Connecting a stage snake to a UAD Apollo Rackmount

B

BORNintoMUSIC

New member
Hi everyone,

My band and I are currently setting up my garage (the live room) for recording. My control room sits right next to the garage but it's separated by a brick wall. I'm debating whether or not I should drill a 6" hole through the brick wall and snake the stage cable into the garage, effectively isolating the live room from the control room. The way we've done it in the past is setting up a laptop in the live room and I would used closed back headphones, but as you can imagine it was difficult to effectively track the control sound from the live sound. The downside of my current situation is that I rent a house. The landlord is ok with me drilling the hole as long as I repair it before I move out. Thus I have three questions:

1) Do you think that will be an easy repair?
2) Will I lose noticeable fidelity from the stage snake even though it's going directly to the Apollo Interface?
3) Do you have any alternate suggestions you would try?

Thank you very much for your help!
Brandon
 
There will be no loss of quality from the snake so long as the device driving it has sufficiently low impedance outputs. OPZ should be 100 Ohms or less for "pro" equipment but anything up to a few 100 Ohms should be ok unless the cable is very, very long. I take it the Apollo has balanced line inputs? How many tracks are we talking about?

Repair of a 6" hole will be tricky on the "domestic" side (I doubt the landlord will be very picky about the garage wall?) I would like to suggest an alternative but it involves and bit of soldering and metal bashing. #

A CAT 5e cable has an OD of about 6mm thus the hole can go in the mortar between bricks (breeze?) . Each CAT cable has 4 pairs (plus drain wire for shielded cable) thus just two cables gives you 8 tracks for two wee holes! A few 6mm holes should be an easy fix? In fact in UK I would take a 13A socket off the wall (wires come UP into it) bosh the holes through and fill with snot after. Socket back on, never effing know!

The downside is you have to make breakout boxes but these can be as simple or posh as you like. Cheap ally box and a few TRS jacks and a bit of slobbering.

I could do you some drawing, whether I can attach them of course is in the lap of the mods!

Dave.
 
Here is the stage snake we are using:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008D279JM/ref=pe_153470_128747380_em_1p_6_ti

It's 50 feet long.

My apollo does have 8 mic pres. Basically enough to get by for a drum recording session, and then isolated recordings for everyone else.

Now as far as the CAT 5e cable method. I think I have an idea of what you are suggesting. A picture would definitely help me out if you have the time to make one. Ideally I would love a "real" control room as opposed to trying to track in the live room.

Thank you very much Dave!
 
A solid brick wall between you and the band is about the best isolation we can hope for in most home recording scenarios. A brick wall with a 6" hole in it, though... Anything you try to plug it with pretty much has to be a lot less effective. Is there no door or window or other pre-existing orifice?
 
ashcat_lt said:
A solid brick wall between you and the band is about the best isolation we can hope for in most home recording scenarios. A brick wall with a 6" hole in it, though... Anything you try to plug it with pretty much has to be a lot less effective. Is there no door or window or other pre

I agree Ash' a 6" hole will be almost impossible to make soundtight. 3 or 4 6mm (1/4") on the other hand? The cable will block 90% of the space so some silicone sealer would take care of the rest.

"Proper" control room? Can get close. CCTV cameras are cheap as chips these days as are FSTellies (picked up a stonking JVC 25" at a charity shop a week or so ago for grandson's Xbox, needed HDMI. £20!) All you need is some sort of co ax cable and RCA plugs, virtually all FSTs have a Composite video input. Course! If you are clever you could stream two laptops across the wall. I am NOT that clever.

If you need to send mics you will need XLR boxes each end plus patch cables. Going to run a bit of money? Still, worth it if you are going to be there a while?

Pics the morrow (Mod willing)

Dave.
Click to expand...
 
Instead of cutting a 6" hole, you need to simply remove one brick. Don't get crazy and go busting it out or you might cause damage to the wall. You'll have to carefully chisel or cut the mortar and work the brick out. It will be so much easier to fix than a round hole when it's time to move. You can buy a tube of concrete patch from the store to repair the wall.

Here are some pics of a guy removing bricks from my wall to accommodate a window a/c unit. He used a drill to make small holes in the mortar then a chisel to break it up. He was very careful doing so the wall wouldn't collapse.
https://homerecording.com/bbs/gener...c-treatment/studio-garage-279814/#post3124206
 
Chili said:
Instead of cutting a 6" hole, you need to simply remove one brick. Don't get crazy and go busting it out or you might cause damage to the wall. You'll have to carefully chisel or cut the mortar and work the brick out. It will be so much easier to fix than a round hole when it's time to move. You can buy a tube of concrete patch from the store to repair the wall.

Here are some pics of a guy removing bricks from my wall to accommodate a window a/c unit. He used a drill to make small holes in the mortar then a chisel to break it up. He was very careful doing so the wall wouldn't collapse.
https://homerecording.com/bbs/gener...c-treatment/studio-garage-279814/#post3124206
Click to expand...

I like this idea about punching out one brick. That seems fairly easy to replace when I do move out. Do you have any suggestions on what I can use to fill in the remaining space around the snake? Perhaps silicon like Dave suggested?

