275. Luke McRitchie & Brian Maddox On Mixing For The 2024 Paris Olympics

Luke McRitchie and Brian Maddox join the show in Episode 275 to talk about their experience working together as mixers for the Olympic Broadcasting Service’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics. They share what it’s like mixing up to 16 simultaneous broadcast channels at once for one of the largest viewing audiences in the world, as well as insights into making the leap from a full-time staff position to freelance work, and how the Signal to Noise Discord community directly led to Luke flying to join the Olympics team with barely a day’s notice! This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

Episode Links:
Brian On Previous STN Episodes: 151, 243 and 244
The Infamous Viral Olympic Chocolate Muffins
Brian’s video tour of the public parts of their Olympic Broadcasting Service offices
Episode 275 Transcript

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Transcript

Signal To Noise, Episode 275 Luke McRitchie & Brian Maddox On Mixing For The 2024 Paris Olympics

Note: This is an automatically generated transcript, so there might be mistakes--if you have any notes or feedback on it, please send them to us at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com so we can improve the transcripts for those who use them!

Voiceover: You’re listening to Signal to Noise, part of the ProSoundWeb podcast network, proudly brought to you this week by the following sponsors:

Allen & Heath, introducing their new CQ series, a trio of compact digital mixers for musicians, bands, audio engineers, home producers, small venues, and installers that puts ease of use and speed of setup at the heart of the user experience.

RCF, who has just unveiled their new TT+ Audio brand, including the high performance GTX series line arrays and the GTS29 subwoofer. Be sure to check it out at rcf-usa.com. That's rcf-usa.com.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green



Andy Leviss: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Levis, and with me as usual, the red hot to my chili peppers, Mr. Sean Walker. What's up, Sean? What's up, Sean? 

Sean Walker: Getting, you know, the usual, running a company, being a dad, you know, chatting with people online. You know, that's how it goes. How are you? 

Andy Leviss: Uh, you know, just pretty close to the same, just the 

Sean Walker: Are you, you look alive? 

Andy Leviss: Um, um, 

Sean Walker: too deep under your eyes? 

Andy Leviss: yeah, I mean, they're there, they're, they're definitely there. Boy. 

Sean Walker: How's, how's dad life? Crazy? Intense? Wonderful? 

Andy Leviss: it's good. I mean, you know, I've got an awesome partner who's just doing an awesome job of, you know, Keeping, keeping this kiddo alive and, you know, doing, doing my part and, you know, here we are, little dude is doing well. 

Yeah, 

Sean Walker: How cool, dude. 

Andy Leviss: well, that's, I want to hit the ground running because we have two guests on this one. Uh, one is a returning guest and long time friend of the podcast and one is a, a new guest, also long time friend of the podcast via the Discord. Uh, first, uh, we've got Brian Maddox joining us and Brian's been on the show a bunch, but Brian, do you want to give us the quick, like. 

30 second intro for anybody who, who's new to the podcast and uh, who you are, what your deal is. 

Brian Maddox: I'm Brian. Welcome to the podcast. As you can tell by, by my spirited voice, I am a very popular guest on the podcast. Sorry. Okay. I'm done with that. Um, yeah, no, uh, actually I was thinking before I got on this, it's like, um, What's the opposite of a long time listener, first time caller? Because, like, I don't really 

Andy Leviss: Ryan John. Ryan John is the opposite of that. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah, so it's like, I don't really listen to podcasts, but for some reason I keep appearing on them. So, there, there's my history. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, that's, I did the opposite. I went through the looking glass and I was listening and I was like, I'm never ever going to like host one and yet here I am a year later. 

Brian Maddox: This. 

Andy Leviss: Uh, yes, but so more, more generally, you want to give us the quick and dirty of like, well, what, what type of work do you do? What's it, what's your deal? Just again, for the few folks who don't know you. 

Brian Maddox: Sure, sorry, I should actually take this seriously, because some people are. Uh, I, I, I'm a, a, a long time, uh, 30 year experience, old guy, um, mostly do corporate stuff, actually exclusively do corporate stuff at this point. Um, we were talking just before we hit record. I tend to be the guy that you fly in when the stakes are high and the organization, um, and coordination of the event is low. 

So if, if, if you have a situation where all of you are jumping out of an airplane and then beginning to sew the parachute on your way to the ground, I am generally the person who is, uh, called to sew as furiously as possible. So that's, that's 

Sean Walker: Welcome to my call sheet. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Threaten Sean with a good time. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, right, totally. You're hired, Brian, you're hired. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And we'll, we'll link back in the show notes to a couple of the past nights Brian's been on, cause it's always a good time, even when he's phoning it in as he did last time. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah, true. 

Andy Leviss: The, it was the, the last time we had Brian on, he was literally driving home from a gig, uh, as we had him on a panel episode. So that was one of the exceptions we made to our new Bluetooth rule. 

Brian Maddox: Ah, yeah, I was going to say, I was like, there's a rule, you're not allowed to use a Bluetooth microphone. I'm like, wait a minute. I feel like, anyway. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, Bri Brian breaks the rules. He's allowed, uh, . Um, and then our other guest this week, uh, who as I said is, uh, those of you who are on the Discord will be well familiar with him, but new to the show is Luke McRitchie. What's up Luke? 

Luke McRitchie: Hi, happy to be here. 

Andy Leviss: Well, and again, why don't you give us a little quick of, uh, of, uh, who you are, what's your deal? Uh, as everybody can tell, he is German based on his accent. 

Brian Maddox: Yes. 

Luke McRitchie: Yeah, I've heard that I actually have an accent, but when I listen back I don't think I have an accent at all. Um, yeah, so, 

Sean Walker: All the American girls listening love your accent, so just roll with it like 

Luke McRitchie: okay, I will, I will just roll with it. So, kind of, unlike Brian, I do not have 30 years history, because I'm not even 30 years old yet. Uh, yeah, so, Scottish based audio engineer, uh, kind of do a bit of everything. A lot of corporate, a bit of music, a bit of kind of broadcast. This was really my first delve into broadcast that we'll talk about later. 

But yeah, kind of, I'm the guy that does audio but also does a bit of video, does a bit of LED. I kind of jump in and I'd like to think I saved the day. 

Andy Leviss: Get, get her done. 

Luke McRitchie: Exactly. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, that's a deep Americanism for the, for the American folks. Um, cool. So, yeah, the reason we got, uh, you two together, we've been, Threatening, promising to do this episode for a little bit, and it took some coordination across either three or four time zones, uh, is because, uh, Brian and Luke both were involved in this tiny little event some of y'all listening at home might have caught on TV if you were bored, called the Olympics. 

Uh, they both took part, uh, working for the Olympic Broadcast Service on the Olympics, and why don't we dive in and, uh, I guess, Brian, do you want to start with, tell us a little bit about exactly what they gave you guys? Did for the Olympics was and how you got involved and then we'll kind of get into how Luke came into the picture and go from there. 

Sean Walker: And how nice was it that Luke was there to show you how to do it so you didn't have to, like, stress about it, Brian, you 

Brian Maddox: Well, well, and the thing is, it's like, that's, that's, uh, that's, that's closer to reality than you think. So, so I don't do sports like at all. So one of the, one of the things that was really interesting about this gig, and I'll see I'll probably talk too long about it to do some explaining, but, uh, a lot, a lot of folks that came to the specific gig that we were doing all came from very different disciplines. 

