Bring the noise! Joe Klimchak pulls off MLB's crowd noise plan at PNC Park - TribLIVE

If you are a Pirates fan who has ever been to PNC Park, you know who Joe Klimchak is.

You may not know his last name off the top of your head. But you know his face. And his voice.

Klimchak is the longtime Pirates in-game host at the stadium. You know, Joe. The guy on the wireless microphone doing the giveaways, calling the pierogi race, and introducing the Box of Mystery.

Plus, you may recognize Klimchak from local commercials and lots of Pirates television promos.

He’s also one of the hundreds of people at PNC Park who usually have 81 days’ worth of employment based on a home baseball schedule. One of the hundreds of people who were staring at a furlough during this 2020 season without fans.

Not a lot of need for an in-game host who is going to host no people. Right?

“They said, ‘Are you interested in a job?’ And ‘I said absolutely yes,’” Klimchak said. “I just want to get to the park. Get back to baseball. Get back to seeing the Pirates and following my team.”

Now the guy, whose voice normally echoes out to all the fans, is actually the voice of all those fans.

You know that artificial crowd noise you’ve been hearing so much about throughout Major League Baseball broadcasts? Well, Klimchak is in charge of it here in Pittsburgh. He’s the one that makes it all happen over the stadium speakers and for the game broadcasts on television and radio.

I think the crowd noise sounds wonderful on the radio. I’ve listened to games as much as I’ve watched so far this year. And, in my opinion, it adds a lot to the broadcasts.

It’s not perfect. You can tell moments where the action is scattered, that something is off. For instance, the noise you get over your car speakers isn’t quite matching up if a player is in a rundown or there is an error with multiple runners on base. Sometimes the background audio stops matching with the play-by-play.

But I’ll be honest, Klimchak had me fooled for that first preseason game against the Cleveland Indians at PNC Park on July 18. I was driving home from a softball game, I flipped on the radio play-by-play, and I was probably two batters in before announcer Joe Block made reference to the crowd noise, and it hit me.

“Wait a minute?! That’s fake. There aren’t people there!”

There’s a reason why it sounds so natural. The method Klimchak and his peers across the league use is to run an extended constant murmur underneath the broadcast.

“These beds are on loops,” Klimchak said. “You hit that, and you forget it. You’re done.”

The ballpark crowd-sound engineers then overlap “reaction-level” audio clips at slightly higher volume via a series of color-coded touchscreen keys.

Klimchak works exclusively off one small iPad. It’s patched to a large mixing board a few doors down in the PNC Park press box, behind public address announcer Tim DeBacco. It’s operated by audio technician Kelly Roofner.

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Tim Benz | Tribune-Review

Joe Klimchak shows the soundboard he uses in the booth during Pirates games to create simulated crowd noise at PNC Park.

She has two audio sliders permanently posted up at set volume. One is set for that murmuring undercurrent at all times. The other is an open channel ready to feed whatever “reaction sound” Klimchak hits on his iPad, as a result of the pitch or the swing.

Major League Baseball generated all the sound via its “MLB: The Show” video game. The league disseminated the same clips to every park in the major leagues. They also allowed each home park to create a few unique “home ballpark” effects.

On Klimchak’s iPad, he constantly toggles between five screens to hit buttons sending sound out to the park and, by extension, the broadcasts.

• Blue (Beds): Those are the different levels of murmurs. Four different volumes of steady, constant, humming white noise. Klimchak can adjust how dense or thin he wants that sound to be based on the tension or excitement in the game at the time.

And those are specifically recorded from PNC Park.

• Red (Reaction Main) and Orange (Reaction Alternate): These are the sounds you hear when the ball is put in play or when outs and walks are recorded.

Klimchak simply labels them small, medium and large reaction sounds. The beds last between :21-:56 seconds in most cases.

They are subdivided into “POS” and “DIS” categories. “POS” hot keys mean “positive” reactions when something goes well for the Pirates. And “DIS” hot keys means “disappointed” audio when something goes wrong for them.

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Tim Benz | Tribune-Review

Joe Klimchak shows the iPad he uses to select noises during Pirates games to create simulated crowd noise at PNC Park.

So a leadoff walk in the second inning for the Pirates might be on the red “Reaction Main” screen, “POS SMALL REACT 1” button.

And a double off the wall to tie the game in the ninth inning might be on the orange “Reaction Alternate” screen. And Klimchak may hit “POS LARGE REACT 6.”

If the Pirates base runner gets thrown out trying to stretch the double into a triple, Klimchak probably hits “DIS MEDIUM 2.”

“There’s just not a button for everything,” Klimchak laughed. “Major League Baseball did a great job. But you can’t possibly cover it all.”

• Purple (Build up): This is where Klimchak may hit a sound that airs under a long Josh Bell drive to the wall. If it falls short, Klimchak may hit “DIS MEDIUM 2” again underneath. If it goes into the river, he could hit “POS LARGE REACT 6.”

• Yellow (Bucco Prompts): This is where Klimchak can dot in the occasional “Let’s Go Bucs” chant or some prerecorded, PNC Park-specific cheers and rhythmic claps local ears may recognize.

By the middle of the home opener, Klimchak already had the color maze pretty much mastered.

“I had not hit a key before those two (preseason) Indians games,” Klimchak admits. “It’s a work in progress.

“I’m two games in and (by number) I do know what all the reactions sound like.”

You can hear more about how Klimchak taught himself the execution so quickly, the feedback he’s getting from the players, and the challenges of live action in our Wednesday podcast. We spoke during the long rain delay during the regular season home opener Monday night.

Listen: Tim Benz talks with Joe Klimchak on how he handles the artificial crowd noises at PNC Park for the Pirates

Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via Twitter. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.

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