CRAS Student Selected for the Sennheiser Mentor Program

Congratulations to CRAS student Brad Bacon for being selected for the Sennheiser Mentor Program.

Sennheiser will fly Brad to Charlotte, NC where he’ll spend the weekend observing the audio production process involved in broadcasting NASCAR’s Coca Cola 600. Brad will be shadowing Fox Sports Sr. Audio Mixer Fred Aldous, who just won his 20th Sports Emmy award.

Fred, who happens to live in the Phoenix area where CRAS is located, dropped by the school and was able to meet Brad before his trip. He spent time going over the track and production compound layouts to give Brad some sense of what he’ll see during his trip later this May.

This marks the second student from CRAS to be accepted into the mentorship program. Last year Shawn Brewer was also selected to shadow Fred.

“He asked if things ever go wrong, and I said, no, nothing that you can’t handle as long as you’ve done all of your prep work correctly and anticipated where problems can arise,” Fred says. “He understands that broadcast is a situation where you get one chance to get it right the first time, and he appreciated that.”

Aldous, an Emmy Award winner for his mixing work, toured Brewer through Game Creek’s four-truck compound, including the FX A unit, the main production truck where Aldous operated from a Calrec Alpha with Bluefin; FX D and its Calrec Sigma used for the track-effects submix; and FX D, where a Yamaha M7CL console handled audio for the wireless in-car and other race comms.