It's, it's kind of an interesting thing. Um, so yeah, I'll give a quick little recap of OBS, Olympic Broadcasting Service and, and, and, and, and what their point is of that organization. It was started in the early 2000s by the Olympic Committee. Basically, to provide video and audio of every Olympic game that happens during the Olympics that they can then, uh, that rights holders worldwide can pick up and they can either lay their own commentary on top of it, or they can pick it up turnkey. 

Um, but the whole idea is that it's, it's unbiased. Olympic coverage. So in the U S a lot of times, most of what we'll see is like, you know, NBC's coverage or whatever, which will be some of OBS's, uh, cameras and audio, but then NBC will also have some cameras there. And of course they'll tend to focus on the U S athletes and, you know, and each country. 

We'll do similar things, you know, they may take the OBS feed, which itself is very generic, but then they may lay on commentary on top of that, that's specific to their country, you know, the people that are in Greece want to hear about the Greek athletes and the people that are in Italy want to talk about the Italian athletes. 

And, you know, that's, that's, that's fairly normal. So, OBS creates, uh, an international sound feed, which is basically ambient microphone. If you're in broadcast, you already know this, but if it's, it's a, it's an ambient microphone mix of the venue and it's usually, I just, you know, 40, 50 microphones. Like it's, it's a lot of coverage and they're, they're picking up every last little detail of sound. 

It's happening in the, in the, in the sport and delivering that. Um, and it's really, I mean, that's, that's its own. So in each venue, there's a, you know, somebody who's responsible for making all that international sound work. Um, A few years ago, a couple of games ago, uh, there started to be a, uh, a demand from some of the broadcasters for, you know, especially some of the smaller broadcasters that might not have commentary, you know, they may not have commentators or the, you know, the infrastructure in their studio to lay on top of the international sound, their own commentary, and they just wanted, you know, pre pre Pre packaged turnkey, please send us the sport with, uh, non biased commentary that we can then just turn right around and, and broadcast straight out. 

So a lot of the smaller countries, a lot of the smaller broadcasters were asking for this. So, um, OBS created, uh, what they call the MDS. OBS likes, um, uh, acronyms, usually three letters, extremely com, uh, hard to 

Andy Leviss: We love a good TLA. 

Brian Maddox: Exactly. Uh, But, um, basically what they did was they made a essentially 16 channel, uh, broadcast and it was produced covering what they thought were the, the most popular sports at any given point in time, all live. 

Uh, but basically giving broadcasters the choice of here's 16 channels of sports that you can, you can grab and it all has English commentary on it. It's completely turnkey. And so Luke and I's role was. to mix the commentary for those 16 channels. So that's our gig in a nutshell is we took international sound from the venues, we sat in a tiny dark room in front of a mixing console and a screen and uh, we basically laid commentary on top of international sound that was already provided for us. 

So that's In a nutshell, what the gig was. Hopefully that answered that question. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and I mean it was pretty straightforward. There was like, it was just like one sport, one game, one language at a time, right? 

Brian Maddox: It's almost like he already, already knew the answer. So Luke, why don't you answer that question of how straightforward it was? 

Luke McRitchie: Yeah, so, uh, I guess at some point it was just one spot on one channel, um, but with the nature of the gig, you have up to 16 channels, and Maybe a broadcaster wanted three of them, maybe a different broadcaster wanted a different three of them. So there was quite a few days where you'd maxed out all 16 channels, um, and you were kind of waiting on kind of more stuff to free up as soon as, as soon as it went live. 

And on top of that, It's not even like we had one go live, then the next go live, then the next go live. There was multiple times where we might have three sports, or even four sports, go live at the same time, which, uh, provided its own challenges. 

Andy Leviss: Audio tap dancing? 

Luke McRitchie: Yeah, if tap dancing was kind of break dancing and tap dancing at the same time, 

Brian Maddox: Yes. Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: what Australia tried at the Olympics, actually. 

Brian Maddox: Yes. Yeah. The, the, yeah, the one little, one little tidbit that I left out of my little explanation is we were producing 16 turnkey broadcast channels with two mixing consoles. So, uh, that's. That's really where the challenge was in a nutshell is, you know, any given time, you know, I might have eight or ten things or twelve things live, but I'm also prepping and sound checking commentators for another four to six, uh, sports while trying to keep track of what is already running live, um, and trying to make tweaks and adjustments to that. 

So while the mixes themselves were essentially. You know, five channel mixes, six channel mixes, um, when you've got ten of them running at a time, and oh Oh, by the way, several million people are listening to what you're doing. Um, that's where the, that's where the challenge sort of, uh, sort of becomes a, a, a significant lift. 

Sean Walker: So no big deal, really, just another day on the couch eating bonbons is what you're saying. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah, pretty much. 

Sean Walker: Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: So, like, how does the monitoring for the, are you just like round robin, like, monitoring through the different mixes, or like, how is that working? 

Brian Maddox: So, the, um, the, the, the only way that this worked is For it, we had three shifts a day, um, doing this, um, one of the venues for this was Tahiti, which is on a completely, totally different time zone than Paris is. Uh, so we actually had a night shift that was doing, you know, that was starting at like 10 o'clock at night and going into like four or five o'clock in the morning because they were doing surfing in Tahiti. 

Uh, so, which is now apparently an Olympic sport, but, uh, Whatever. Um, so, yeah, what, again, what made this really interesting, we've got, we had six producer teams, uh, in the room next to us, and that was, uh, you know, a line producer and, uh, you know, graphics person, and, you know, these are basically people that are producing a television channel, and they split the 16 channels that they were producing up amongst these six teams, and, you know, they split the 16 channels that they were producing up amongst these six teams. 

And then the six teams were deciding we're going to run this board at this time and this board at this time and oh, this one ran a little bit late, so we're going to have to cut, you know, we're going to have to cut into this later or we'll, we'll push the archery to channel six because we're running long on the track and field or, or whatever. 

Um, And so they're just kind of moving things on the fly and all six of those producers are then working with both of us as audio engineers because each sport, we just have kind of split them over the day between the two engineers, but none of the producing teams know what the other teams are doing. At any given time. 

So, you know, comms might be quiet for 15 minutes and then light up with four different producer teams, all wanting me to do something at exactly the same time, because they have no idea what the other teams are doing. 

Sean Walker: Holy shit, dude. 

Brian Maddox: and the, the way that the whole thing was structured, it was, it would have thrown a huge wrench in the works if. 

I was to just say, Hey, can I just shove these two sports over to my partner on, in the other room? Because, you know, we, we sort of had a plan in audio land and if we were moving our G, moving our plan as fast as they were moving their plan, it would have been really, really messy. So, so yeah, it was, um, I'd say the first couple of days, and I've been doing this for a, for a day or two. 

Definitely in my top five most hectic, most difficult. From a concentration standpoint, things that I've ever mixed in my life, it was 10 hours straight of no more than three minutes between, you know, you're doing something or doing two somethings or doing three somethings simultaneously. But sorry to circle back to the actual question. 

What, the only thing that made this work is. Each shift had four people, we had two mix engineers, that's what Luke and I were doing, we had an overall lead that was fielding questions and just, I don't even know, like doing stuff that, to keep other, other burdens away from us, but then we had a QC engineer, and all the QC engineer did was basically sit in a room with a punch panel, And just punch up all 16 live mixes and just punch up all 16 live mixes and just listen through. 

