Studio cables

[Gabriel Sousa]

hello,

whats the best way to connect the control room with the capture room ? with audio cables ?

why i dont find anything for studios ?
i only find "snake cables" but is for stage.

thanks

 

[RecorderMan]

Originally posted by Gabriel Sousa:
hello,

whats the best way to connect the control room with the capture room ? with audio cables ?

why i dont find anything for studios ?
i only find "snake cables" but is for stage.

thanks

Studio's are custom built .
Buy a particular brand of microphone or multipair (for many lines). One end gets prepped and soldered to your patch bay. The other end goes to a custom built (although their are probably some prefab units out thier) mic panel in the "capture" (tracking or live room, etc). Usually this is a plate of steel with holes punched out. XLR connecttors (female for mic to the control room; male for cue returns) are connected to the pannel and the prep'ed multipair cavle is hoooked up. Other things to add between the control room and live room that help are tie lines for unbalanced cacles with 1/4" tip/sleeve...so you can have a gtr player , etc in the room and run a line to his amp; and speaker cable tie lines so that he can have a marshall head in the control room and the cabinet out in the tracking room.

 

[sosayu2]

try this
http://www.procosound.com/contractors/plateworks/index.htm

 

by the way, using a good quality stage snake (box at one end, fan at the other) will work just fine. just looks a lot funkier than having a jack plate mounted nicely on your wall.

 

[fevers_mirrors]

Other things to add between the control room and live room that help are tie lines for unbalanced cacles with 1/4" tip/sleeve...so you can have a gtr player , etc in the room and run a line to his amp; and speaker cable tie lines so that he can have a marshall head in the control room and the cabinet out in the tracking room. [/QB]

i would strongly recommend not running a instrument cable from the control room to an amp in the tracking room unless the cable is going to be under 15 ft.

there are many sites that have various different types of cable and snakes. 2 off hand are:

http://www.redco.com
http://www.markertek.com

 

[RecorderMan]

Originally posted by fevers_mirrors:
i would strongly recommend not running a instrument cable from the control room to an amp in the tracking room unless the cable is going to be under 15 ft.

It is in most cases. How many studios do you work in that doesn't have the tracking room on the otherside of the wall from the control room? 3 feet? ???

 

[congalocke]

If your worried about getting a guitar signal from the control room to the amp...you might consider getting an X-Wire digital wireless guitar transmitter. It's not availble new anymore since the company sold the technology to Sennheiser, but you can find them used on eBay. I have seen them in the racks of Korn and the bass player from Journey. There is a qoute by Steve Vai where he say's that going through the X-Wire is actually better sounding than cable.

Sennheiser has also released a digital guitar transmitter...it may be the technology that they purchased from X-Wire (heaven knows they took long enough!) and it costs around $350.00. The Sennheiser model is the one I'm gonna be stuffing in my guitar rack. I think since it's digital that it doesn't compress or alter your signal in any way! You'll want to check it out for yourself however. I wrote Sennhesier and for some reason they didn't write back!

Regards
conga

 

[RecorderMan]

I actually use a LittleLabs DI..it puts out near line level. That goes to the patch bay and then out to a reamp.
...Still doesn't sound the same as plugging right into the amp with a 10ft cable...but again the freedom is mor important sometimes.

 

[emedley]

Another little trick I've done to get a little more mileage out of the guitar cables is just use a plain old 1/4" to TT from gutiar to patchbay. (however you're getting through the wall.) then in the studio, bring the thing out with a very short cord into a guitar pedal but leave the pedal off. (this assumes the pedal is not a passive pass through) then you can go another 10-15 feet without too much line loss or noise. this works quite well. I've actually been in one situation where we did this with 2 pedals in the chain. It really wasn't too bad at all. a little high freq loss but not bad.

Having said this, I still like to encourage the guitarist to stay out in the room. there is still some interplay between the guitar and amp that is not as good when the guitarist is in the control room. (things like feedback are not as easy, loss of those wonderful chimey overtones, etc...)

Here's what I do about keeping them in the studio. I have this god-awwfullll set of 8ohm koss headphones. they're louder than crap and sound like it too. I hand them and a set of foam ear plugs to the player. I then have them plug in a play their amp as loud as they usually do. The louder-than-crap headphones can easily get above the amp sound in the room but the ear plugs help keep the players monioring volume comfortable. Most people I've used this rig on say in the end that they liked it and it was actually not unlike playing live without all the ear fatigue.

later
ejm