Artificial crowd noise at Indy? (MERGED)

Re: More Polian shenanigans -- artificial crowd noise?

SaCaCh said:

This really is getting sad with you guys...it's really sad. Its a CBS issue, nothing more. Move on, celebrate a good win. Paranoia much?

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Give it a rest. Greg Aeillo of the NFL is looking into it, so whether it turns out to be anything or not, the question is very legitimate.

We can celebrate a win and still discuss other items, like AP's record, the fall of the Chargers, and the cheating of your pal Polian.

workhorse said:

If you can't hear it from the radio broadcast and those at the game did not hear it, then it had to be a CBS issue. I know most here hate the Colts and want to see someone go down, but this is really reaching.

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This is my opinion also.

Re: More Polian shenanigans -- artificial crowd noise?

sarge said:

I heard it to at that exact moment.

I also noticed the only thing stuttering was the crowd noise.

Everything else was normal.

Someone needs to YouTube it!

I wonder how long the Colts have been doing this crap!

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I think this calls into question the Colts' AFC Championship*, which was won* in their own stadium.

Re: More Polian shenanigans -- artificial crowd noise?

shakadave said:

I think this calls into question the Colts' AFC Championship*, which was won* in their own stadium.

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Since no one at the game is making any claim, I think this is a non-issue.

Have you ever been to a game at the dome? The sound system is sooo crappy you can't hear the ref most of the time and rarely understand any of the commericials on the jumbotron. If they were pumping in sound it wouldn't help, you wouldn't hear it unless the dome was silent.

Even the Indy response brought a chuckle "ridiculous and unfounded" - a little testy there Polian?


"In reference to questions regarding the audio transmission of yesterday’s game, please refer to the following statement from the NFL:
CBS has informed us that the unusual audio moment heard by fans during the Patriots-Colts game was the result of tape feedback in the CBS production truck and was isolated to the CBS broadcast. It was in no way related to any sound within the stadium and could not be heard in the stadium.
We trust this will put an end to the ridiculous and unfounded accusations that the Colts artificially enhanced crowd noise at the RCA Dome in any way."

workhorse said:

I was and I truly did not hear anything like what was on the TV broadcast.

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Thanks for the simple answer. Count me among those who wanted to reserve opinion unless we knew for sure that it wasn't CBS' mistake. Now that it is, I want to move on to the main gripe - the poor officiating.

Re: About the crowd noise...

Nitro said:

I can hear it on the BCN clip, it's much more mixed in, but i can definately hear what sounds like a diesel idling mixed in with the crowd noise.

Which makes sense, i don't think they use those dish antennas aimed at the crowd (and PA speakers) so it would be much less obvious.

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I have heard others claim this too. Because this sound we're talking about is feedback, (I'm sure it is), CBS could not have had anything to do with it. The broadcast company sets up it's own live mics. They only go to one place and that is the broadcast audio console. The stadium engineer does not have access to them at his console. Also CBS's engineer does not have access to the stadium's sound system. There is only one mic that is split to go to each of the two consoles and that is the ref's mic used to describe penalties.

It requires a set of speakers and a microphone to create feedback. The only live mic that that is supposed to be plugged into the stadium console during the actual game is the ref's. If it were inadvertently left hot, field noise would have been pumped through the stadium system and not crowd noise. The logical conclusion is that the Colts have their own mics setup whose sole purpose is to pickup and amplify the crowd noise and they are under the control of the stadium engineer.

We'll hear more about this and it will soon take on a life of it's own. Having the recording of this is akin to watching the Spygate tapes.

For those that may be wondering, I work for this company.

http://rainbowproductionservices.com/index.htm

I have been in the live production business for 32 years and have just put two major systems together. One is for the Three Days Grace/Breaking Benjamin tour and another for 25 dates on the Dane Cook tour that just went out the door. I have mixed events at Shaefer Stadium in the form of a Christian rock event that had a live mass given by Cardinal Law and a few country western shows when it bacame Gillette. For decades I have been doing the Oldies 103 shows at the Hatch Shell and am also the preferred engineer for the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra at their larger outdoor events. Microphone/speaker induced feedback is a live engineer's nemesis and we are very in tune to it's characteristics.

Here is my contribution to "noisegate". I work with audio from podcasts a lot, and I am familiar with audio files. Here is the graphical representation of the audio from the CBS feed. I labeled points of interest.

You can clearly see the noise level increase by approximately 3 fold at one point, where the skipping starts, and where the skipping ends. Notice how the audio signatures are similar before the crowd noise increases noticeably from 0 to 5 seconds, and how it looks from 22.5 to 22.7 seconds. You can also see how the baseline noise is uniform from the time the skipping starts until it ends. At no other point in this audio is the baseline uniform. That suggests to me that it is artificial/mechanical in some way.

Image of the CBS audio in question

Uh...

It's "reaching" enough for Aiello to be looking into it.

Perhaps if the Colts weren't already warned about it once...


So we have motive, and precedent. I don't think these accusations are so off the wall.

Message to Polian.....Try an MP3 Player

No Skipping!!!!!!!!