And so if I was working on something while I had five other things that I wasn't able to listen to, I'd get a quick call to say, Hey, can you circle back to archery? Because the, you know, the, the British commentator sounds a little bit low or the crowd noise is getting a little loud or whatever. And so they were the ones that sort of, you know, You know, kept us honest, if you will, to try to keep track of all of the things that, I mean, sometimes I wouldn't have even listened to a sport for an hour. 

Like I had set it up, I had set the auto mixer, I had set some compression, I had set some stuff, and I was too busy doing other things until the QC person would, you know, Ping me and say, Hey, check on Equestrian. I'm like, really the horses again? Why? But yeah, 

Sean Walker: Dude, that's intense. That's a lot of stuff to manage at one time. Good job, dude. Holy crap. 

Luke McRitchie: yeah, it was a bit wild and kind of The big thing for me is, as Brian's kind of alluded to, the first few days were absolutely hectic, um, and for myself, I landed kind of two days before the opening ceremony, um, so it made an already hectic kind of situation that much more hectic because I hadn't been there long enough to kind of really Get my nails into the systems and the processes and everything that kind of comes with an event of this scale. 

Sean Walker: And so were you two like leapfrogging back and forth? So like, you know, you, you and Brian were like, we're leaving each other basically at different shifts. Is that how that was working for you guys or something else? 

Luke McRitchie: Yeah, so I did the early morning shift and then Brian came in for the afternoon. So there was only Yeah, there was only a couple of days that we actually kind of spent that much time together in the studio. Uh, a few drinks after a couple of shifts and a couple of long days. 

Sean Walker: Only a few, huh? 

Luke McRitchie: Yeah. Only a few. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah, that was one of, one of the bummers was, um, so when, you know, when I landed, so there was three shifts, four positions, 12 people. period. There was no extra people on the crew. Every single one of us worked every single day. Um, 10, you know, basically 8 to 10 hour days. Uh, so when we landed, one of the, one of the guys that had been, uh, hired for the gig wasn't able to, to come. 

He had a health issue. Thankfully, it resolved itself. It was okay, but he wasn't able to fly and do the gig. So there was more than a bit of a scramble. It's like, we're short a person and we, there's no headroom. There's no extra person to fill in. So I, I, you know, so our, our supervisor was like, you know, does anybody know anybody? 

And I was like, well, I know a resource that we might be able to tap. It's a community, uh, called the Signal to Noise, uh, podcast community. And there's a lot of high quality people on there and I can, you know, I can reach out and, and, and see what we can find. And, and they were like, Oh, that'll be great. 

That'll be great. And so, you know, I posted something in the, in the job postings, uh, completely just. Hoping for the best, and it was just like, must have passport, must be able to leave tomorrow, must have next month open, um, you know, at warm body, please apply, uh, 

Sean Walker: not have wife and kids. They're going to stab you. Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: yeah. 

Brian Maddox: oh yeah, and UK based because it, because of the whole, for a bunch of reasons. So, um, yeah, Luke can tell the story of how he took that call, but we were, we were really kind of up against it. Like we needed, and, and the two mixed positions, not to, to discount the other two positions, because those guys actually have already come through doing what we do, but these are the, like, these are the hands on, like, This is, this isn't something you can just like swoop in and sit and punch through some things to go, Oh, this sounds a little funny. 

It's like, no, you, you've got to have some, some skills and some, some bandwidth to handle some really crazy situations. Um, and so Luke, why don't you tell the story of, uh, how, how you saw the listing and how you ended up in Paris? 

Luke McRitchie: Yeah, so that's a bit of a crazy story. Um, so I kind of saw the listing and I'm like, Oh, I know some guys that might be, might be great for that. And you do the usual reach out to freelancers. It's like, Oh, this guy's a great guy. Oh, he's not available. This guy's a great guy. Oh, he's not available. Um, and then it kind of reaches the point, a couple of days pass and I'm like, Eh, maybe? 

Maybe I could do it? Um, and then one thing leads to another and I've got a plane ticket booked for Sunday. Um, and it's like, it goes zero to a hundred mile an hour in kind of absolutely no time. And I just become the yes man. I just say, yep, yep, I will roll with the punches. I will kind of make it work. 

Because I had a full time job. Job at this time. And I kind of phoned my boss and was like, Please? Please? Uh, yeah, so kind of roll with the punches. Just, uh, Get on that plane and figure it out later. 

Sean Walker: That's the kind of job you, you quit to go do the Olympics, bro. You just say, Hey bud, can I have the time off? No, you can't have the time off. Then I fucking quit. Like kick Rockstock. I'm like, see ya. 

Andy Leviss: their credit, like looking through Luke's Facebook, like they were like, well we can brag on you that like one of our guys is going to do this, right? Yeah, here 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Hell yeah, we can like, I'd be like, get, get on a plane, Luke. See ya. Like, they let you go or did you have to quit? 

Luke McRitchie: yeah. No, they let me go. They were 

Sean Walker: Ah, we had a boys or gals or whoever. Yeah. Good job team. That's awesome. 

Brian Maddox: and I have to say, because if, no, go ahead, Luke, go ahead, Luke. 

Luke McRitchie: No, I was just going to say that meant that I landed I want to say the football started on, uh, day minus two. So, like, the opening ceremony would be day zero. Um, so two days before that was the football and I I seem to remember I landed the day before the football started, or it might have been the day before that. 

So the idea was I have a day on the desk and then after that we go for broadcast. So it wasn't quite the couple of weeks the rest of the guys had to kind of familiarise 

Sean Walker: What was the desk? 

Luke McRitchie: It was a Lavo MC 56, which I had also never used before. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, most of us have it. It's a cool desk, right? What'd you guys, what you guys got into it? Was it pretty sweet? Or were you just begging for a rivage at that point? Ha ha ha ha ha 

Brian Maddox: I'm not sure I'm allowed to comment on that because the various, I'm kidding. Um, no, I, I, so, well, one as an aside, um, Luke absolutely killed it. Uh, I mean, it was a really, really tough situation, uh, to be, to be thrown into. Um, and, and I, and it's, and it's worth noting, like, there was. Of the 11 of us, other than Luke, I think one of us was under 40. 

Almost all of us were over 50. So it was lots of guys with tons of experience. And we had had two weeks to discuss, here's how our workflow is going to go. Here's how we're going to trade off between different people. Here's how we're going to organize things. Here's how we're going to do things. Do things, et cetera, et cetera. 

Like, you know, because this whole MDS channel thing is still a relatively new thing. Um, there's not an established, you know, institutional workflow of this is the way it's always done. And in fact, the guys from LAVO. actually developed a workflow for us, uh, to, to make this even remotely manageable. There was 35 venues, there was 26 off tube locations, which are basically little booths in the IBC, International Broadcast Center, where we were working. 

And then of the 35 venues, I'd say somewhere around 16 or 18 of them also had on site commentary positions. So, for any given, you know, Broadcast, you're selecting which venue, where the commentary position is coming from, how many commentators there are, making sure the commentators, if they're local to the, to the IBC, can see the right sport. 

