With more than 200m members worldwide and more than 6m games played daily, Chess.com is the world’s largest chess website. Behind the scenes, the website’s Director of Broadcast Engineering & Production, Michael Buetsch, is using the Waves Cloud MX Audio Mixer to handle its audio.
‘Waves Cloud MX has been a real game-changer for how we handle and mix audio within the cloud, while fully remote,’ Buetsch comments. ‘We have been able to use every toolset you would typically see on a television production truck’s console and integrate those capabilities into our broadcast workflows.
‘I would say that the feature we have found most useful is the complex bus routing that Waves supports,’ he continues. ‘Waves Cloud MX has allowed us to significantly expand how we build out every single type of mix for live broadcast, in-house production, IFB mixes, and archive-only outputs.’
Buetsch recalls a notable tournament where Waves Cloud MX played a crucial role in streaming: ‘Most recently in Oslo, Norway, we completed the Champions Chess Tour Finals. This was a 24-plus camera show operating entirely remotely. Signals were backhauled from the playing hall and insert studio, where the competitors and talent were located, to our cloud-based control room. Operators from across four different continents connected to operate the show remotely, including our lead audio engineer who mixed the show.
‘This event had millions of viewers worldwide over the five days of competition. While players, commentators and a small crew were on-site in Oslo, the remaining production crew (engineers, producers, director, TD, tape, audio) worked remotely. With 22 microphones, multiple tape channels, IFB mixes and other FX inputs, all signals were backhauled to our cloud in US-East-1, where a remote audio engineer mixed everything from their home in the United States. ‘The efficiency of the Cloud MX custom pages and user-definable hotkeys allowed us to navigate a very complex show with relative ease.
‘With Cloud MX, audio engineers are entering a system that feels both comfortable and familiar to them, and we have yet to encounter a question from someone mixing a show that Waves Cloud MX couldn’t solve,’ he adds.
More: www.waves.com
