Originally Posted by Amnorix

FWIW, a post on a Pats group:

I'm a live audio engineer. This was NOT a broadcast thing. This is my perception of what happened. I posted this on the Pat's group on Usenet. This is a cut and paste.


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.

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england-...&postcount=140

Originally Posted by Amnorix

If they're doing that, they're cheating, as there is an NFL rule against it, punishable by a $50K fine apparently (no 1st round pick, unfortunatley).

And, more importantly (IMHO), they can stick that holier-than-thou attitude of theirs.

Originally Posted by dtebbe

I just listened to it and it sounds like an CBS network issue to me. Sounds like a A/D-D/A converter freaked out to me. No way they would be using a CD to pipe in noise, and that was not feedback.

DT

Originally Posted by Garcia Bronco

Yep..cheating is cheating.

Originally Posted by Garcia Bronco

If it was CBS feed there would have been more problems. It's a CD skipping pure and simple.

Originally Posted by beach tribe

They've already been busted for this before.

Originally Posted by dtebbe

No, not if it was an in-stadium link that was causing the problem. They probably have a bunch of mics ran to one small rack in the stadium where the processing, power supplies, and A-D conversion are, then a piece of coax or fiber from that rack out to the truck where the sound board is. The analog mic signals are probably converted to digital at that rack on the field, and one of those coud have freaked out. The noise was much too loud, uniform, and "direct fed" (ie. not picked up by mics, but fed directly into the broadcast chain) to have been an in-stadium problem.

DT

Originally Posted by Dartgod

Didn't they get caught with speakers on the sideline directed out towards the field that they were amplifying the crowd noiose through? I remember something like this 10 or so years ago.

Originally Posted by beach tribe

It wasn't that long ago.

Originally Posted by Laz

i've thought the Chiefs might be "looping" the crowd noise at arrowhead for awhile now.