Mic snakes and daisy chaining
mattc...@hotmail.com
I know this is a very simple question, so hopefully someone can answer
it for me real quick (I looked through the forums but couldn't find
this info anywhere, probably because it's very basic).
I'm upgrading from a simple A/D-D/A box to a mixer combined with the M-
audio Delta 1010 for multitracking. Our tracking room will be ~30
feet from the control room on the other end of the house, so I was
about to buy some 100 ft. balanced mic cables to give us plenty of
room for positioning mics. But now, I'm considering getting a 50 ft.
snake and some shorter mic cables to chain to the snake for each room.
My question is whether or not the chaining of the mic cables reduces
sound quality at all, or if this is just standard practice in most
studios.
Thanks very much.
Richard Crowley
> My question is whether or not the chaining of the mic cables reduces
> sound quality at all,
If you are using halfway decent cables, it does not "reduce the
sound quality at all".
> or if this is just standard practice in most studios.
It is standard practice in both studios and on location recording
and reinforcement. Buy decent cables and don't worry about it.
philicorda
It is standard practice to use a snake. Keep everything balanced and get
a good quality multicore and you won't have problems.
Eight 100 ft cables might end up getting tangled up with each other too.
It's nicer to only have the cables on the floor that you are using for
the session.
>
> Thanks very much.
mattc...@hotmail.com
Cool, thanks for your replies. Also, while I have your attention, one
more question:
I'll be running a couple of aux mixes from the mixer into the tracking
room and into a headphone amp (I've got one amp with multiple ins and
outs) for monitor mixes. What kind of cable would be good for this?
I had assumed a 50 ft. TRS cable, but after looking on eBay and such
for cables a 50 ft. TRS seems very uncommon, whereas there are lots of
50 ft. "speaker cables"--I wasn't sure what the difference would be
(besides that the speaker cables appear to be mono?) or how it might
affect my ability to run the monitor mixes into the headphone amp.
Thanks again!
Laurence Payne
>I'll be running a couple of aux mixes from the mixer into the tracking
>room and into a headphone amp (I've got one amp with multiple ins and
>outs) for monitor mixes. What kind of cable would be good for this?
>I had assumed a 50 ft. TRS cable, but after looking on eBay and such
>for cables a 50 ft. TRS seems very uncommon, whereas there are lots of
>50 ft. "speaker cables"--I wasn't sure what the difference would be
>(besides that the speaker cables appear to be mono?) or how it might
>affect my ability to run the monitor mixes into the headphone amp.
If you want a 50' TRS buy 50' of cable and put a TRS plug on each end.
You're not setting up a studio with ALL pre-bought cables are you? :-)
But, in practice, people send this sort of signal back down the snake.
You can specify some TRS jacks on the boxes at each end. Or you can
make up some XLR > TRS cables. First rule of installing wiring (which
includes choosing a snake) - get at least 25% more circuits than you
think you'll EVER need.
philicorda
> Cool, thanks for your replies. Also, while I have your attention, one
> more question:
>
> I'll be running a couple of aux mixes from the mixer into the tracking
> room and into a headphone amp (I've got one amp with multiple ins and
> outs) for monitor mixes. What kind of cable would be good for this? I
> had assumed a 50 ft. TRS cable, but after looking on eBay and such for
> cables a 50 ft. TRS seems very uncommon, whereas there are lots of 50
> ft. "speaker cables"--I wasn't sure what the difference would be
> (besides that the speaker cables appear to be mono?) or how it might
> affect my ability to run the monitor mixes into the headphone amp.
I'd send the headphone mixes down the same multicore as the mics. It does
not cause noticeable interference.
>
> Thanks again!
Roy W. Rising
Consider getting a snake with a box at the input end. It really expedites
a setup.
--
~
~ Roy
"If you notice the sound, it's wrong!"
Scott Dorsey
>
>I'm upgrading from a simple A/D-D/A box to a mixer combined with the M-
>audio Delta 1010 for multitracking. Our tracking room will be ~30
>feet from the control room on the other end of the house, so I was
>about to buy some 100 ft. balanced mic cables to give us plenty of
>room for positioning mics. But now, I'm considering getting a 50 ft.
