Wireless Snake?

  • Thread starter Thread starter RawDepth
  • Start date Start date
RawDepth

RawDepth

New member
Is there any such thing as a wireless snake? Something that can transmit 24+ channels of pristine audio from stage to the front of house for live PA’s or perhaps to a remote recording truck?

I’ve researched MADI but it is still hard wired.
 
Not that I know of. With all the restrictions on rf bandwidth, and much of the available bandwidth available soon to be up for sale, I doubt it's going to be practical. Currently excellent wireless is anywhere from 1-$2000 a channel. That works out to about $40,000 for a 24-channel snake, with very limited range. Good idea, though. What's this MADI thing? I've seen fiber optic snakes, again about $50,000 for a 40 ch. version
 
boingoman said:
What's this MADI thing?
Click to expand...

MADI stands for Multichannel Audio Digital Interface.

It is a conversion box that can take 8 ADAT lightpipe digital inputs, (that’s 64 channels) and cram it all into a single narrow wire for a run of some 300 feet. Another similar box then converts it back to lightpipe again, all channels still separate, and with no degradation in signal quality. You can even get a PCI card to run the MADI straight into your PC/DAW. It sells for less than $2000.

Is that a cool snake or what?

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/hdsp/index_madi.htm

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/adi/adi648.htm
 
That is cool. Still a lot of $$$. If it's live, you need 64 mic pres on stage, and 64 channels of A/D conversion with lightpipe out before you get to the $2500 MADI box. Then another $2500 MADI box to get back to 64 channels of adat lightpipe. Then either a digital mixer or 64 channels of D/A for your analog board. Same in a home studio, unless you do all your mixing on a DAW, where you can get a MADI card for $1750. Still many many many thousands of dollars.

64 mic pres and 64 channels of A/D could easily be $30,000, and would almost probably be lots more, plus extra racks, power distro, so on.

I bet it will get more flexible as time goes on, though. Like a box loaded with mic pres all digitally remote controlled, built in MADI, and digital consoles with MADI built in.

Cool. Now if someone can figure how to get 30 amps of 220 A/C down a fiber optic cable..........
 
boingoman said:
That is cool. Still a lot of $$$. If it's live, you need 64 mic pres on stage, and 64 channels of A/D conversion with lightpipe out before you get to the $2500 MADI box.
Click to expand...

Well, I didn’t really need 64 channels. I only have 24 mic pres and 24 A/D converters for live shows. I was already willing to spend between $1000 and $2000 for a good isolated splitter snake. I was just looking for an easier way to get signal to the recording truck without having nightclub patrons tripping over cables. I am exploring different options for snakes. I can put the mic pres either on the stage or in the truck depending on what kind of snake I end up using.

I did find one that was interesting. It seems cheap enough. I just don’t know how well it will work. http://www.heartechnologies.com/extender/extreme_extender.htm

Most of my gear has both analog and digital inputs. I think I can make a digital snake work. I wonder if I would still need the Isolation Transformers with a digital snake?

Hmmm.
 
WIFI snake

Hi Guys,

Actually i think that you are close to a good answer. If you use wireless mics (vocal and percussion) and instrument jacks (1/4 wireless guitar, bass, keyboard), then you only have to send a mono or stereo mix from an unpowered mixer to a power amp (2 more wireless mics?). Then you can add a wireless for each monitor. In other words, if you already use wireless for vocals and instruments you are very close to going completely wireless (6 new mics?). If you use an Axiom system with an ethernet system then you can send everything wifi to the stage and just use a Wireless access point at the stage to route the signal across the stage. There are some really cool wireless units for projectors too if you are doing multimedia.:cool:

