NFL Media Launches World’s Largest Dante Audio Network

When the nfl began planning more than four years ago to move its headquarters from Culver City, California to a new facility located a few miles away in Inglewood, he had a vision of creating one of the most cutting-edge IP-based workflows in the world.

Opening just before the start of the 2021 season, the new NFL Media headquarters became the official home of the NFL Network, NFL.com, NFL RedZone, the NFL app, and many other departments that support NFL’s media operations. the league. These state-of-the-art production facilitiesbased on IPWith capacity 4K and HDRemploy more than 1,000 people and house five main stages, all of which are supported by numerous production control rooms, audio control rooms and workstations.

Bruce Goldfedervice president of broadcast engineering for NFL Media, says that these new production facilities feature 31 direct fiber audio locations from the building to nearby SoFi Stadium, home of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, plus six direct fiber audio locations throughout the complex.

The headquarters is also connected to all 30 NFL stadiums through a 10Gbps interface and to 32 NFL training facilities. Post-production operations consist of 18 high-end editing suites, two audio attenuation suites, and 90 thin-client VDI desktop editors that can be accessed remotely from anywhere in the building.

NFL Media currently produces broadcasts in 1080p 60 with audio Dolby 5.1but the infrastructure is capable of broadcasting at 4K 60 with audio Dolby Atmos 7.2.4 and can be expanded to any format in the future, including HDR or 8K. To tie it all together, NFL Media’s facilities feature nearly 18,000 Dante audio network connections, 16,000 MADI connections and more of 2,000 intercom channels of Riedel.

The Dante platform is a complete audio over IP solution that allows audio and control data to be transported over standard 1 GB Ethernet networks. Compatible with more than 3,500 products From more than 500 manufacturers, Dante replaces point-to-point analog and digital connections with software-based routing, effortlessly sending audio channels to any point on the network with perfect digital fidelity.

NFL Headquarters (Photo: Eva Murphy Ryan)

Solid State Logic

For audio production, the various studios are equipped with a mix of eleven audio consoles broadcast production SystemT with Dante’s Solid State Logic (SSL). SSL consoles and production tools are used by many of the world’s most prestigious studios and venues, and have been used for countless hit recordings, award-winning television productions, and major artists’ tours.

“This is one of the largest Dante installations in the world, if not the largest, and the NFL team chose SSL in part because we offer the most Dante-integrated broadcast production consoles on the market,” he says. phil wagner, Senior Vice President of Solid State Logic. “The Dante ecosystem is huge and continues to grow because Dante is incredibly robust, flexible, and secure.”

The installation is also using Dante Domain Manager to secure audio networks and enable seamless expansion of Dante systems over any network infrastructure. DDM is comprehensive network management software that enables user authentication, role-based security, and auditing capabilities for Dante networks.

“The Dante network and tools like Dante Domain Manager make it easy for us to quickly and easily reconfigure our audio workflows to bring together the equipment and people needed for any production. We needed a solid infrastructure for the productions we are creating today, and we need to know that the system we have in place can grow with us and adapt to our future needs. Dante offers that level of scalability and flexibility,” concludes Goldfeder.

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NFL Media Launches World’s Largest Dante Audio Network