DPA mics allow NBC’s NASCAR fans to hear skids, shifts & roars

When NBC Sports’ Director of Remote Technical Operations for Motorsports Matt Hogencamp walks onto a NASCAR racing track, his priority is to ensure that viewers feel the race, by giving the production team the tools they need to turn their wildest broadcast ideas into reality.

Recently, those ideas have sounded better than ever, thanks to the network’s new DPA Microphones solutions. 

The choice of DPA began with simply asking how NBC Sports can bring fans audio they have never heard before. For Hogencamp, the answer was found in the brand’s tiny, rugged and remarkably powerful 4062 Omnidirectional Miniature Lavaliers. The NBC Sports team mounted the microphones in unconventional places, including front bumpers, rear quarter panels and even directly inside the drivers’ helmets without disrupting cameras or slowing pit lane setups.

“In NASCAR, grammes matter, and race cars generate brutal wind speeds, punishing vibration, extreme temperature shifts and showers of track debris,” Hogencamp explained. 

“We needed mics that were small enough to hide, light enough to avoid affecting aerodynamics and strong enough to survive extreme conditions lap after lap, while still delivering top-tier audio. The 4062 checked every box and gave us a real leg up in the sound department. Now, fans can hear the gritty scrape of a car skidding along the wall without crashing, or the vacuum of ‘dirty air’ when one car tucks in behind another, the sound vanishing into eerie silence.” 

Hogencamp sees this as more than a novelty, calling it a “game-changer” for storytelling. “We’ve always had new camera angles and visuals, but sound is equally important,” he said. “When we put a mic under the hood, our viewers can hear the engine in a way that changes how they experience the race. It’s like they are in the car themselves.

“Even more revealing, viewers can now catch a driver’s unfiltered thoughts mid-race – the adrenaline-laced monologue they usually have on their own, as they hurtle towards a 200-mile-per-hour turn. These microphones nearly disappear into the car but still capture everything we want.

“The microphones performed consistently, no matter where they were placed, cutting down on post-production fixes and letting the engineers focus on the dozens of other live feeds streaming into the truck.

Durability is another win. Quick mounting and low maintenance also made life easier in the high-pressure environment of race day, where every second of set-up time is precious.”