I’ve always been mystified by how SBC crowds sound so quiet on ESPN+.

Assumed it was because we all just have smaller attendance than P5 games you see on linear broadcasts.

But I just turned on the UGA-CS game…

Also quiet. Which seems impossible for a UGA crowd.

I’m guessing it just comes down to mic placements? If ESPN+ games are put on by the home school, I’m guessing they just don’t have as many mics for crowd noise as an ESPN or Fox broadcast.

Does anyone have any insight?

Audio is a lot harder than video when it comes to very large areas. 4 Cameras and 3 mics? No problem. Add more mics and you start adding points of failure. Just think about how crappy Ref/official's mics are and how often they barely work. And that's a mic that should be easy enough to run. Most probably don't either have the equipment for it, tech skills to handle it, or want to put the effort into it.

A significant part of it is the quality of the production. When ESPN comes into town with their polished operation, they bring in multiple crowd mics, parabolic mics to pick up on field action, and will have a dedicated sound mixer to ensure the quality of the audio stream is professional and high quality.

ESPN+ are local productions, and the extent of audio work may be as simple as utilizing a single crowd mic that is probably set at a single level for the whole event. Most times there will probably be a single board operator who can control the audio but is probably mixing the whole production including video. So, yes, it's largely due to the quality of investment and manpower in the production.

Not all ESPN+ broadcasts are created equally. Some are well done, and some are done with the minimal standards ESPN requires to be on the platform.

Well shortly after I posted that, the crowd noise jumped up a bit in mid-play. I guess someone adjusted the audio mix. To me that seems like such an obvious thing to do in a broadcast to make it more interesting.

Watch Georgia State. They had the field mics up loud enough I heard Butch Jones call a timeout and the third down with the siren hard to make out what announcers are saying. It’s microphone placement and how the sound is mixed.