Sound Mixer/Supervisor Daniel McCoy Talks About The Audio Production Of Dancing With The Stats Season 20

ET Now has a fascinating article published on the production of Dancing With The Stars Season 20. Sound Mixer/Supervisor Daniel McCoy talks on how they raised the bar for the audio, sound quality, and more.

Due to the physicality of the routines, whenever the celebrities and professional dancers were rehearsing off the lot, the audio equipment would frequently be handled by both the cast members and audio crew. “Throughout the entire season, which began in February, we had zero ‘loss and damage’ for any of the DPA 4060s,” explains McCoy. “Not a single record of any damage at all.” For previous seasons, McCoy was provided with a competitor microphone for the production and can recall having mic heads pop off and connectors break, which ultimately led to audio cable failure. Often, the crew was left with up to 40 percent of the mics being destroyed.

McCoy also says that during this season period he noticed much better fidelity to his ear while using the mics. “I thought that DWTS was a really good demonstration of the DPA d:screet 4060’s ability and consistency,” he explains. “There are often things that you can’t control. A lot of the time, I couldn’t personally be present for every contestant rehearsal, so I had producers and talent mic’ing themselves. That’s always a red flag and prediction for disaster. In this case, with the steel housing jacket of the DPA 4060s, the production was flawless.”

Another reason McCoy chose the 4060s was that the output impedance of the mics has a higher sensitivity. “This feature proved beneficial when the producers, who are not trained audio technicians or engineers, were travelling all over the country with the contestants during rehearsals,” he explains. “In those cases, the 4060s provided the producers with maximum audio output so they didn’t have to tinker with the gain stages.”

To read the full article, see ET Now.