KZSU and Tieline for Road Sports Broadcasting
By Jack Wang, Assistant Chief Engineer, KZSU Engineering.
Background
KZSU 90.1FM is Stanford University’s campus radio station. We broadcast on 90.1FM throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, and online at kzsu.stanford.edu. Our radio station broadcasts music, news, public affairs programming, and Stanford sports. Without a doubt, live sports coverage of Stanford Athletics is our most heavily listened-to form of content.
KZSU broadcasts several Stanford sports: Football, Baseball, Basketball, Volleyball, Soccer, and Softball. Approximately 200 games are broadcast every year, and 70 or so broadcasts involve traveling on the road. We generally focus our travel coverage on the four most prominent sports: football, baseball, basketball, and volleyball. Stanford competes in the Pac-12 conference and many of those travel locations include well-known universities such as Washington, Oregon, USC, UC Berkeley, Notre Dame, UCLA, and iconic stadiums such as the Rose Bowl. Other locations include NCAA tournament sites for playoffs and championships.
KZSU is owned by Stanford University, and it is a non-profit, non-commercial radio station with an educational license by the FCC. Our broadcasters consist of mainly Stanford student DJs, Stanford student sports announcers, and an array of alumni and local community volunteers.
Challenges for KZSU’s Stanford sports Coverage
KZSU is unique in that it is an FM radio station that broadcasts live sports in stereo. Furthermore, because of KZSU’s non-commercial status, relatively small budget, and roster of student broadcasters, we have several specific requirements when we consider any sort of sports remote broadcasting platform:
- Affordable
- High-quality digital audio
- Portable – must fit in a carry-on case
- Reliable connectivity – IP codec w/ backup connectivity options
- Ease of Use for student broadcasters
- Durability
Choice of Tieline Product Line
KZSU chose the Tieline codecs around 2011, by purchasing and implementing the Commander G3 and iMix field and rack-mount units. Prior to that, we primarily used Comrex-based analog-digital (dial-up modem) codecs such as the Comrex Vector. Those dial-up devices required POTS. With our constantly changing rotation of student broadcasters, and the inherent unreliability of POTS dialing and poorer sound quality, KZSU sports struggled with connectivity, errors, and audio instability for many years.
The goal in 2011 was to replace those dial-up POTS modem-based codecs with high-speed IP solutions so that we could stream a fully stereo digital broadcast from any remote stadium. This would ensure high-quality sound for our sports coverage.
Our first use of the Tieline platform for a major football broadcast was for the 2012 Fiesta Bowl featuring Stanford (led by Andrew Luck) vs. Oklahoma State. The Fiesta Bowl was held in the NFL stadium in Glendale, Arizona (University of Phoenix Stadium). At a professional (NFL) quality stadium, it was necessary for us to pre-order a wired Ethernet (IP) connection instead of using a wireless solution. Over 80,000 people were in the stadium – it was impossible for us to use 3G data or any wireless solution, as the wireless networks were slammed. But once we had the wired IP connection for that game, we were all set. It was the first major sporting event we covered without using POTS. We became fully invested in Tieline and committed to full-digital audio codecs for remote broadcasting.
Telecom Challenges Still Persist but Have Improved, and so has Sound Quality
Over the past decade, telecom at various university athletics venues across the USA have generally improved. KZSU also upgraded its broadcasting kit by purchasing the Tieline ViA portable codec and a Gateway 4 rack mount codec to receive remote audio feeds at the studio. The gold standard for any sort of broadcasting on the Tieline platform is a wired data connection. Unfortunately, not all stadiums have hard-wired Ethernet IP available.
The landscape of sports facilities varies wildly. At some aging stadiums desperately needing renovation, there’s often a lack of space for student broadcasters and proper telecom. Certain sports also do not have enough funding for modernized facilities. Often, a university might have a brand-new and well-connected facility for one sport, and an inhospitable and aging stadium for another sport. Therefore, the top priority for audio engineering on the Tieline platform when traveling for Stanford sports coverage is telecom. A wired IP solution is always best.
Due to the inconsistencies of sports facilities, KZSU often runs into many tricky situations in which a wireless solution is the only method for connectivity. The Tieline ViA product line with 4G data and WiFi has helped out tremendously for various events that KZSU has covered, in facilities where there was no wired IP solution.
Some recent examples:
- Stanford Football at Vanderbilt (Sept 2021), in Vanderbilt University’s antiquated stadium. We were on a dust-covered roof-top on a concrete ledge, with no telecom available. We connected the ViA to Vanderbilt Athletics WPA WiFi network and broadcast the entire game wirelessly.
