Sure is a lotta cable ?'s lately... here's 1 more

rushfan33

rushfan33

New member
I actually have a couple of questions.... one of which is not audio related.

First.... I need to run coax cable from my house to the studio (only about 15'). Is there any special coax that I need for internet AND cable TV or is it all the same shit?

Next... If I build a wall panel with XLR connectors, Is the path: Female at wall - cable - Male at other wall - cable with male and female XLR's - mixer?

Thanks,
John
 
First.... I need to run coax cable from my house to the studio (only about 15'). Is there any special coax that I need for internet AND cable TV or is it all the same shit?
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If you're putting a cable modem out in your studio, then yes, use 75 ohm coax and bury it in conduit and use a splitter, one leg for the cable box/tv/vcr and one leg for the cable modem.

If your cable modem is in the house, and you have an ethernet hub, you need to run category 5 cable from the house to the studio, and again, bury it in conduit so you don't have any wires hanging down from the eves of the two structures.

PVC conduit is buriable, easily cut and glued together, and so cheap. The glue is often more expensive than the PVC, which is about $2 US for 8 or feet.

Next... If I build a wall panel with XLR connectors, Is the path: Female at wall - cable - Male at other wall - cable with male and female XLR's - mixer?
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The mixer will have female XLR connectors more than likely, so the jacks on the wall should mirror this, so a mic cable you'd normally plug into the XLR connectors on the mixer, can be plugged into the patch panel instead. I'd follow through F -- > M consistantly throughout if you are having multiple bays/cables in series for wahtever reason.

If you need me to clarify either point, just holla :)
 
The prongs of the male connector point the direction you want the signal to go - male is source, female is the receiver. So if you have jack panels in walls (offset, of course) then all but board sends would be female panel mount in the studio side, male panel mount in the CR side. If you use XLR sends to the studio (like for tie lines, etc) they should be opposite. Easier to tell them, plus the signal would normally be going INTO the studio instead of OUT... Steve

(With TRS, it's too hard to get male panel mounts, so tough luck... :=)
 
Hey, Frederic - not only didja beat me by a minute, you didn't forget about the other parts of the question - guess I gotta get new batteries (sigh...)
 
In my vocal booth I'll be running one snake, which is 24 TRS pairs, and terminating it at Neutrik combo connectors, so if I want a mic jack, it is, if I want a TRS pair for my digital piano, it works. I'm going to make custom midi cables that go from phone plugs to din-5, and use the same snake. 24 pairs is gross overkill, but since I have a spool of it I might as well use it, right?

Me thinks I'll be making extra midi adaptor cables, because one will go bad the second I need it LOL
 
knightfly said:
Hey, Frederic - not only didja beat me by a minute, you didn't forget about the other parts of the question - guess I gotta get new batteries (sigh...)
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eheheh, I'm quick tonight because I finished sheet rocking, and just loafing around listening to streamed Steve Vai through my laptop :)

Aaaah, breaks are good :)
 
Thanks guys.... I shoulda phrazed my question a little different about the panel. I do understand the direct and so forth..... I just wanted to be sure that basically, I'll be using 2 mic cables for each input!? One on the control room side, and one on the recording side?

Thanks,
John
 
rushfan33 said:
Thanks guys.... I shoulda phrazed my question a little different about the panel. I do understand the direct and so forth..... I just wanted to be sure that basically, I'll be using 2 mic cables for each input!? One on the control room side, and one on the recording side?

Thanks,
John
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I don't feel so bad now. ;)
I just asked this same question in another thread.
 
Sorry Frederic! I'll clarify a little...... this is what I picture my panel "assembly" to look like:

Mic and mic cable to connector on the live room wall-
From that connector would be soldered wires to the control room wall-
The control room wall would have the opposite connector as the live room-
Last would be another mic cable coming from the control room wall connector to the mixer XLR input.

Essentially, it would be 3 mic cables, one being inside the wall!?

My other option is that I already have a nice 12-channel snake with a box on it. I could just feed that through the wall!? Then the only area I would have to worry about wiring would be the ISO booth.

Is that any clearer? :o
Thanks,
John
 
Sorry Frederic! I'll clarify a little...... this is what I picture my panel "assembly" to look like:
Click to expand...

Nothing to be sorry for... when I'm under caffienated my brain doesn't visualize things correctly from ascii :)

Mic and mic cable to connector on the live room wall-
From that connector would be soldered wires to the control room wall-
The control room wall would have the opposite connector as the live room-
Last would be another mic cable coming from the control room wall connector to the mixer XLR input.
Click to expand...

Essentially, it would be 3 mic cables, one being inside the wall!?
Click to expand...

Okay, so you're essentially doing a pass-through via existing cables that you work into a patch type configuration. Totally doable, nothing wrong with it at all. But you might need more than one connection in your booth / live room, no? This is where your snake might be more useful.

