Thread: snakes and other cable routing methods

NOT A GOOD IDEA. Why is it not a good idea? Most snakes are from 50 to 100 feet on average. You would NOT want to plug a high impedance guitar into anything more than a 10 to 15 foot cable length. That just won't work well. A corrupted frequency response and lots of hum and buzz is what you will get.

Those 1/4" connectors were designed for line level monitor and/or headphone feeds. And sure, you could use commercially available snakes to wire from your studio to your control room. Nothing really wrong with that.

For your headphones system in your tracking room, you may want to investigate a master headphone amplifier sent to a breakout box to passively combined headphone boxes? As opposed to those ridiculous quad headphone amplifiers, designed for the control room of a project studio. There really is no convenient way to utilize something like that in the studio unless you put the headphone amplifier in the studio which still makes it difficult to deal with since you have a single box with 4 headphone outputs as opposed to 4 separate boxes that feed the headphones, etc.. And for the central amplifier passively combined system, you won't want to take the amplifier output and feed that up the microphone snake. If you do that you are asking for lots of trouble from inductive coupling and grounding problems. In that respect, you should use a separate piece of unshielded 3 conductor electrical "zip" cord from the amplifier in the control room rack to the headphone breakout box in the tracking room. The ground from the output of the amplifier should not be combined with the ground for the microphones. When you believe you heard somebody say something about using ethernet cables, they were probably trying to tell you that the output from power amplifiers should NEVER USE shielded cables. The output from power amplifiers should always use unshielded cable. That's it. End of comment.

Search Recording.org for the other threads regarding my recommended construction for a central amplifier, passively distributed headphone system.

Head phony
Ms. Remy Ann David

I have read about some sort of headphone hub that uses ethernet cables?

www.aviom.com look at the pro16 series, more than the 5 channels you mentioned but useful if you ever need that many.. your problem would be that they output at mic or line level so you would need to have your headphone amp at the other end.

twon

Originally Posted by RemyRAD

NOT A GOOD IDEA. Why is it not a good idea? Most snakes are from 50 to 100 feet on average. You would NOT want to plug a high impedance guitar into anything more than a 10 to 15 foot cable length. That just won't work well. A corrupted frequency response and lots of hum and buzz is what you will get.

Those 1/4" connectors were designed for line level monitor and/or headphone feeds. And sure, you could use commercially available snakes to wire from your studio to your control room. Nothing really wrong with that.

For your headphones system in your tracking room, you may want to investigate a master headphone amplifier sent to a breakout box to passively combined headphone boxes? As opposed to those ridiculous quad headphone amplifiers, designed for the control room of a project studio. There really is no convenient way to utilize something like that in the studio unless you put the headphone amplifier in the studio which still makes it difficult to deal with since you have a single box with 4 headphone outputs as opposed to 4 separate boxes that feed the headphones, etc.. And for the central amplifier passively combined system, you won't want to take the amplifier output and feed that up the microphone snake. If you do that you are asking for lots of trouble from inductive coupling and grounding problems. In that respect, you should use a separate piece of unshielded 3 conductor electrical "zip" cord from the amplifier in the control room rack to the headphone breakout box in the tracking room. The ground from the output of the amplifier should not be combined with the ground for the microphones. When you believe you heard somebody say something about using ethernet cables, they were probably trying to tell you that the output from power amplifiers should NEVER USE shielded cables. The output from power amplifiers should always use unshielded cable. That's it. End of comment.

Search Recording.org for the other threads regarding my recommended construction for a central amplifier, passively distributed headphone system.

Head phony
Ms. Remy Ann David

Thanks for your advice, very helpful. But what about this - the MOTU has 12 outputs (XLR) and we want to use 5 of them for the headphones, because each of them can have their own monitor mix (this studio is going to be used for practices too) so, what about just running 5 cables from the MOTU into the room, and building a little box for each with a 1/4" input on them? We are using these headphones - http://www.extremeheadphones.com/

edit- oh, wow, I'm half retarded, I somehow let it slip my mind that the MOTU outputs at line level... wow. So, I have to come up with a solution that is a mix of mine and yours, unless there are headphone amps that have 5 inputs and 5 outputs? I've never really looked into headphone amps before.

edit2- what about sending the 5 outputs from the motu into one of these in the tracking room? http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...Amp?sku=240109

As for the head in control room to the cab in tracking room, what is the solution for that? Just run a 12' cable?

This is our studio layout, and so-far planned cable routing-

Excuse me, I'm sorry, misinterpretation on my side here.

You will be perfectly fine with your guitar and guitar amp head in the control room, running the output of the guitar head to the cabinet in the studio. Just make sure you use at least 16 gauge stranded, unshielded cable to the cabinets. Those broken orange colored electrical extension cords work great as speaker cable. Depending on who's commercially available microphone snake you are using, the 1/4" connectors on each end, aren't really designed to send a full-blown amplifier signal through. They utilize the same microphone cable, which is shielded and balanced, only 24 gauge and more designed for auxiliary, monitor and effects sends/returns at line level voltages not speaker voltages, albeit the more technically challenged folks have/do send amplified signals through those pathways and wonder why they get peculiar inductive feedback they can't
and speakers that sound less than spectacular?