- Stanford Football at Arizona State (Oct 2021), in ASU’s Tempe Stadium. We were assigned to a hermetically sealed booth for guests with no telecom available. ASU’s telecom provided a wireless data device that created a mobile WiFi hot-spot, and we used the ViA’s WiFi feature to connect wirelessly.
- We at KZSU are recently discovering new wireless uses for the Tieline ViA, on the Stanford campus itself! Recently, KZSU has hosted and broadcast two student rallies and festivals on the Stanford campus where no wired connectivity options exist. It was incredibly easy to take an audio feed from the live PA system and simply connect it to the Tieline ViA, which would connect using wireless data back to KZSU. In the past, we would’ve had to rely upon long wiring runs, or POTS, to connect back to KZSU.
Stereo Audio Imaging Enhancement
For the 2022 football season, KZSU implemented a special audio enhancement for road football games. In order to project a stereo audio image, we added an Allen & Heath Zed-i8 mixing console for the broadcasters themselves to control. That console would feed stereo audio to the Tieline ViA codec for IP connectivity back to KZSU.
Our Standard ViA kit (WITHOUT Zed-i8) includes:
- Tieline ViA & accessories
- 2 Sennheiser sports headsets
- Shure SM58 microphone
- Assorted XLR, Ethernet, Power cables
- USB-micro/USB-C adapters
This kit is portable enough to fit inside a single carry-on Pelican flight-case for one or two student broadcasters to travel to cover a game on the road. The ViA easily supports two sports announcer headsets (Sennheisers) on channels 1 & 2, while the 3rd channel is used for a mic (SM58) to pick up ambient crowd sound. The USB I/O Audio codec can be connected to a laptop for pre-recorded announcements during breaks. Those inputs are all we need for standard road sports broadcasts.
Our Stereo Enhancement Addition to the Standard Kit:
- Allen & Heath 4-channel mixer (the Zed-i8)
- RODE camera-mount Stereo Video Mic
- Tripod mount, Assorted additional audio cables
The RODE Stereo Video Mic serves as our crowd mic instead of a single Shure SM58. It allows us to present a stereo audio image for the crowd audio in a stadium. Because KZSU is an FM radio station, the listeners can get a better feeling of what is happening inside a large football stadium where cheers may be emanating from one side while fireworks, cannons, or PA announcements are on the other.
More importantly, by connecting the 2 broadcasters headsets into a 4-channel mixer like the Allen & Heath Zed i8, we can control the stereo imaging by panning them slightly. This enhancement really helps when announcers are in a booth. Announcer #1 can be panned slightly right, and announcer #2 can be panned slightly left, so they don’t sound like they are on top of each other. The stereo crowd mic is also fed into the 4-channel mixer so the entire mix feels like it’s in stereo. The stereo output of the mixer is fed to the Tieline ViA where channels 1 & 2 can be configured R/L. The engineer/producer can connect to stadium effects with channel 3. The USB audio I/O is still used for laptop audio.
This stereo enhancement is still highly portable. A 3-man broadcast crew (2 announcers, 1 producer) can easily bring this equipment in 2 carry-on cases. This audio enhancement was deployed in the Fall of 2022 Stanford Football Season for:
- Stanford at Univ. of Washington
- Stanford at Univ. of Oregon
- Stanford at Notre Dame University
- Stanford at Univ. of Utah
- Stanford at UC Berkeley
Concluding Comments:
KZSU is deeply committed to bringing high-quality FM audio broadcasts of Stanford sports, and the product line by Tieline has been instrumental in delivering exceptional quality for remote broadcasts.
Since 2011 when we purchased our first Tieline products, KZSU has now successfully transitioned away from POTS-based remote connectivity solutions towards full digital audio. We anticipate more wireless solutions as networks become more robust.
Tieline has been a great vendor that has provided excellent support for KZSU. It is truly a special relationship over the past decade, one that enables KZSU, a small, non-profit, university-based radio station to deliver such high-quality sound using the Tieline platform.
An Interview with Jack Wang from KZSU about sports remotes using Tieline ViA…
Want to know more?
For more information on Gateway and ViA codecs visit www.tieline.com/products or contact Tieline sales:
- For USA, Canada & Latin America contact: sales@tieline.com
- For Australia and International: info@tieline.com
(“KZSU and Tieline for Road Sports Broadcasting” first published in June 2023)