I can post pictures if that would help at all... but quite literally it's basically just punching a brick out.

Thanks for all of your help everyone.
 
ashcat_lt said:
A solid brick wall between you and the band is about the best isolation we can hope for in most home recording scenarios. A brick wall with a 6" hole in it, though... Anything you try to plug it with pretty much has to be a lot less effective. Is there no door or window or other pre-existing orifice?
Click to expand...

Hey Ashcat - In the past there is a window in my control room, which is caddy corner to the garage's back door. The only problem is during the winter it ends up getting super cold. I have an industrial heater in the garage which makes the live room comfortable, but I'm trying to prevent my house heater turning on as it's expensive to heat the house. :)
 
BORNintoMUSIC said:
Do you have any suggestions on what I can use to fill in the remaining space around the snake? Perhaps silicon like Dave suggested?
Click to expand...
Can you post up some pics? Is the brick outside the house? Exposed so as to be an aesthetic problem? Or does it divide two rooms? I'm thinking you may not need to fill it at all. And if you do need to, and if 'ugly' is not a problem. Stuff it with pieces of drywall and seal it with something. Or hang a picture over it. lol Filling up a brickhole with silicon can get messy and it sounds like a lot of silicon. Then you gotta remove it when you move.
 
So, I understand now that you have a window communicating the two rooms but you cannot have it open because of the cold and in any case it will destroy sound isolation?

Wooden window and frame? If so remove it and cut two pieces of 3/4" chipboard to fit the frame and screw in place. Fill the void with GF or rockwool. Hole in chipboard for snake can be stuffed with GF and snotted.

When you go, put back window, lick o paint, job's good'un.

Dave.
 
***k! It worked!

Just a couple of ideas if you go the CAT cable route*

The box is based loosely on the size of our metal 13AMP back boxes as they are dirt cheap and pre-punched for a gland or grommet.

Ah! I have fooked oop! Missed the drain wire from the CAT cable to the earth "bus bar".
N.B. is to point out the connection from incoming earth to the XLR case tag and hence the box. Some XLRs may not have the tag so make other arrangements.

N very B. I have shown the pairs preserved as they come. In practice grn/wh grn are NOT a pair in a network plug. Naturally the twists are kept MUCH tighter than shown.

The TRS box shows that you can get 2 independent stereo headphone lines out of one cable and have 2 wires over (3 if you count the drain) this could carry 9V DC for pedal or kbd power. Not shown but you could parallel all the solid colours and all the whites to get a high current pair that could, for instance feed a 4x12 cab and keep head in the "control room".

Have you considered a Talk Back system and its attendant interlocks?

Lastly, DON'T forget a CAT5e (or better) link for a PC or maybe an Ethernet mulititrack system in the future.

PPS, You can used the much cheaper solid core FTP (shielded) cable instead of flexible patch cable. I doubt you will move the cables much once installed? In any case I have used solid cable for all sorts of jobs for years and it has never broken.
Dave.
 

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Chili said:
Can you post up some pics? Is the brick outside the house? Exposed so as to be an aesthetic problem? Or does it divide two rooms? I'm thinking you may not need to fill it at all. And if you do need to, and if 'ugly' is not a problem. Stuff it with pieces of drywall and seal it with something. Or hang a picture over it. lol Filling up a brickhole with silicon can get messy and it sounds like a lot of silicon. Then you gotta remove it when you move.
Click to expand...
'

Here are some pictures of what I'm speaking to:
<blockquote class="imgur-embed-pub" lang="en" data-id="a/VWt70"><a href="//imgur.com/a/VWt70">View post on imgur.com</a></blockquote><script async src="//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Hopefully the pictures give a better idea of what I'm working with.

Recording Setup - Album on Imgur

Thanks everyone!
 
I still like the idea of putting the UAD in the garage and running a firewire cable through the wall. There's an electrical outlet on the brick wall. Does it have a partner on the other side? If so, you can run a firewire cable through there.
 
Link does not work for me. Why in black? I pasted it in but got some **** about "cross site scripting"?

Dave....I am SEVENTY ****ing ONE! NEVER thought I would last this long (well, some bit of me haven't!)
 
ecc83 said:
GRRRR! Can someone fix that bloody link for me???

Dave.
Click to expand...

Hey Dave, if you're using Internet Explorer, please switch to Firefox. IE does not work with vBulletin anymore. I've complained about it for a year now and there is nothing the admins can do. The problem comes from vBulletin. :(
 
Chili said:
Hey Dave, if you're using Internet Explorer, please switch to Firefox. IE does not work with vBulletin anymore. I've complained about it for a year now and there is nothing the admins can do. The problem comes from vBulletin. :(
Click to expand...

Not B likely Chills! I have enough trouble in IE with BT not wanting my mail to be my home page. Yahoo taking over when it feels like it and Talk Talk who is my actual ISP just being a chocolate teapot. I have just about worked out my hacks for this lot. NOT starting again with another browser AMTOL!

Surely some nice person who HAS it can turn it into a .bmp and attach it?

Dave.
 
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