How Superbowl Audio Works
There’s a lot that goes into the 15 minute performance you see on TV. It’s a whole lot more than a single person turning a few knobs and hoping for the best. There are 3 primary positions- The stadium audio engineer, the monitor engineer, and the broadcast engineer.
The Stadium audio engineer controls everything the people hear in the stadium. There is a completely separate audio system that is brought in just for the half time(and pre game) performances. It is his job to make sure everything sounds good in the stadium.
The Monitor engineer controls everything that the performers hear. Each performer on stage essentially has a set of “headphones” that they wear so they can hear what they need to hear. They’re like the iPod earbuds, only a lot more advanced and a lot better sounding. There are also little speakers set up all along the stage so that if their in-ear mix were to fail, they could still hear themselves.
The Broadcast engineer controls everything we hear on TV. These guys are in a separate truck outside of the stadium. They have a bunch of TV monitors so they can see what’s going on, and a pair of speakers in the truck so they can hear their mix. What they hear is exactly what you hear on TV.
Days before the superbowl, the band will get together with this production team and start rehearsing the show. They’ll sit down with the monitor engineer and make sure everyone can hear what they need to hear, and they’ll run the show a few times so everyone knows what to expect. Then, the day before the superbowl, they will run the complete show a few times in the actual stadium to get a feel for the real show. While there is very little time to set up before the actual show, there has at least been a few hours of practice from all the band and crew, so they know what to expect.
Tonight’s superbowl performance was a mess. Someone was asleep behind the wheel on the broadcast side of things. You could hear the sound from the stadium, and it was fine. The mics were on and clear, but the broadcast engineer was missing a lot of cues. It happens in the heat of the moment, and it can be very challenging. It takes someone with a lot of skills to pull off a perfect show, and it’s yet to happen in all of superbowl history.
So, there you have it. The superbowl halftime show is a very big challenge, and it takes a lot of people to make it happen.
