Behind the Broadcast!

Part of our new curriculum expansion included adding broadcast audio engineering to the collection of disciplines that we teach at the Conservatory. With the assistance of Fred Aldous, who has a long career working in many aspects of audio engineering, including running sound for Olympic events, baseball World Series, football Super Bowls, NCAA National Basketball Championships, the Daytona 500 and more, we have build a fully comprehensive broadcast curriculum.

With our brand new Studio E and MBU, students get hands on experience with everything audio for broadcast – including party lines, communication systems, audio feeds, mobile trucks and more!

Watch this video to get a glimpse on what it’s like to be a student in our broadcast classes. Fred goes over everything that needs to be taken account of when making a quality broadcast mix. When you turn on a sporting event, do you realize that every sound that comes out of the television had to have been miked up at one point, routed, mixed, and polished by an audio engineer, all before it hits the air waves! This audio is all live, so you only get one chance to make it right!

There are four elements to broadcast audio – announcers, field/stadium effects, playback material, and sound effects for graphics/transitions. And with all of these events running in real time, you need to be able to listen to producer cues, pay attention to what is going to happen, and make sure what is going out on the air is good quality!