I suppose somebody could compare the radio audio to the same moment this "feedback" occurred that supposedly only affected the CBS broadcast.

I suppose somebody illegally taped the game from inside and has the same audio moment on tape.

Wouldn't it be funny to catch CBS lying?

I'm not sure that makes sense. And I'm not sure I like this new style of NFL where everybody is out to destroy everybody else publicly. It's getting ridiculous. Can we just play football like we used to and suck it up when it comes to the espionage and trickery of home field advantage?

Who knew this many audio experts were Pats fans. Bring on the evidence. I don't care if they get punished, just shut the holier the thou media experts up.

If you can't hear it from the radio broadcast and those at the game did not hear it, then it had to be a CBS issue. I know most here hate the Colts and want to see someone go down, but this is really reaching.
__________________

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The radio broadcasters do not have a parabolic mic on the field. Their speech on their headsets bleeds out the sound coming from inside their stadium. So I have to disagree with you here.

I remember these are the kind of statements we were making after the Jets game too. We thought it was all bunk and just a bunch of haters. A week later the Pats lost a 1st round pick, BB lost $500K, and the Pats became "cheaters".

Re: Message to Polian.....Try an MP3 Player

Slagathor said:

No Skipping!!!!!!!!

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Oh good another thread on this delusion.



PS. If they DID do it, they would amplify the existing noise, not play a sound from a CD....

Re: Message to Polian.....Try an MP3 Player

Slagathor said:

No Skipping!!!!!!!!

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haha, Ipods are too sweet. I've dropped mine a couple times and no skipping.

Don't cheap out polian

Re: Message to Polian.....Try an MP3 Player

SaCaCh said:

Oh good another thread on this delusion.



PS. If they DID do it, they would amplify the existing noise, not play a sound from a CD....

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Dude. It was a joke!

Lighten up.

I do think they were playing with the crowd noise.

Re: More Polian shenanigans -- artificial crowd noise?

workhorse said:

Since no one at the game is making any claim, I think this is a non-issue.

Have you ever been to a game at the dome? The sound system is sooo crappy you can't hear the ref most of the time and rarely understand any of the commericials on the jumbotron. If they were pumping in sound it wouldn't help, you wouldn't hear it unless the dome was silent.

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I went to the conference championship game last year and thought there was definitely noise piped in. I posted about it after the game as well...

Re: Message to Polian.....Try an MP3 Player

SaCaCh said:

Oh good another thread on this delusion.



PS. If they DID do it, they would amplify the existing noise, not play a sound from a CD....

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Here is a post from another thread that gives an explanation how it could happen with amplification, not CDs. This technically makes sense to me in terms of the "loop".

"The Colts have microphones placed in locations around the stadium. They are probably somewhere in the domed ceiling. They would be directional shotgun mics and aimed at the crowd. They would be best aimed at the top half of the seating so as not to pick up any field noise. When the opposing team is on offense and before the play starts when the QB is calling signals, the house, (Colt's), engineer turns up these mics and feeds them through the stadium's sound system. This is much better than pre-recorded crowd noise because it is a perfect audible match to the environment and there are no recordings of crowd noise to get busted with.

What happened tonight was the engineer turned up the mics too much. This caused the mics to pick up the sound eminating from the stadiums sound system, (the amplified crowd noise), as well as the natural crowd noise. The result is a feedback loop. As this loop continues to cycle through the mics and speakers oscillation occurs. This was described as the skipping sound. At this point the feedback is full bandwidth. This means that all of the frequencies being reproduced by the system were present in the loop. If you listen carefully to the recording you will hear a midrange frequency starting to become predominant. It sounded like something between 600hz and 800hz was starting to take off. At this point the engineer became aware of his error and shut off the mics. That was the abrupt drop in volume that is also on the recording on the PFT site.

If this was an accident with one of the ref's mics, field noise would have been pumped through the system such as player's voices. So I don't think that this a possibility anymore.

I'm practically positive that the Colts were up to no good. Any audio engineer with a half of brain will recognize that sound. That includes the multitude of engineers on NFL payroll. I doubt anything will come of it. It would be a massive scandal for the league's pretty boy team and a member of the CC. We'll see what Goodell is made of now. He'd have to have the stadium physically inspected and chances are that the mics are removed after any games. What is good is that Goodell and others will now be listening more intently and this may be enough to make Polian back off and stop using them. IMO the Colts are cheaters."

J D Sal

Re: Artificial Crowd Noise

Cassanova792 said:

Isnt this supposed to be illegal??? Go to 2:23 on the video and listen to the artificial crowd soundtrack skip.

http://www.nfl.com/videos?videoId=09000d5d803e4990

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Wow.

CROWD NOISE!!!

*skipping*

Crowd noise.

stratoman420 said:

The radio broadcasters do not have a parabolic mic on the field. Their speech on their headsets bleeds out the sound coming from inside their stadium. So I have to disagree with you here.

I remember these are the kind of statements we were making after the Jets game too. We thought it was all bunk and just a bunch of haters. A week later the Pats lost a 1st round pick, BB lost $500K, and the Pats became "cheaters".

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Bumping for a good point.