networked audio and built-in Dante redundancy deliver robust, reliable performance, allowing NBC Sports teams to work with confidence.

The system has also sometimes included eleven RTS intercom equipment that incorporated 140 Omneo key panels, all tightly integrated with Dante to allow audio sharing between consoles, intercom and engineering terminals.

Stamford Operations Center

With Dante at the core, he Sports Broadcast Operations Center wrote NBC, located in the American city of Stamford, produces the network's year-round event coverage. This facility has one hundred Dante-compatible voice over consoles and eighteen I/O units high-density audio console, all integrated into the audio network.

Fourteen production control room intercom systems have used Dante as main RTS trunk, providing a dynamic and highly responsive production environment. In total, the global system has admitted more than 14.000 intercom and audio resources trunked, thanks to the unparalleled channel density of Dante and the management capabilities of Domain Manager.

The final mixes of the programs have been produced using console Calrec Apollo, Artemis and Brio, all of them equipped with Dante connectivity to guarantee fluid integration with the general network.

Scalability and centralized production

An extensive Dante network of, approximately, five hundred devices. But that number is only the tip of the iceberg., since it includes numerous consoles and converters with a high number of channels, which adds up to a total of 10.000 sources and 12.000 Dante destinations.

Footprint continues to grow rapidly as they get underway new control rooms and point-to-point audio interfaces inherited by Dante are replaced. “That number will increase substantially”, Pastore assures.

This expansion is largely due to the organization's shift to a production model of Field acquisition unit (FAU), in which Dante plays a fundamental role in making this transformation possible.

The Stamford facility now has twelve production control rooms; fifteen audio controls and two submix controlsa, and additional expansions are made regularly to this operations center.

With the FAU approach, mobile units deployed at events are only responsible for signal acquisition, while the main production tasks (video switching, audio mix, graphics and playback) are centralized in the operations center.

“The success of our FAU model depends on the ease and repetition we obtain when using the Dante infrastructure”, explains Mike DiCrescenzo, senior audio design engineer and NBC Sports A1.

Communications Modernization

The transition from analog to Dante is especially evident in the communications engine room, where the Old analog intercom systems now work alongside their Dante-based counterparts. The contrast is striking.

Traditional racks full of patchbays and analog patch panels multipin are being progressively replaced by modern configurations with Odin racks from RTS Intercom Systems and network switches from Cisco.

Commissioning of new intercom racks has become much more efficient, since it only requires a few network connections and well-known tools such as RTS AZEdit y Dante Controller.

Niraj Patel, NBC Sports Broadcast Communications Engineer, emphasizes that “with Dante Controller our systems light up quickly, with just a few clicks and drag and drop”.

Fluid large-scale management

To manage network segmentation, synchronization and management of multiple subnets, NBC Sports implemented Dante Domain Manager, “which has been the only way we have been able to scale to meet our needs”, point Dave Meehl, network broadcast communications engineer.

Given the complexity of the network and the number of professionals involved in daily operations, the team needed to simplify some of the most complex tasks. To achieve, They implemented the broadcast control system Cerebrum of EVS, that makes API calls to Dante Domain Manager through the Dante Managed API. This allows route changes in real time without operators having to interact with Controller.

To further optimize operations, Control rooms throughout the facility are equipped with touch panels Densitron, providing operators with intuitive XY routing capabilities, but with restricted access to the sources and destinations they need. This approach limits the scope of control, reducing the risk of accidental changes.

“Technical managers and engineers work primarily with sources that we have exposed through the managed Dante API in Cerebrum,” he explains. Paul Dryden, NBC Sports systems design engineer. Control is essential and we couldn't do it without Dante's managed API.”.

For the technical managers of NBC Sports, Dante has become much more than just a technology: It is the cornerstone of your operations. From initial adoption to today's advanced, high-performance workflows, has allowed them to evolve, face new challenges and offer top-level sports productions.

The scalability, reliability and flexible Dante integration have redefined the possibilities of live streaming, improving both behind-the-scenes technical execution and the on-air viewer experience.

Lepore wins

Global Training Director Audinate