>snake and some shorter mic cables to chain to the snake for each room.
>
>My question is whether or not the chaining of the mic cables reduces
>sound quality at all, or if this is just standard practice in most
>studios.
This is standard practice. The reason we run balanced low-Z lines is that
we can run thousands of feet of mike cable without any problem.
The only times it becomes an issue is when you have very high capacitance
mike cable (like star-quad), combined with microphones that don't like
driving capacitive loads (like RCA ribbons).
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Mike Rivers
> My question is whether or not the chaining of the mic cables reduces
> sound quality at all
Silly boy! There's nothing you can do that won't affect the sound
quality in some way. But if we worried about little things like that,
we'd never get anything done.
A snake is a very good idea. It will make your setup a lot neater and
will reduce clutter in they house when you don't clean up after a
session. Go for it.
Mike Rivers
> I'll be running a couple of aux mixes from the mixer into the tracking
> room and into a headphone amp (I've got one amp with multiple ins and
> outs) for monitor mixes. What kind of cable would be good for this?
Most commercially made snakes have "return" lines as well as
connectors for your mic cables. You can use those. Quit worrying about
cables. They just work, as long as they're wired correctly.
cjawcrusher512
I agree with you !I support you . As formidable as the 'rubber extruder'
(http://tinyurl.com/6ofsoy)
--
cjawcrusher512
WillStG
> room and into a headphone amp (I've got one amp with multiple ins and
> outs) for monitor mixes. What kind of cable would be good for this?
> I had assumed a 50 ft. TRS cable, but after looking on eBay and such
> for cables a 50 ft. TRS seems very uncommon, whereas there are lots of
> 50 ft. "speaker cables"--I wasn't sure what the difference would be
> (besides that the speaker cables appear to be mono?) or how it might
> affect my ability to run the monitor mixes into the headphone amp.
Mic Snakes will typically say something like "20 sends 4
returns." It's all the same in the multicore cable, just the returns
are the opposite gender of the sends, or sometimes they are 1/4"
connectors instead of XLR's. The returns are typically for monitor
mixes for live gigs, or headphone mixes/talkback signal in the studio.
But if you don't have returns built in, you can just use back to back
adapters to change genders on the ends.
It's also not an unusual practice to send headphone mixes down
the returns after the amp, and keep the amp/amps in the control room.
On the studio end you plug into the returns with a box/boxes that go
around the studio floor that guys jack their headphones into. If the
returns are balanced 1/4" it's easy to send stereo mixes to the
studio, if they aren't you need to wire your headphone breakout and
use two 1/4" inputs for the left and right. For a small room with a
box with 4 unbalanced 1/4" returns, you might have a choice of (for
example), 4 mono mixes, or 1 stereo and 2 mono mixes, or 2 stereo
mixes. If people sing with one ear off anyway, mono mixes are fine.
Will Miho
NY TV/Audio Post/Music/Live Sound Guy
"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away..." Tom Waits
Chris Hornbeck
>I'll be running a couple of aux mixes from the mixer into the tracking
>room and into a headphone amp (I've got one amp with multiple ins and
>outs) for monitor mixes. What kind of cable would be good for this?
>I had assumed a 50 ft. TRS cable, but after looking on eBay and such
>for cables a 50 ft. TRS seems very uncommon, whereas there are lots of
>50 ft. "speaker cables"--I wasn't sure what the difference would be
>(besides that the speaker cables appear to be mono?) or how it might
>affect my ability to run the monitor mixes into the headphone amp.
Reading through all the excellent responses already posted,
maybe I could add a couple of details?
You really want your send from the mixer back down to your
headphone amplifier to be the same (balanced twisted-pair
wiring, with shield) as your incoming mic lines. Folks do
this all the time without issue in the same (snake) bundle
as the incoming mic lines. Maybe scary, but has anybody ever
heard of it being an issue? - Wait for responses, but that's
the usual way. It's the same issue as monitor feeds in
stage work - mic signals coming up; big(ger) line level
signals going down - scary, but works anyway.
Speaker cables aren't shielded or twisted, so aren't reliably
noise-immune. Fine for speakers, where it doesn't matter so much,
but not so wonderful for line-level. You want the same kind
of wiring used for mic's, just with different connectors
and/or genders.
