Can snake returns be used for headphones?

B

bremerr

New member
Has anyone had experience powering headphones through a mic cable? I think both a mic cable and headphone cable have 2 conductors and a ground.

The reason I ask is:
A friend of mine is putting together a studio. There is a 12 channel snake running from the drum area to the control room. There are 4 additional returns in the snake and it would be nice to make a few adapters to run the headphone signal though the snake back to the drummer.

Thanks for the help!
 
Don't see why not. My snake has TRS returns, and I use them for headphones all the time....
 
I did it.
I have never had any issues doing it.
It has not introduced noise into the other mic channels, if that is your concern.
 
I did it as well. My snake had mono 1/4" jacks though. I opened the connectors and found that there were three wires, but only two were used. I went to radio-shack and got cheap stereo male and female ends, soldered them in and they work great. I have no problem powering my phones to record drums down the hall.
 
It will work but you will be sending a powered (albeit low powered) signal in the same cable run with your audio and that is something you usually want to avoid because it can cause interference.

The best method is to use the sends for line level signals from the aux sends and then have the headphone amp be in the tracking room. That way the musicians can adjust their own levels and you don't have any powered signals going through the snake.
 
TexRoadkill said:
It will work but you will be sending a powered (albeit low powered) signal in the same cable run with your audio and that is something you usually want to avoid because it can cause interference.

The best method is to use the sends for line level signals from the aux sends and then have the headphone amp be in the tracking room. That way the musicians can adjust their own levels and you don't have any powered signals going through the snake.
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Sometimes I think I'm smart...then I read an answer like that. I wouldn't have thought of sending the un-amped signal through the snake the amplifying it on the receiving end. (But I will if I ever need to do this). Nice call, Tex! :D
 
WhiteStrat said:
Sometimes I think I'm smart...then I read an answer like that. I wouldn't have thought of sending the un-amped signal through the snake the amplifying it on the receiving end. (But I will if I ever need to do this). Nice call, Tex! :D
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same technique is used when reamping in a studio
 
bennychico11 said:
same technique is used when reamping in a studio
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I've never reamped, but it sure seems logical (if not obvious!) to me now. The funny thing is, I have almost as much of a live rig as I do recording gear. Almost 10,000 watts FOH--and it's all active. So in the "live" world, I'm doing this all the time w/my returns. I have two 100' stage snakes, each w/4 four returns. One snake feeds mains & subs, the other feeds monitor mixes (the monitors are active as well.)

I guess that's why TexRoadkills answer made sense to me--since I do it live. I had just never applied it to the studio.

Here's a very real question though. My studio's one big room. If my headhone amp is in my console rack, am I okay running from that, into the walls (trs wire & jacks in the walls) and then to headphones. The longest run would be about 30'. To my way of thinking, that's the same as a headphone extension cord--or am I missing something?
 
While interference is possible, as a practical matter the mic pairs should be twisted, shielded and of course balanced. I would expect the CMRR is a large enough number that you would practically have to wire the headphone returns directly to the mic pairs to notice. In fact, I just measured the headphone returns in the multicore in my studio. Not too rigorous a test, but doing the following:

Driving a pair of Sony MDR-7506 at 1VRMS (that's pretty loud in the cans, in excess of 110dBSPL at the ear) I measured several test signals in a mic line that shares the multicore for about 50 feet. It did not seem to matter whether the mic line was terminated (with a dynamic mic, nominal 250 ohm) or not. The resulting CMRR was frequency-dependent. Above 16kHz, I measured about 109dB of CMRR. Below 4kHz, it was better than 120dB.

I would expect such levels would only be a problem if recording a quiet source with a low-sensitivity dynamic or ribbon mic, paradoxically while blasting the foldback at extreme levels . . . which would have more acoustic bleed than electrical interference.

Your mileage may vary, especially with poor-quality multicore that is not fully shielded. Higher current draw from low-impedance headphones would also be more troublesome, although I still would think not practically so in most instances.

It is a bad idea to run a power signal to a speaker through multicore, as the power dissipation in the wire could compromise the insulation. Also, the currents involved are much larger and I would expect would cause much more interference.
 
TexRoadkill said:
The best method is to use the sends for line level signals from the aux sends and then have the headphone amp be in the tracking room. That way the musicians can adjust their own levels and you don't have any powered signals going through the snake.
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This is excellent advice, and you may want to take it a step further and feed a pair of stereo signals - the music that's been tracked already, and the singer. THen the singer can not only control the volume, but also the balance between his/her voice and the music. I've found over the years some singers prefer more music and less of themselves, others prefer the other way around. Others, sadly, shouldn't be given any knobs whatsoever :D
 
In practice I've found the "musician mix yourself" thing to only work about 25% of the time. Even when a musician has only 2 knobs to worry about, them and everyone else, it seems to be too complicated for them to understand. :(
 
This is a useless reply other than to say that I use the returns on my snake all the time for headphone sends. Works like a charm.
 
TexRoadkill said:
In practice I've found the "musician mix yourself" thing to only work about 25% of the time. Even when a musician has only 2 knobs to worry about, them and everyone else, it seems to be too complicated for them to understand. :(
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+11111111111111111:D
 
Myriad_Rocker said:
This is a useless reply other than to say that I use the returns on my snake all the time for headphone sends. Works like a charm.
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i do the same--in fact, 3 of the 4 returns are dedicated to headphone sends and the 4th is a reamp channel.

i have no problems with interference, crosstalk or anything else.


cheers,
wade
 
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