CBS Sports Goes For A Virtual Intercom for the Final Four

By Dan Daley
SVG Audio Editor

When the NCAA Men’s Final Four showdown in San Antonio plays out April 5 and 7, the CBS Sports crews that have been chasing the 65 teams around the country since mid-March will have become experts at IP-based intercom. The network chose Intracom’s VCOM system, an all-software IoIP (intercom-over-Internet Protocol) consisting of a server-side Virtual Matrix summing/mixing engine and client-side control panels  for multi-channel/multi-access intercom operations.

“It’s a very cool system,” says Bruce Goldfeder, director of engineering/sports for CBS. “The NCAA finals are complicated, so we were looking for a simpler solution for the intercom. The way we’re using it, we can have a dedicated and very configurable trunk between the broadcast center [in New York City] and San Antonio.”

Goldfeder says CBS has a conventional telco solution as a back up, but says the IP-based solution seems to be working out well. Phil Adler, one of the event’s audio mixers, says it’s a strategy that’s transparent to the crews in the trucks.

“Once the intercom audio comes back to us, it’s converted into four-wire audio by a Roland DAC and then interfaced with our Adams intercom,” he explains. “We can configure it any way we need to: we have producer-to-producer channels, director-to-director channels and so on. As long as the Internet stays up, we’re good.”

One of the reasons the transition has been smooth is that Intracon’s VCOM is designed to virtualize the operation of a hardware-based solution. For instance, the summing aspect of the system is analogous to the functionality of a conference bridge used over a public or private switched telephone network. VCOM runs on standard computer and network hardware and is based on a dedicated server with multiple client architecture. Multiple group and individual voice paths can be established simultaneously and multiple conferences can be accommodated in any complexity, according to Intracom’s documentation. Users may talk and/or listen in a single conference or multiple conferences, in any combination and in any sequence.  

Other news from the audio front for this year’s March Madness is that a combination of Calrec Alpha and Sigma consoles have become the de facto standard in all the remote trucks. “It’s been nice and consistent,” says Adler. That’s good because CBS Sports has placed a higher emphasis this year on making the commentator audio more intelligible. “The mandate is to pull the [ambient sound] effect back in the mix and push up the announcers.”

Adler says he’s using a combination of EQ and compression techniques as well as riding the faders to achieve this. He’s also mixing at a much lower overall level in the truck than in the past. Acknowledging that even mixers can get caught up in the excitement surrounding the game while still mixing and taking cues from directors and producers. Adler says he pushed himself to mix at lower volumes. “The idea is to make your mix stand up at lower volumes and to not make it a race between all of the sound elements,” he says.

Like last year’s games, a Dolby E-encoded 5.1 surround mix is the only feed. After decoding in New York, the 5.1 is sent to HD customers and a LTRT fold-down via a Dolby 563 encoder goes to standard-def channels. Adler can monitor the LTRT mix in the truck, as well.

The surround channels get a mix of ambient sound, crowd noise and music. But unlike cinematic 5.1, Adler can’t use the surround channels for much of the ambient noise in order to free up more of the L-C-R array for commentators. “The idea is that you want the viewer to hear it as if he were at the game, and you don’t get that that surround effect at the game,” he says. “You just have to keep checking the mix in every configuration. Sometime, I still check it in mono.”