Cable length - limits?

[pure.fusion]

Hi all,

Just planning a new Iso cabinet / vocal booth and the layout of my house determines that it will be a fair distance from my desk - probably about 6m (20ft) away. The cables, one XLR for a phantom powered condenser mic and one guitar lead will have to be more like 8m or 9m (26ft to 30ft) to get the job done.

Will this have any noticable effect on sound quality with cables at this distance?

I'll be using a pedal to buffer the guitar signal, the question refers more to the microphone.

Cheers,
FM

 

[SuperGeek]

I use a 100 foot snake and have no issues and its plugged into a RME Octamic D and Fireface 800 or sometimes a Yamaha O1V96 mixing board.

 

[witzendoz]

Hi,

I don't think you will have any problem up to 6 mtrs, but use good quality cables. Cheap mic cables have smaller wire cross section and the phantom suffers over long distance.

In my studio the longest multi core into the studio is 12 mts (40 feet) plus mic lead, and there are never any problems, I used to do live sound and the multicore was 30 mtrs (100 feet), plus mic leads, and there was rarely a problem, (Over 30 meters we used to do phantom from a fold-back desk).

Guitar lead up to 6 mtrs should also not be a problem if it's a good quality.

Cheers
Alan.

 

[pure.fusion]

Great. Good info guys thanks.

How much should I worry about avoiding power power cables? Obviously the amp will need powering and some lighting too.

Has this caused problems in your experience?

Cheers,
FM

 

[witzendoz]

Power cables usually only cause a problem if they are run alongside the signal cables, you always end up with power cables around the signal cables as the gear has to be plugged in, I actually have the mains power and the multicore separated by about 200 mm (the mains cables are in a conduit 200 mm above the multicore). Sometimes the cables have to cross, but this has never been a problem.

You may find the guitar cables is more likely to be effected by mains than a balanced multicore, but if there is noise just separate them a little.

Just another idea, I have a system set up in the studio where the guitar player if they want to can play in the control room with cab in the main room, however we have the amp head in the control room with us so we can change settings and the guitar lead is kept short. I have a permeant speaker cable running out to the recording room from the control room to plug an amp and cab together, this cable is made up using some 10 amp 2 core mains flex with a jack plug each end.

Cheers
Alan.

 

[pure.fusion]

Thanks witzendoz.

The (ex) owner of the booth also has a multicore to give me but will surely be too short. Is it a done thing to extend XLR cables with another XLR cable? Or does the join cause noise or signal power problems?

Hey, cool with the separate head/Cab.

Mine is a combo, so the whole thing is in the iso box, and I'll be recording from my desk.

I'm assuming that your guitarists can't pull any feedback from their setup when the player and the head is in the control room separate from the speaker cab?

FM

 

[witzendoz]

Thanks witzendoz.
The (ex) owner of the booth also has a multicore to give me but will surely be too short. Is it a done thing to extend XLR cables with another XLR cable? Or does the join cause noise or signal power problems?

If it's all you can do OK, but use good connectors, you could buy a length of multicore cable and reuse the connectors? As long as the multicore connectors are close enough to plug in the mic cables the number of connectors remains the same.

Hey, cool with the separate head/Cab.

Mine is a combo, so the whole thing is in the iso box, and I'll be recording from my desk.

Yes, it only works with a separate head cab setup.

I'm assuming that your guitarists can't pull any feedback from their setup when the player and the head is in the control room separate from the speaker cab?

Much harder to do, if you want feedback be in the same room as the cab.

Alan.

 

[Weasel9992]

Just to add to what Alan's already said, typically you can run mic/line level cable for hundreds of feet with little or no signal loss. The issue is that the longer the cable run is, the bigger the potential for noise induction. When I worked in design/install, whenever we had to run line/mic cable that long we'd have to be really sure to separate everything out into its own conduit (mic w/mic, line w/line, video/video and certainly power/power...that's a code issue anyhow). The lesson is, only use as much cable as you need. If you need 20', then use 20', not 100' with 80' of it coiled up somewhere.