If you're going to take the last 5 XLR outputs from the back of your MOTU as your headphone mix feed, that should be totally adequate as well since you'll be able to create 5 separate cue mixes in the computer, for each individual but you will need to add some specific headphone amplification. You will not want to use the outputs directly to headphones, regardless of adapters available, as they are not designed to load into low impedance loads such as 8 ohm headphone speakers. They have to be loaded into 600 ohms or higher, preferably around 10,000 to 50,000 ohms. Since most commercially available amplifiers and specific headphone amplifiers all have medium input impedances between 10,000 and 50,000 ohms, the output of your MOTU can be split, passively, with patch cords, to your other rooms, provided they are all equipped with individual headphone amplification systems. You may however run into ground loop problems since you will want/have an amplifier plugged in at each location which could cause a ground loop and therefore lots of HUM rendering the system useless. You would only need to lift the ground on the headphone amplifiers AC connector but make absolutely sure you have no shock hazard. To do this, you should take a volt meter set to AC. Attach one lead to the chassis of the now ungrounded headphone amplifier and attach the other lead to pin 1, the Shield/ground in/on the XLR connector, without plugging it into the headphone amplifier i.e. no electrical connection between the two to the best of your knowledge. Do this with gloves on and jewelry off, since you could possibly create a circuit through your body, (which you might get a charge out of). Now observe the volt meter and see how much AC voltage you observe? You'll most likely see at least a couple of volts but if there is any miss wired electrical wiring, you could see 117 volts! That could be huge cause for concern as you have a hot chassis which could cause electrocution and death. I don't care how much Metal you want to record, you just don't want to be that realistic!

I think you are well now on your way? But where?
Ms. Remy Ann David

Originally Posted by RemyRAD

Excuse me, I'm sorry, misinterpretation on my side here.

You will be perfectly fine with your guitar and guitar amp head in the control room, running the output of the guitar head to the cabinet in the studio. Just make sure you use at least 16 gauge stranded, unshielded cable to the cabinets. Those broken orange colored electrical extension cords work great as speaker cable. Depending on who's commercially available microphone snake you are using, the 1/4" connectors on each end, aren't really designed to send a full-blown amplifier signal through. They utilize the same microphone cable, which is shielded and balanced, only 24 gauge and more designed for auxiliary, monitor and effects sends/returns at line level voltages not speaker voltages, albeit the more technically challenged folks have/do send amplified signals through those pathways and wonder why they get peculiar inductive feedback they can't
and speakers that sound less than spectacular?

If you're going to take the last 5 XLR outputs from the back of your MOTU as your headphone mix feed, that should be totally adequate as well since you'll be able to create 5 separate cue mixes in the computer, for each individual but you will need to add some specific headphone amplification. You will not want to use the outputs directly to headphones, regardless of adapters available, as they are not designed to load into low impedance loads such as 8 ohm headphone speakers. They have to be loaded into 600 ohms or higher, preferably around 10,000 to 50,000 ohms. Since most commercially available amplifiers and specific headphone amplifiers all have medium input impedances between 10,000 and 50,000 ohms, the output of your MOTU can be split, passively, with patch cords, to your other rooms, provided they are all equipped with individual headphone amplification systems. You may however run into ground loop problems since you will want/have an amplifier plugged in at each location which could cause a ground loop and therefore lots of HUM rendering the system useless. You would only need to lift the ground on the headphone amplifiers AC connector but make absolutely sure you have no shock hazard. To do this, you should take a volt meter set to AC. Attach one lead to the chassis of the now ungrounded headphone amplifier and attach the other lead to pin 1, the Shield/ground in/on the XLR connector, without plugging it into the headphone amplifier i.e. no electrical connection between the two to the best of your knowledge. Do this with gloves on and jewelry off, since you could possibly create a circuit through your body, (which you might get a charge out of). Now observe the volt meter and see how much AC voltage you observe? You'll most likely see at least a couple of volts but if there is any miss wired electrical wiring, you could see 117 volts! That could be huge cause for concern as you have a hot chassis which could cause electrocution and death. I don't care how much Metal you want to record, you just don't want to be that realistic!

I think you are well now on your way? But where?
Ms. Remy Ann David

Thanks for all your help, I really really appreciate it. Not to be a bugger, but I have a few questions about your post.

1. Are you saying I should cut the ends off an extention cord and wire them up with 1/4" plugs?

2. The second part has me completely confused. Let me clarify on what I want to do.

I want to buy the Behringer Powerplay PRO-8 HA-8000, which has eight independent amp sections, and send 5 outputs from the motu into 5 channels of the PRO-8, and from that into the headphones.

Like this-

dude why go all the way around the parameter of the room?

You should go right through the wall behind your mixer/daw station.

I mean thats just stupid to snake all the way around. The best thing to do is keep the signal short.

I would buy a regular a regular snake, not a stage snake. Just the wire like this...

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=100-622

Then buy the proper connectors going into your motu, then in your studio/recording area a wall panel with the neccerary kack run the snake though the wall and make the connections to the panel and then mount it.

these go on the panel..

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=092-036
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=092-044


this at the other end of the snake to motu
for input:
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=092-010


line out:
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=092-012


For Plates, maybe ..

http://www.procosound.com/plateworksindex.htm

or convert a rack panel to mount on a wall like this..

http://www.whirlwindusa.com/rack01.html



k im dont.

The reason we didn't want to go with a wall plate is that the walls are already built and we don't want to puch any holes.

So, could I do that, but just have a peice of rack gear that is not mounted to the wall?

Punching a hole in the wall isnt that big a deal. one side just has to be big enough for the wiring to fit through and then cut a hole for the plate to mount it use those screws that come with the plastic steeves for screwing into the dry wall. easy to do. the hard part is wiring the connections at the mic wall plate , not the actual install of the plate. oh and feed the snare wire through the wall and do the sodering for the connections that way the hole on the control room side can be rather small, yup.