So they're looking at the right thing. Um, sound checking the commentators, making sure the commentators can hear each other and making sure the system was right. And da da da da da da da da da. Um, So the guys from Lavo actually, um, put together a system using, Luke, do you remember what the screen thing was called? 

I always forget what the screen thing was called. 

Luke McRitchie: I'm not entirely sure, but the screen kind of linked to the server at the back end, so we kind of had these kind of mini custom buttons that would do system routing for us, which definitely helped. 

Brian Maddox: Uh, yeah, I don't think, I don't think the job that we were doing could have, could have been possible any other way. We, they literally put together a user interface for us so that we could just say, we're coming from this venue. From this commentary position, and we need to put it into this auto mix on the desk and then select the auto mix and poof, it populates to the center of the console. 

Total input count for the console was well north of 200. Uh, total output was, uh, well north of a hundred, so it was a huge amount of io. And they basically organized a workflow such that we weren't, we weren't dealing with a lot of the back end, thankfully. And, and I mean, very, very, I got to give the LAVO guys a little bit of, of props because it was, you know, very complicated. 

And, you know, we would select a venue and the channel names would automatically populate to the right. Channel names. And like I said, um, would populate to the, cause each one of us had 32 auto mixes that we could drop things into and we could then organize things according to the order that they were in. 

And, and so it was, it, it made it possible. You know, sometimes it's situations like that. You're like, Oh, you know, it was just a convenience. Like, no, I cannot. I cannot imagine having to, like, hand route that, that stuff, uh, uh, no. 

Luke McRitchie: And that's the thing as well, is we had Labo engineers kind of on, on site as well, so When it came to kind of improvements that we could make to workflows and changes that we could make they were great to be able to just change things on the fly like that was just a kind of insane thing 

Sean Walker: Dude, how rad. 

Luke McRitchie: yeah that coming from kind of Uh, live perspective where the console is the console. 

Like, there is no flexibility in how things are done to have kind of two LAVO engineers on site that could turn around and say you don't like that Way that that is, well we can change that. We can make it this way. Would that be better for your workflow? And it's like, yeah. So 

Sean Walker: Dude, how awesome. 

Luke McRitchie: of hours later they make that change and we're off at the races. 

Sean Walker: How awesome. And, and, you know, for, for that company, like, how, what kind of experience is that? So they can go back and go, hey man, You got a big sports gig? Boom, here's the desk you needed. It's already been run through all that. Cause they, they stored all those changes. They, this is not going to be the last time they need to have that workflow. 

Right? So now they've got just a huge leg up on anybody else that's trying to do that too. You know what I mean? And when you guys go do it in the next four years, it'll already be built in. You already know what you're doing. You know what I mean? Piece of cake. You already have a homie at Laval to buy you drinks. Luke, are you old enough to 

Brian Maddox: and, and 

Luke McRitchie: Yeah. Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: Are you old enough to drink in the U. S.? 

Luke McRitchie: Just, yes. 

Sean Walker: Nailed it. 

Andy Leviss: Uh, so where is this, like is this, is this like, are they bringing in a corral of broadcast trucks to do this? Is there a studio? Like where, where is this all taking 

Sean Walker: Yeah. They build a joint or what? 

Brian Maddox: go Luke. 

Luke McRitchie: I was hoping you were gonna answer this. Um, yeah. So it's essentially, um, this kind of massive exhibition center was converted into. Uh, a kind of set of rooms and walls and areas, um, so the International Broadcast Centre took place at this exhibition center and the way that kind of we had it set up is we had our individual studio booths if you want to call them that and then connected to that was two more studio booths which had the lead mixer and the audio quality control which is then part of this bigger compound um which had everything it had food it had like ATMs to take money out, it had like shops for merchandise, like it had everything you need in this kind of temporary facility. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah, adding on to that, um, uh, OBS has developed over the last, you know, 20, 20 ish years, essentially, uh, completely modular studio system. So, all of the rooms, all of the build out, Inside these exhibit halls is all modular turnkey. It all comes down, goes on to trucks and gets stored in a massive warehouse. 

And so all that they do when they go to a new city is they just find hopefully an exhibit hall or some extremely large existing structure, and then they basically just bring all of the, all of the rooms, all of the walls, all of the AC units. All of the build out all, I mean, literally everything. And it's almost impossible to give a sense of the scale of this silly thing. 

Like, you know, Luke and I were working in one of the buildings that I would say would take a solid, you know, five, Solid five minutes to walk from one end to the other at a rapid pace, and there was five buildings. Uh, there were buildings we never even bothered to go into. Um, it, the scale is just utterly 

Sean Walker: built a city. 

Brian Maddox: they built a 

Sean Walker: They built a city. Yeah. All right. Cool, 

Luke McRitchie: and that's the thing, so OBS in Paris had eight and a half thousand people working for them directly and then however many kind of indirectly and the great volunteers that were helping during the Paris Games, the actual team that was working Kind of was working, um, both directly for OBS and kind of indirectly for the Olympics as a whole was just massive. 

It was kind of amazing to just be part of that, that bigger team. 

Sean Walker: dude. How cool. What a fricking cool experience that must've been like intense and crazy. Yes. But like looking back on it now, what a fricking cool thing you guys did. You know, like that's awesome. You guys good work. 

Brian Maddox: well, and I, sorry, Andy, looks like he was getting ready to ask a, probably a very pertinent question. Um, uh, 

Andy Leviss: Never. 

Brian Maddox: the, the, the coolest thing, and this was echoed by all, all my coworkers, and just about anybody that you ask, especially with the OBS team, will echo this. The, the coolest part of the whole thing is that the, the team is. 

Totally international. Like, you know, we had a 12 person, um, audio team, which is a really small team for a lot of these different, different teams that are, but, uh, there was one other American, um, there were only, I think four or five of us who were native English speakers. Um, you know, we had four. from Portugal and from Scotland and from Great Britain and from Spain and from Brazil and from Argentina and from Canada. 

And, and that was just it with our, our small direct team. Then we had an entire team of, uh, kind of university age. people that were actually managing the actual commentary units themselves, the actual hardware that people were talking through. And again, and Japan and China and, you know, I could just go on and on and on. 

And so, you know, being a part of this huge multicultural group and just the conversations that you would have in the exchanges with people from all over the world and a wide variety of ages. You know, uh, there was folks older than, so we've got folks in their 60s and folks in their early 20s from vastly different backgrounds. 

That's, the tech part is cool. Being part of something that big is cool. You know, doing something that's got that large of an audience is cool, but probably the day to day, the most interesting part of the whole gig. It's just working with this hugely diverse group of people, all who have the same common goal of we want to deliver the coolest experience worldwide for this worldwide sporting event, you know, perhaps the largest worldwide broadcast event in the world. 

In the world, I think that's true. Pretty sure that's true. Uh, you know, so yeah, on a personal note, aside from all the tech stuff, it's just a really, really cool personal experience. 

Luke McRitchie: Yeah. And just to add to that, kind of having such a massive group of people that are all as dedicated and as experienced and as knowledgeable as you can possibly get is Both a very intimidating experience to come into, but also just such a kind of liberating and great feeling when kind of a couple of days in they're like, yeah, you're one of us now. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, buddy. Get it. It 

Andy Leviss: So. I mean, this, this being like as unique a gig as it is, I'm wondering, like, is there like, is there stuff or like tips and tricks you picked up from that workflow that, like, that you wouldn't have picked up somewhere else that is more applicable to like other less chaotic gigs? Or like, like, what, what are the lessons you kind of, you kind of learned on this experience? 

