Chess.com Moves to Integrate Waves Cloud MX

Knoxville, TN (March 19, 2025)—Chess.com, said to be the world’s largest chess website, is using Waves’ Cloud MX to mix audio for its streaming tournaments.

Michael Buetsch, director of broadcast engineering and production at Chess.com, comments, “Waves Cloud MX has been a real game-changer for how we handle and mix audio within the cloud, while fully remote. We have been able to utilize every toolset you would typically see on a television production truck’s console and seamlessly integrate those capabilities into our broadcast workflows.”

Founded in 2007, Chess.com boasts a community of more than 200 million members worldwide and more than 6 million games played daily.

Buetsch continues, “I would say that the feature we have found most useful is the complex buss routing that Waves supports. Waves Cloud MX has allowed us to significantly expand how we build out every single type of mix for live broadcast, in-house production, IFB mixes and archive-only outputs.”

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Buetsch refers to a notable tournament where Waves Cloud MX played a crucial role in streaming: “Most recently in Oslo, Norway, we completed the Champions Chess Tour Finals. This was a 24-plus camera show operating entirely remotely. Signals were backhauled from the playing hall and insert studio, where the competitors and talent were located, to our cloud-based control room. Operators from across four different continents connected to operate the show remotely, including our lead audio engineer who mixed the show. This event had millions of viewers worldwide over the five days of competition.

“While players, commentators and a small crew were on-site in Oslo, the remaining production crew—engineers, producers, director, TD, tape, audio, etc.—worked remotely. With 22 microphones, multiple tape channels, IFB mixes and other FX inputs, all signals were backhauled to our cloud in US-East-1, where a remote audio engineer mixed everything from their home in the United States.”

He concludes, “The efficiency of the Cloud MX custom pages and user-definable hotkeys allowed us to navigate a very complex show with relative ease. With Cloud MX, audio engineers are entering a system that feels both comfortable and familiar to them, and we have yet to encounter a question from someone mixing a show that Waves Cloud MX couldn’t solve.”