Repetitive And Redundant Moves

It never ceases to amaze me how hard musicians and technicians work to make something difficult.  They will make several moves when, with a little prep work, only one would be sufficient.

Let me ask you this, would you make 12 trips to the grocery store to get a dozen eggs?  No, you pick up 12 eggs all bundled together in a carton, and do it in one trip.

Hooking up sound (and lighting) systems is much the same way.  If you know you need to run two speaker cables to a PA stack every time you set up, why are you running them one at a time?  This is where the idea of cable bundles comes in...group cables that have a common source and destination together.  Then, you just run one bundle instead of several individual cables.


Here's a real world example from one of my PA systems.  We use a passive 3-way top and powered subwoofer per side.  That requires a speaker level output for the top, a line level signal to the sub, and power for the sub.  All 3 cables are all bundled together and run from the main rack to the speaker stack.  That saves 4 minutes in set up.

Do that twice (once for each side), and you just saved 7 or 8 minutes.
 

This not only works for PA, but for guitar rigs.  Here's the snake that runs from  my guitar pedal board I use with The Rhythm Dawgs.

There's a lot going on here, as there are 5 lines running between the board and my rack and amp (Send, Return A, Return B, Mic Send, Amp Control, and output from the Talk Box amp).  

Before making this bundle, it was 12 minutes to hook up the pedal board.  Now it's 3.  And because everything is color coded, it's a lot easier to hook it up right the first time.



Once you get above 6 or 7 lines that you need to run for any distance, I usually recommend sub-snakes to clean things up.  I'll almost always use one for the drums, as mic'ing up a kit can involve 8 or more channels (depending on how crazy you want to get).  You're still going to be plugging in the same number of mics, but it's a lot easier to run a mic cable 5-10 feet (to the sub snake) than it is 20-30 feet back to a mixer.

In The Michael Ingalls Band, we use a stage snake physically located between the drums and the bass stack.  

It not only sends the drums, bass DI, and vocals back to the board, it also returns the stage left PA feed and two monitor sends. That's 13 signals on one cable...a huge time saver.  (The "D" return in the upper right hand corner is just for the drummer during breaks.)



  Are there there things that you should not bundle together?  Absolutely.  You don't want to bundle mic or instrument lines together with AC power (especially if the power cable is feeding something with a heavy current draw).  You might can get away with it with balanced audio cables.  With unbalanced (like a guitar cable), you're asking for hum and noise to get into your signal path.
You're safe bundling power and speaker level cables together.  You're usually OK with power, speaker, and line level (-10dBm) together, but I don't put mic lines and power together.  I've seen the math behind the reasoning, and it ain't pretty.

So take a look at your setup, and see what can get consolidated together.  

The main thing to keep in mind when bundling cables together is to clearly mark what cable is carrying what signal.  You don't want to negate any time savings you get with running cable bundles by have to figure out what plugs into what.  

It the example I used earlier with the PA stack, the 3 cables all have different connectors on them (a Neutrik NL4, and XLR, and an IEC power).  In this scenario, you simply can't hook it up wrong.  

But what do you do when you have several of the same connector, be it XLR's, 1/4" phone, or whatever?  Ah grasshopper...this is where you learn the wisdom of the 4 by 4 test!  And that's what we'll touch on next week.

Until then, keep the meters out of the red!

Ken

Ken Carver has been a musician and performer since the early 70's, and involved with live music production since the mid 70's.  He worked for 15 years as a broadcast engineer, building numerous studios and transmitter sites around Texas.  He's also worked in Critical Care Communications for the medical industry, R&D for an automated lighting manufacturer, and owned Project Lighting & Sound in the 80's.  He currently heads up an R&D Hardware Technician Team at National Instruments in Austin, and still performs on the weekends in the Central Texas area.  You can reach Ken at kcarvertx@gmail.com