Luke McRitchie: Yeah, I, I'll maybe start and then Brian can kind of take on. Um, I think for me, when I kind of spoke to a couple of people just before I had come out about what the. This job would entail and the nature of it. I think the biggest, the biggest challenge that I would have originally thought coming into it is navigating, listening to mixes while also keeping on top of comms. 

Um, but, and that's something that's very common in corporate work is, you know, You have to keep on top of comms. If your show caller is giving you cues, you need to nail the cues. You can't miss the cues. But also you can't make, you can't miss the fact that one of the presenters has got a lav mic on and they've just walked in front of the PA and you have to bring that down. 

So you kind of, you need to be on top of multiple things at the same time. So I would say that's a big thing. A big takeaway from the event is how do you manage that and how do you kind of navigate making sure that yes, you're focused on one thing, but that doesn't mean that you can ignore everything else that's going on. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah. The multitasking is, is I think the carry over, uh, for really any, any other endeavor. The, the amount of multitasking that we had to do, uh, was very intense. I mean, as I said, we had six different teams that were communicating with us independently of each other, which meant they were oftentimes talking on top of each other. 

And so you had to sort out, you know, You know, who's talking to me? You know, we had a, a reedle panel with, we had a reedle panel completely full, all, all, however many keys, 64 keys, whatever it is, completely full of, uh, between, uh, channels talking directly to commentators, um, so that we're interfacing with them, channels talking directly to our team, channels talking to each other. 

Um, so you're keeping track of all of that. And. Simultaneously, oh, by the way, you've got, you know, 10 mixes going out to air and another two getting ready to go live because I did leave out one nifty little bit, which was we were producing 16 channels, but we were also running some direct to tape, tape, finger quotes, EVS, so, uh, it was entirely possible for us to have, you know, 23, 24, 23, 24, sports broadcasts going simultaneously, even though we were only, you know, literally live on 16 at once. 

So the, yeah, the multitasking thing is, was super intense, super intense. And, uh, you know, learning how to manage that and, you know, everybody has to, to, to manage it in different ways. Um, one of the things that the, the, we, we were in, We kind of stuck to an individual console. So I was on console one, Luke was on console two. 

So the, the person that was on in front of me, um, in, in the early shift, because I am not a morning person, so I was definitely the afternoon guy, uh, would, would remark as we would kind of do the changeover, you know, and he would kind of sit back and, you know, I would start doing, he's like, you know, I'd get mixes going. 

And then I would be talking on comms. I would have the console, like, Like I wouldn't even be listening to the, he's like, you're, you're not even listening to the mixes. I'm like, dude, I can't, I, I can't focus on this heavy comms traffic, which is telling me what I need to do. And simultaneously in the background keep track of, and with any kind of critical critical listening, that was just me. 

I was like, I'm just, I recognized in myself, like. I can do one or the other, so it's like I'll concentrate on the mixes and then the comms would call and I would just, you know, turn off the solo and, and do the comms and then go back and forth, because, yeah, it's, it's so much, but it does, it completely applies to corporate work, it completely applies to, you know, anything that we do, it's like, we're often juggling, you know, multiple things at once, like, it's almost like having a, newborn. 

For instance, where you're suddenly juggling. So not that anyone here knows anything about that, but you know, it's kind of like that thing where you're juggling. That was my segue back to 

Andy Leviss: I was gonna say you're hitting me on both the newborn and the juggling. 

Brian Maddox: yes. There you go. 

Andy Leviss: Although if I were looking at the photos of the four of us, the one I would expect to be a juggler would probably be Brian. 

Brian Maddox: I do have a circus look to me. Yeah. Um, I do have a circus look to me. I'm also extraordinarily uncoordinated. So definitely not the juggler 

Andy Leviss: Um, I, so Luke, I mean, I don't know if there, is there anything like specific to the Olympics or workflow that like you guys think was cool to share that we haven't asked you about yet before we kind of tangent off of that a little more? 

Luke McRitchie: Um, probably not, to be honest. I think, I don't know about yourself, Brian, but I think we've kind of covered most of the nature of, uh The gig, I think. 

Brian Maddox: from I, and I don't know if, if, if Andy, you're getting ready to pivot over to technical, um, side of it. Are you getting ready to pivot over to the technical side of it? Um, 

Andy Leviss: We, we certainly can. I had another pivot in mind, but if there's 

Brian Maddox: okay, well, no, no, no, no, no. 

Andy Leviss: will love it. Yeah, 

Brian Maddox: the, the couple of things that were, were, were big learns for me was, um, because I hadn't done sports before, um, it's certainly not anything remotely like this, um, controlling the bleed in the commentary microphones for the folks that were on site, because these venues were completely packed with extremely loud, um, audiences, was, um, Extraordinarily tricky. 

Um, one of the tricks that the Lavo has is that it has an auto mix that is similar conceptually to a Doogan, except that all the parameters are controllable. So you can control the depth of the uh, You can control the attack and release of the amount of auto mix. You can control the threshold, you can control the weighting, you control. 

So, you know, really kind of the, the thing that, the other thing that made this possible was the ability to do, uh, for lack of a better word, a very, Subtle Dugan, where you know, things were only ducking out like by 3dB or 4dB or 5dB as opposed to completely disappearing, so I could have commentary that's, you know, pushing the crowd noise down a little bit or pushing the, the, uh their fellow commentators microphone down a little bit without it being, you know, like a Dugan would be very, you know, very, very obvious. 

Cause obviously, you know, if, if, if the crowd noise is going up and down by, you know, 20 DB, it's going to be extremely, uh, noticeable. So that was one of the LAVO things that was, uh, Kind of unique. So, you know, somebody said, would you have rather had a RIVAGE? I would have been faster on a RIVAGE by a long shot, and I would have loved to stick the, um, the, the dance, um, plug in on, uh, these commentary mics, because that would have helped clean them up a lot. 

But the, the LAVO's, uh, implementation of the AutoMix was, was really key to making the whole thing work. It, it gave us the ability to, put together a mix that would hold up and, and could be kind of put on the back burner until something significant changed. And then, you know, maybe, maybe a commentator moved their microphone a little bit, or sometimes a commentator would just change. 

They would have two and they would swap out one of them to a different person when I wasn't listening. Thank you very much. And so then I, you know, there'd be a tweak or something, but yeah, that, so from a technical standpoint, that auto mix thing was the biggest, exactly. 

Sean Walker: sounds, it sounds like it was the right tool for the job then. You know what I 

Brian Maddox: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Absolutely. 

Sean Walker: what your normal workflow or normal console is, and got to do a different, whole different vibe, but like, that was the right tool for the job. You know what I mean? And getting to learn that tool was, was the, was the thing. 

And, right? Is that what you're saying? Basically? 

Brian Maddox: absolutely. Well, and LAVO has a long, um, not to plug LAVO, but LAVO has a long history with, with the Olympics. And, uh, as you know, so they, they're, they're deeply embedded in the, in, in the, the, the needs of that specific gig and then applying their tool for that specific gig. One of the things that they, uh, implemented really on a wide scale, um, in Paris was, um, SMPTE 2110. 