Remember, if you run 10 cables, you'll need 11 in a month :)

My other option is that I already have a nice 12-channel snake with a box on it. I could just feed that through the wall!? Then the only area I would have to worry about wiring would be the ISO booth.
Click to expand...

Much clearer, thank you. You can do it that way, and like Steve said, the male XLR connectors are outputs... so you use females for wall plates that lead to your input channels or outboards, and males for returns to the room.

Me, I make everything female "just because" since male to male cables are about the same price as male-->female so any jack can be used for anything. I keep track of what patches where via a chart, so it really doesn't matter, er, won't matter once my studio is done :)

in my vocal booth i'll even be using XLR jacks for Midi, why not, I'm running a 24-channel TRS raw snake into there, might as well use it for any and all purposes. Gonna make XLR to midi cables :)

just can't run headphones through most snakes since 24 ga conductors usually can't handle 1 or 2 watts.
 
rushfan33 said:

The control room wall would have the opposite connector as the live room-

John
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OK, let's think this through:
The mic end of a cable is female.
So, the LR wall plate should have a male connector on it. Right?
Then imagine going from the pre-amp to the CR side of the wall plate.
Would it not too require a male connector?
 
The connector to the mic is female, but the connector to your walljack in the LR should be female, too.

'Cause the other end of the cable-- the end that you would plug into your pre direct--- is male.

In the CR I would think you would want male jacks at the wall.

How difficult are the combo jacks to solder? Looks pretty crowded in there to me...........
 
Michael Jones said:
OK, let's think this through:
The mic end of a cable is female.
So, the LR wall plate should have a male connector on it. Right?
Then imagine going from the pre-amp to the CR side of the wall plate.
Would it not too require a male connector?
Click to expand...

Let's see.... I drew it on paper to help me see this through. Sometimes I'm very guilty of having brainstorms that leak out before I can articulate them. Here's what I drew out (in word form):

Mic-Female connector of cable-cable-male connector of cable-female connector in LR wall-Cable through wall-male connector on CR wall-female connector on cable-cable-male connector to mixer input.

So that would mean that the LR would in fact have a FEMALE connector..... Either I'm missing something in a big way, or I'm missing something in a big way! :D

John
 
c7sus said:
The connector to the mic is female, but the connector to your walljack in the LR should be female, too.

'Cause the other end of the cable-- the end that you would plug into your pre direct--- is male.

In the CR I would think you would want male jacks at the wall.

How difficult are the combo jacks to solder? Looks pretty crowded in there to me...........
Click to expand...


c7----That's how I have it in my drawing. Basically, it's 3 mic cables in a row.

I just made an order from Markertek for some connectors. I'm gonna start with the iso booth. I forgot that I already bought about 120' of Canare' cable from them about a year ago. It's the Quad cable. I'll start there ans see what happens as far as soldering and all. I figure I'll be safe (perhaps even overkill) with 3 mic jacks in my ISO booth. Should I also put a speaker cable in there in case I wanna put a talkback speaker in later?
I'm also going to put in two 1/4" jacks in there for headphones. How do you all use headphones in an ISO booth?

Thanks,
John
 
If anyone reading this EVER thinks they might use a DAW in their control room, I'd also add a Cat5 cable or two to every room, back to a common patch bay in the CR - That way, if you're cutting vox by yourself you can hook up a KVM extender in the vox booth and patch it into another extender in the CR, and control your entire DAW remote from the vox booth, or from the LR, or wherever you have cat5 cabling run.

My particular system, once it actually has a HOME, has the capability of arming multiple tracks, changing levels, almost anything I can do from the CR, anywhere within 500 feet of the CR - this also will let me put the noisy 'puter stuff in a machine room and not worry about signal degradation of longer 'puter cables. A small roll-around with a 15" LCD, keyboard and mouse, and you're in control no matter which room you're in.

Oh, and all this confusion about mic cables? I tried to KISS this earlier - just point the male in the direction of signal flow. Done deal.

AFAIK, the Neutrik combo plugs are only available in female - if anybody's seen otherwise, I'd like to know, since they're so handy... Steve
 
The mixer has a female.
The mic cable has a male.

So, the connection from the back of your console side patch bay needs to be male, and the patch panel in your vocal booth or live room needs to be female.


Whatever you put in between is pretty much irrelevent, as long as the connectors are high quality, balanced, and consistantly wired throughout (signal + to signal +, ground to ground, signal - to signal -).

Not trying to simplify it, merely point out the obvious maybe?

You can also significantly increase your wall plate functionality by using neutrik combo jacks. XLR and 1/4 :)
 
Steve, I was going to discuss the pros and cons of running CAT5. You've pretty much convinced me to do it now.
I have a little closet just outside of the CR that I was going to put CAT5 in for the PC, now I'm going to wire all the rooms with it.

The remote controll-ability sounds like a great set-up!

Hook me up on this KVM Extender?

edit: I know what it is, but... any brands or type you fancy?
 
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