The sound of Late Night television is a complex beast with many moving parts. In this episode, we step inside the daily hustle of Broadcast Mixer Fred Hedemark as he and his team bring the sound of Late Night with Seth Meyers to life. Along the way, Fred reveals the highs and lows of working on a high-adrenaline, live-to-tape TV show, and shares some never-heard recordings from his years on the show. Sign up for Twenty Thousand Hertz+ to get our entire catalog ad-free. If you know what this week's mystery sound is, tell us at mystery.20k.org. Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Watch our video shorts on YouTube, and join the discussion on Reddit and Facebook. Learn more about Fred Hedemark’s work at audiofred.com. Find the right doctor, right now at zocdoc.com/20k. Learn a new language with fifty-five percent off at babbel.com/20k. Find the right candidates with a seventy-five dollar sponsored job credit at indeed.com/hertz. Get a FREE Netsuite KPI Checklist at netsuite.com/20k. Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: www.20k.org/episodes/latenight Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Stand clear of the closing doors, please.
My day starts usually take the subway in and just kind of chilling out.
That's Fred Hedemark.
I'm just trying to start off my day and kind of use that time to meditate and just get my mind into the right place before we have a big day at the office.
Fred is an audio engineer based in New York City.
The next stop is 47 50th Street, Rockefeller center.
Once he gets off the subway, Fred walks up the stairs and into one of the most famous buildings in the world.
So I walk into 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
I go up to the 7th floor, and the 7th floor is where all the control rooms are.
Most audio rooms are pretty dark, and they don't have windows to the world.
But our room in control room 72 is a little bit different because you can pay to go upstairs and get a tour.
So we actually, actually have glass windows that people can look into to see the production's happening.
This control room is jam packed with state of the art audio gear.
There are computer screens from floor to ceiling, as well as all kinds of outboard effects, speakers, patch bays, processors.
And at the center of it all is a giant mixing board.
Whatever you're picturing in your head right now, multiply it by ten and you'll get the right idea.
It's very colorful these days.
Lots of leds.
We have testing equipment.
There's a transmission station.