Uh, transport protocol. So basically, as early in the, the signal chain as possible in general at the venues, everything was converted to 2110. Everything ran over, you know, standard, um, you know, 10, 10 G, uh, uh, networks. Um, everything was shuffled around via, you know, standard network protocols. And, um, In fact, the, the, the Lavo engineer said really the only analog endpoints. 

On this whole workflow are your control room monitors, uh, literally everything else was just, it all stayed 2110 all the way through to the broadcasters, you know, in the various countries on the other side. So, uh, definitely a, a tailor made solution for this specific problem. 

Sean Walker: Dude, how cool. 

Luke McRitchie: And just to kind of quickly add to that, despite that being as complicated as it is, with this being my first time on the lavo, I was looking at the user manual and doing training videos on the plane over to Paris and yet it was still kind of user friendly enough. To pick up things. So yeah, the first kind of day or two I was kind of only using basic um, parameters. 

And then as you develop confidence, you kind of use more and more of the desk. And by the end of the time I felt quite confident using the desk, but I think that only would've happened with the desk as it is and it being as kind of user friendly to get into. 

Andy Leviss: it's, it's super interesting. Cause like the, the brands of consoles we're all used to in the live world are very optimized for what we do. And like you switch over to the broadcast realm and like. There's three or four players there that like the consoles are very like LAVO, Calrec, SSL, and like there's like some cousins of like the DiGiCo line and maybe one or two others and they're they're structured very differently that like Us live folks sit in front of them and it's like, this is fucking weird. 

But then as you start to dig into it, you're like, oh, I totally get why it does it that way. For all the like crazy needs you're doing, and particularly on a gig as like complex and layered as what you two are doing is, is wild. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah, there's, there's, you know, horses for courses. As I say, you know, we like to, we like to argue, I like this guy, I like this guy, I like these, I like, it's like, you know, every, everything, the, you know, if you, if you want to dig into a lavo to find, um, the, the, the brycasty plugin, you're not going to. Uh, you know, if you want to put a delay in, well, you can, you can time shift a channel. 

Uh, you know, there are no effects, there's no, you know, because it's a broadcast desk, like that's not what it does. But if you want to, you know, create 96 mixed minuses, Uh, quickly and easily, well, that's, that's the tool for the job, like that, that'll get it done. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, that's, uh, yeah, that's one of the biggest things on, like, any broadcast desk that, like, somebody come over to get used to is, like, mixed minuses are a little bit of a, of a mindfuck the first time you're on it. Because for the, for those who aren't familiar, like, a mixed minus is when you've got a mix that everything but the thing you're sending back to it, so that you're not getting, like, echoes and feedback to it to kind Grossly oversimplify, but what broadcast desks do is they basically have mix minus buses that are backwards buses from how we would normally assign a bus. 

So, whereas like on a normal live console, a normal mix bus that's like a fixed send, you tap the button for what you want to go into it. Often on a mix minus on a broadcast desk, by default, Everything goes into it and you tap what you don't want to go into it. So there's a lot less thingy involved when it's like, I'm like, I have a zoom presenter coming into a broadcast. 

I want to make sure I'm not sending them back to themselves. It's one button to do that instead of having like Yamaha's have started to add more functions for that. Like for a while they had sort of a, you know, a half assed way to do it where they would like basically it was almost a permanently built macro to build that mix for you at the one time. 

But then you'd have to rebuild it, you know, another way to change it. And that's one of the big things in broadcast desks is that they have that functionality built in. And once you learn how to use it, it's so powerful. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah, I'm just, um, only because I literally just, just needed to use this functionality on the last gig that I did. Um, I was on a PM5, uh, Ravage, and, uh, Uh, I had a bunch of different feeds where the spec was for full mix, um, but not the playback machines, full mix, but not the live entertainment, full mix, but not, and then full mix and the, uh, The inputs were changing like constantly, like, like they were adding things and then adding other things and then adding other things. 

And what I ended up doing is anything that required a full mix, I just basically put it on a mix minus bus and I took my last channel that I knew was never going to get used and I assigned that As the minus that turns it into a mixed minus bus and that sends everything to it. So when, you know, when you're dealing with 143, I think, uh, well, yeah, I mean, I was only using the first 144 of the, of the desk, but if you're dealing with 143 channels and you're not sure when you're going to add more stuff. 

It was an extremely quick and dirty way to just, I want this, I want all these channels to go for sure, even if I add stuff, and then when somebody says, oh, we don't want to hear the ambient mics, it's like, okay, ping, ping, ping, now you're not hearing the ambient mics. Uh, so it was getting kind of used to using a mix minus, not just as the traditional. 

You know, send everything except minus the one thing that's coming from there, but also just making a quick and dirty. Everything goes to this and then, oh, and then turn these things off. Now those things aren't going to it anymore. Um, and you, you know, you can start with everything's going to it. It's a full mix. 

And then very quickly on the fly, go, Oh, you. I need to take this out and you just take it out. Pivot, pivot, pivot. 

Sean Walker: That makes that so much simpler. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and it's been, I mean, it's been great even on the live thing to see Yamaha starting to add like more functionality and more, slightly less hacky ways of doing it than they had on the QLNCL. But even there, there was at least, buried in the menu, a way to sort of build that quickly. But yeah, it's cool to see them adopting more of those broadcast y elements to it. 

And I know they've got like a broadcast, like, package for the DM7, so. Curious to like poke at that at some point and see what they've added in there as well. Um, I don't know, is there any other like technical stuff we wanted to touch on or should we take the last little bit of this and there's a couple other directions I think we could pivot from this. Pivot, pivot, pivot! Uh, so Luke, we were, we sort of, Touched on parts of this when we were all chatting beforehand, and I'm not going to get into the specifics of that, but I know on the Discord too, you've talked a little bit about how you had a staff position, you took time off to do this gig, and uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but that sort of kind of pushed you into the, maybe it's time for me to start thinking about going freelance. 

Um, do you want to talk a little bit about, about that journey you're on right now? 

Luke McRitchie: Yeah, definitely. Um, so, kind of from a personal perspective, there's a couple of things that happened kind of earlier in the year in my kind of personal life that kind of, I don't know, it reminds you that life's short, um, and you've only got A finite time to kind of do what you want to do. Um, so I'd say probably from kind of March onwards, I had kind of seriously considered could I go freelance? 

Could I make it work? Um, but as, as we all know, Impostor Syndrome kicks in and then you're like, uh, I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can make it work. And then kind of Paris happened and Brian's like, yeah, come out. I don't see why not. Uh, so I came out like, I guess made it work and 

Sean Walker: That was a pretty perfect Brian impression, really, to be honest with you. Yeah, 

Brian Maddox: Yes, yes, 

Sean Walker: Nailed 

Brian Maddox: pretty spot on, pretty spot on. He got the accent and everything was nice. 

Luke McRitchie: So kind of came back with this kind of level of confidence and like, okay, maybe, maybe I can make this work. Maybe I can, um, Have a go. Um, so kind of in the process now of kind of exploring what that, what that looks like, um, I believe when this episode goes out I will actually be officially freelance. 

So that's, 

Andy Leviss: was going to say, I hope you didn't just blow your own shit up to your employer in this episode. www. 

Luke McRitchie: no, they've, they've been aware and I've, I've, I've worked a notice period. But, uh, yeah. Um, that kind of, that will finish up probably about when this episode goes live. So I'll be officially freelance and, navigating that kind of, 

Sean Walker: He's all and call me. 