All the best fortune,
Chris Hornbeck
Soundhaspriority
"Chris Hornbeck" <chrishornbe...@att.net> wrote in message
news:jett64ljqgsblk6no...@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 14:39:37 -0700 (PDT), mattc...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
>>I'll be running a couple of aux mixes from the mixer into the tracking
>>room and into a headphone amp (I've got one amp with multiple ins and
>>outs) for monitor mixes. What kind of cable would be good for this?
>>I had assumed a 50 ft. TRS cable, but after looking on eBay and such
>>for cables a 50 ft. TRS seems very uncommon, whereas there are lots of
>>50 ft. "speaker cables"--I wasn't sure what the difference would be
>>(besides that the speaker cables appear to be mono?) or how it might
>>affect my ability to run the monitor mixes into the headphone amp.
>
> Reading through all the excellent responses already posted,
> maybe I could add a couple of details?
>
> You really want your send from the mixer back down to your
> headphone amplifier to be the same (balanced twisted-pair
> wiring, with shield) as your incoming mic lines. Folks do
> this all the time without issue in the same (snake) bundle
> as the incoming mic lines. Maybe scary, but has anybody ever
> heard of it being an issue? - Wait for responses, but that's
> the usual way. It's the same issue as monitor feeds in
> stage work - mic signals coming up; big(ger) line level
> signals going down - scary, but works anyway.
>
benefit of the students. Crosstalk was a surprising problem. This was
coupling between unbalanced feeds of similar signal levels, so it's not
exactly the same.
Headphone level is higher than line level, which is higher than mike level.
Crosstalk might be unobvious in sound reinforcement or garage band
recording, yet show up unexpectedly in other situations. So why risk it?
In the small business of orchestral recording, and purist work, the
practitioners frequently don't even trust snakes, preferring individual
cables and preamps placed close to the mikes.
Bob Morein
(310) 237-6511
Roy W. Rising
>
> Headphone level is higher than line level, which is higher than mike
> level. Crosstalk might be unobvious in sound reinforcement or garage band
> recording, yet show up unexpectedly in other situations. So why risk it?
>
> (310) 237-6511
Bob ~ In practice, headphone level usually is not higher than line level.
When I plug my phones into a +4 dBu output, it's louder than I find
comfortable by at least 6 dB.
Still, the rule of thumb for crosstalk in multicore cable keeps level
differences greater than 40 dB from sharing the same snake. When mics are
close to their sources, outputs easily can be above the -40 dBu range.
Janice Joplin's voice was about -10 coming out of an EV 635A! A top-fuel
dragster passing the same mic placed trackside measured +4 dBu!
Soundhaspriority
<rwrising@dsl[omit]extreme.com> wrote in message
20080705145527.027$f...@newsreader.com...
> Bob ~ In practice, headphone level usually is not higher than line level.
> When I plug my phones into a +4 dBu output, it's louder than I find
> comfortable by at least 6 dB.
>
> Still, the rule of thumb for crosstalk in multicore cable keeps level
> differences greater than 40 dB from sharing the same snake. When mics are
> close to their sources, outputs easily can be above the -40 dBu range.
> Janice Joplin's voice was about -10 coming out of an EV 635A! A top-fuel
> dragster passing the same mic placed trackside measured +4 dBu!
I don't know about anything "in practice". I read all about recording and
know what's best from the literature.
"I don't really have a replacement career, it's a very gnawing thing."
Robert Morein
Dresher, PA
(310) 237-6511
(215) 646-4894
Roy W. Rising
The information I try to provide here is derived from four decades of
studying the literature and applying it in the very real world of TV audio
systems ~ their design, development, maintenance, modification and
*operation*.
Here are two example of some things I did in 1969:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsGm-DqbmSA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkMKRxn5x14
Both are live to videotape. And ... I've learned a great deal *since*
1969. ;-)
GepcoChris
I reccomend Gepco International cables. They are a true manufacturer
of audio cable. They make a real nice digital snake cable. You can buy
it from them bulk or have them make the snake box with connectors to
your specifications.