Luke McRitchie: yeah, anxious but also 

Sean Walker: right. Totally. WW dot. 

Luke McRitchie: that kind of, yeah, that kind of balance between this is really exciting, the world's my oyster, but also now I need to, like, actually, you know, Get my shit together and kind of say yes and go for 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Say yes. What the heck, bro? That's awesome, dude. Congrats. And you got a killer fricking feather in your cap to put on your resume for when you're like, Oh, why would I pick you over the X ray? Well, I mean, I mixed the Olympics. Does that count? Oh shit. Okay, cool, man. Nope. Yeah, we'll hire you. 

Luke McRitchie: And that's the thing, like I've, I've worked full time for a couple of years and through that time have developed so many great freelancers that I would consider friends. And since speaking to them about kind of going in that freelance direction, there's been so many great people that have come out and said, yeah, like I'll vote for you or I'll, I'll put it in a good word, or even, yeah, I want you as my A2 on this gig or this gig. 

Um, and it's, it's been so great, like I would not be where I am today in terms of confidence or skills if it wasn't for the great team, um, both at my full time work, but also kind of the wider freelance community in Scotland and the wider UK. 

Sean Walker: Dude. That's awesome. Good work, dude. 

Luke McRitchie: And I'll include you in that, Brian. 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Brian Maddox changing lives. Life coach, Brian Maddox. 

Brian Maddox: Life Coach Brian Maddox. I, I will say if, if to, to, to, to, to change your lives one life at a time. Um, I will say to, to, to, to, To, to, to plug the podcast, um, Discord, if you're listening to this podcast and you're not a member of the Discord community, you are really, really, really missing out because there is just so much to, to, to learn from the community of people that's there. 

You know, we've, we've got folks, you know, like me that have been doing this for 30 years. We've got folks that are starting out. At age 15 and everything in between and uh, there's just so much great community and great opportunity. You know, we all suffer from imposter syndrome. We all do the, I, And this is, this is 

Sean Walker: Yes, we 

Brian Maddox: a, this is, yes we do. 

And this is not, um, this is, this is what it is. But in the U S we think of the Olympics as being kind of a big deal, but you know, whatever, um, as an accident of scheduling, I was the primary, I was the one that did the opening ceremony, uh, and again, you know, five inputs, six inputs, not a big deal, um, got it all rolling and then I googled and it's like, yeah, estimated, um, viewership, three billion people and it's like, oh my, 

Sean Walker: You should have waited till after. You should have waited till after so you didn't have a fucking heart attack, Brian. Jesus, bro. You're too old for that kind of shock, dawg. 

Brian Maddox: and, well, and, you know, and, and, and, you know, to, to full disclosure, you know, the channel that we were doing, it was probably only 5 percent of that audience was actually listening to what I was doing. That's still a lot. A lot of people. Um, 

Sean Walker: That's, that's more people than the entirety of my career put together, Brian. 

Brian Maddox: My, my, my other little stat that I loved, because again it was just one of those like mind blown. I stuck, I stayed and actually did the Paralympics, which You know, is definitely more downscaled than the Olympics. Um, and so I had this kind of view that it was, you know, kind of a small time thing, but, you know, the Olympic committee just went ahead and did it because everything was set up and whatever. 

And so again, I'm doing the opening ceremony. I get it all set up. It's rolling. It's working. It was actually harder because the, the, the commentators were actually, you know, in the stadium and it was in a stadium and it was a little bit more challenging but i get it all set up and it's like okay it's working it's doing its thing everybody's happy and i like googled like who's watching this because i'm thinking who's who's watching this like i i and the 

Andy Leviss: learn his lesson the first time. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah, as if I didn't know that. 

And, um, the estimated viewership of the Paralympics opening ceremony is 300 million people. Um, to put that in perspective, the last Super Bowl, which was a record viewership, was 238 million people. So, 

Sean Walker: Totally. 

Brian Maddox: yeah. And again, that's not, that's in no way, shape or form a brag. It's just sort of a like, you know, everything gets in perspective and you go, um, Um, okay, I should probably be careful. 

Uh, I should probably watch where I put my coffee cup. I should just probably pay some attention to I had, I had, 

Sean Walker: walking to work every day. Don't fuck this up, Brian. Don't fuck this up. This is good. 

Luke McRitchie: well that's the thing as well, like Brian said, Scotland has a population of like 5 million, so there's 

Sean Walker: The whole country's watching. 

Luke McRitchie: yeah, there's a very high likelihood that using conservative figures that there's more people listening than there are people in my country, which just, 

Sean Walker: Mind blown, 

Luke McRitchie: mind blown. And it's alright, you've checked the user guide for the desk on the way to Paris. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, no problem, you had two days notice, you read the RTFM on the way to the fucking airport. It's just, I got this, no big deal. 

Luke McRitchie: So how do I EQ on this desk? Yes, yes, it'll be fine, it'll be 

Andy Leviss: I mean, I'm not going to lie. I'm currently a few days a week covering a gig at a broadcast studio for a major network and streaming service that is on one of those LAVO consoles. And there is not a day that I have to touch that console that I'm not at some point flipping through the three ring binder of the manual next to the desk for, wait, where do I find that thing again? 

So I feel ya. I feel ya. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah, well, I mean, the desk is so deep and so customizable. So then it just becomes like, well, how did they build this one out? Like, how did they do this? Uh, 

Sean Walker: Like in, like in the, in the show file, or like from the factory, when you say customize one, build it out? 

Andy Leviss: Yes. 

Sean Walker: Both. Okay, got it. 

Brian Maddox: yeah, yeah, 

Luke McRitchie: that's the thing Sean, so this, the thing that kind of blew my mind initially is what I think of an audio console being An audio console was not what the LAVO was. So the LAVO was essentially a fancy kind of, uh, controller. So because of it being a controller rather than kind of an audio desk in the traditional sense, it connected to servers on the back end that did all the processing. 

So it meant that this kind of control surface can be customized in so many different ways because it doesn't have to have that feature there or that thing there. It can have it wherever, because it just sends a command back to the server which then actually does what you want it to do. 

Sean Walker: That is awesome. That is so awesome. In that particular case, that's so awesome. In a, like Live quick corporate thing would just be brutal to have to have that much programming before you could do it, right? But like, how cool to have that power and custodability at your fingertips for 

Andy Leviss: It's like back to. Back to the Freeform DSP we were talking about the other 

Sean Walker: Shoot me in the face. I'm gonna run over the top of you, Eddie. Shoot me in the face. 

Luke McRitchie: that thing as well, I don't see any other way that you can change a control in one audio console, and it not only change your main audio console but also a redundant system at the exact same time in real time. I think that can only really be done with these separate kind of server units. If I had two ravages in front of me, I'm not changing the game or both at the exact same time. 

and making minute adjustments on both at the same time. 

Sean Walker: Right, totally. 

Brian Maddox: Well, and the, and the, the, the thing that, uh, I keep forgetting what it's called, so I'm sure that there'll be lots of comments in discord. They'll say it's called the EW thing or whatever it is, but the, uh, essentially the touchscreen surface that the Lavo engineers, you know, put together for us is. Built into the LAVO software, basically they can make, you can make a completely customized, I mean, if you think about standard mixing consoles having a whole bunch of different windows and a whole bunch of different screens that you deal with, imagine if you could just start with a blank slate and say, I need to make a bunch of buttons and I want them to be yellow and I want them to turn green when I hit them, And I want them to say this, and I want it to be this big, and I want this one, you have to press and hold it, because I want to make sure I don't do that one by accident, and I, you know, like, that's the degree of custom, customizability, like, when we were selecting, it's this venue, and it's this venue to this automix, It was populating the channel names, where the automix went, where the inputs went, you know, where the insert point for the embed, de embed for the SD, like it was doing a sea of things on the background with just a, you know, single button press. 

And, you know, as the days, days went on and we needed some, you know, Other features, or we wanted to change some things, we could just ask the Lavo, and can you just please make a button on here that does this? And, you know, an hour later, there'd be a button that does this, including a button that was just, can this button just reset this one screen on the controller? 

Because the one screen is, is occasionally freezing. And so there was just a button that was like, reset that screen without upsetting anything else. And it just reset that screen. 

Sean Walker: Dude, that's awesome. What a freaking cool gig, you guys. What a great experience that must have been for so many different people from so many different countries and so many people watching and what an intense thing and then you got done and went, fuck yeah, we did it, dude. It was a success! We did it! 

Like, good job you guys! Way to go! 

Luke McRitchie: And that's the thing as well, like the community of kind of OBS is so good. Like, just in our team alone, when you're working with the same people for like 23 days straight, you create connections for life. Like, I don't think I'm underrest I don't think I'm understating or overstating that. Um, when you spend that many hours a day with the same people that have, that just have your best interests at heart, it's, it's such a great experience. 

Brian Maddox: Yeah, it really is, it really is an amazing team. I do have to say one, one funny story. Uh, uh, when, when Luke came on, cause he sort of like, he parachuted in at the last second. And the, uh, the, the, the standard, uh, not standard, it's, it's established. It's, it's a rule. Uh, everybody. communicates in English because it's, you know, so many different communities, just to make sure everybody stays on the same page. 

We all communicate in English. Um, several of the, the, um, guys came to me at various points, um, who were very fluent in English. And they were like, Luke is great, but we can't understand a fricking word he's saying. And, and, and it was, and I, and I like never really thought about it, but like, yeah, like, you know, if English is your second language and you're confronted with a fairly strong Scottish or Irish or really any other, you know, they, they were like, we, we get like every other word, like, we're really not sure what he's saying, 

Andy Leviss: I'm just picturing the, the Robin Williams like drinking with different cultures and he's like drinking with Scotsman is like an experience because like you can barely understand them in the first place. It's like then you get, then you get a couple drinks in them and they, you get a couple drinks in them and they start having vowel movements. 

Brian Maddox: Uh, 

Andy Leviss: I eat all of you, and sometimes a lot, yeah. 

Luke McRitchie: And that's the thing, like, when you're on comms and you've got so much going on, it's so much effort to put on an English accent and speak, kind of, English. And all very proper and slow while you've got a million things going on and you're just like, uh, 

Brian Maddox: yeah, it's, it's very difficult to add consonants to your, uh, to your language that you don't normally use because Scottish really only uses like what, what, 19 letters, 18 letters, like a significant number of consonants that are just thrown out because they don't feel like it. Um, so yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it was fun. 

It was very fun. And, and we had a. We, I mean, we did, I could just go on story after story of the, of the guys that we worked with and, but just an absolutely insanely great group of people. And, um, the MDS, uh, thing that we did was apparently, I don't know if, um, Luke, you even knew this was apparently so popular that the, the broadcasters want us to do the same thing to put, you know, unbiased English commentary on top of every sport for the Olympics from beginning to end, not just 16 channels, which means that the entire team is going to be expanded for the winter Olympics and then very much expanded for the next summer Olympics. 

So, so Luke, you may want to keep your calendar open. I'm just saying. Um, and, uh, anybody else that's interested may want to, um, To, to, I don't know, DM me or something, because I have a feeling that there's going to be, going to be lots of, lots of folks, uh, that we need to fill some slots. 

Luke McRitchie: and totally not to intimidate anyone, but what I got told on my first day on site was You're part of a great team. This team is some of the most experienced and knowledgeable Sound engineers in the world. And I was like, that's, uh, totally not intimidating at all, but they're such a great team to work with. 

Sean Walker: Dude, that's awesome. How cool. 

Andy Leviss: I've two quick questions to wrap us back up, because I know we're, 

Sean Walker: It's time to wrap it up for sure. Hahahaha! 

Andy Leviss: ask, because we gotta bring it around to food somewhere here, did y'all get to experience these, like, viral Olympic chocolate muffins, or was that like, was that solely the domain of the athletes and it never made it over to the broadcast center? 

Brian Maddox: I, I, I, I got no muffins. That's, that's, that's all I'm going to say. There were, there were no 

Luke McRitchie: I don't, yeah, no muffins. 

Andy Leviss: Okay, so the magic chocolate muffins go on the rider for next time, got it. And then Brian, I got a question for you, because normally we would ask, uh, uh, experienced guests like you, if you could go back in time and talk to yourself earlier in your career and give yourself one piece of advice, what would you do? 

But since we've got you and Luke here, if you could give Luke, who's at an earlier point in his career than you, one bit of advice that you wish you had when you were at that point in your career, what would it be? 

Brian Maddox: man. I, you know, the thing is Luke has already got it and sorry, this is just sound like what it sounds like. Uh, Luke's already got so much going on that it's, there's very little that I feel like I could even tell him and I'm. That's not me shining him on. It's just the truth. He was a total rock star on this gig. 

Um, and you know, I just, it's like, just basically just keep killing it. It's, you know, show up, say yes. If you are just starting as a freelancer, say yes to everything that you can possibly fit into your schedule, go out and kill everything. Even if in the first hour, you're like, I never want to work with these people again. 

Doesn't matter, just go out there and, and kill it because your reputation is made in the first two or three years as a freelancer and if you nail it, you can just ride on it for the next 25 years, ask me how I know. So that's my advice. 

Sean Walker: Totally! That's awesome. Well guys, thank you so much for hanging out and sharing your time with us. Awesome fricking experience. It was such a cool gig. We really appreciate your time and the coordinating it took to get everybody from different continents and time zones here. Thanks to Allen and Heath and RCF for letting us rip. 

Nice shirt, Andy. Nice Allen and Heath shirt there, buddy. And, uh, that's the pod y'all. See you next week.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green

Andy Leviss: Yeah, we haven't done B Roll at the end of an episode in a little bit, but uh, who knows? Maybe this'll be it. 

Sean Walker: Is this the time? Now's the time? 

Andy Leviss: is the time, right? 

Brian Maddox: the time. 

Andy Leviss: I don't know, is it too contrived if we're doing the B Roll intentionally? 

Sean Walker: Maybe. Maybe. 

Brian Maddox: A bit. Yeah. Well, although then is, is this the B roll of us talking about the B roll that we're doing intentionally the B roll. So then it's double intentional. So then it's B rollception. So then it works. Hi. 

Andy Leviss: At that point we've gone past B past C to D-roll, or droll, so we should probably get going with the actual episode. Hey! Hey [starts laughing] 

Sean Walker: Aaaaand scene.