Bud
 
Sounds like pretty scary stuff to me. Any sort of technically capable wireless system will require either a lot of batteries, or a lot of power adapters. In addition to all this the most important thing, the lack of decent quality and reliable wireless transmission systems. Never mind all the RF interference issues, droputs, crosstalk, shifting, antenna distribution, etc.... Oh yeah, the raw $ involved in any halfway decent wireless solution. Wifi doesn't sound like the greatest solution to me either. Once again, there can be dropouts, range issues, non reliable drivers, bandwidth, throughput, latency etc. I think we are still quiet aways from any sort of real wireless snake that addresses all of these issues in any sort of reliable fashion without sacrificing the integrity of the signal path and real time demand needed in a live or remote circumstance. I know that I for one use as little wireless as possible in all scenarios, regardless of the availability of equipment.
 
xstatic said:
Sounds like pretty scary stuff to me. Any sort of technically capable wireless system will require either a lot of batteries, or a lot of power adapters. In addition to all this the most important thing, the lack of decent quality and reliable wireless transmission systems. Never mind all the RF interference issues, droputs, crosstalk, shifting, antenna distribution, etc.... Oh yeah, the raw $ involved in any halfway decent wireless solution. Wifi doesn't sound like the greatest solution to me either. Once again, there can be dropouts, range issues, non reliable drivers, bandwidth, throughput, latency etc. I think we are still quiet aways from any sort of real wireless snake that addresses all of these issues in any sort of reliable fashion without sacrificing the integrity of the signal path and real time demand needed in a live or remote circumstance. I know that I for one use as little wireless as possible in all scenarios, regardless of the availability of equipment.
Click to expand...

I agree ...... I basically hate wireless although I understand the newest (and most expensive) do a good job.
But to carry 24 channels is gonna be a heap 'o' money.
 
Though it's an old thread, I still think it's title sounds like a great insult or something, "You, you....wireless snake !".
Major nations have gone to war over less.
 
grimtraveller said:
Though it's an old thread, I still think it's title sounds like a great insult or something, "You, you....wireless snake !".
Major nations have gone to war over less.
Click to expand...

You trying to start something Grim?
Thems fightin' words where I come from.






:cool:
 
Hi,

Well, here is a different spin on it.

I read an article about a band on tour and what the sound guys did was this:

They had a digital desk that could do both front of house and fold back. They set it up next to the stage where the fold back mixer would have gone. They plugged all the mics and lines into the mixer and connected the amp rack / speakers to it. This meant all cables were a short run. Now it gets interesting.

They set up a lap top that could communicate to the mixer via wifi. As the mixer had all the channel faders eq, processing, effects etc on board they could activate all of this by lap top. The engineer doing the fold back sat at the mixer, the front of house guy sat in the room at a table and mixed the band with his lap top. No Snake, no space taken up with a front of house mixer.

I thought this was pure genius. EDIT: found an article here.

Cheers
Alan.
 
Wow??

xstatic said:
Sounds like pretty scary stuff to me. Any sort of technically capable wireless system will require either a lot of batteries, or a lot of power adapters. In addition to all this the most important thing, the lack of decent quality and reliable wireless transmission systems. Never mind all the RF interference issues, droputs, crosstalk, shifting, antenna distribution, etc.... Oh yeah, the raw $ involved in any halfway decent wireless solution. Wifi doesn't sound like the greatest solution to me either. Once again, there can be dropouts, range issues, non reliable drivers, bandwidth, throughput, latency etc. I think we are still quiet aways from any sort of real wireless snake that addresses all of these issues in any sort of reliable fashion without sacrificing the integrity of the signal path and real time demand needed in a live or remote circumstance. I know that I for one use as little wireless as possible in all scenarios, regardless of the availability of equipment.
Click to expand...

I have been running sound since 1980. I am very comfortable with wireless mics. Yep, we have to recharge the batteries regularly. I have not experienced any RF interference issues in years, no dropouts, cross talk, shifting, antenna distribution to speak of (no worse than issues like a bad cable or something). As for $$$, you get what you pay for. The only thing keeping our team from a wireless solution is that after years of using wireless vocals without issue, one of our current guys for no apparent reason doesn't trust wireless instruments even though they are a mature and trustworthy technology. No bandwidth issues. No latency issues. No lack of frequency response. No sacrifice of signal path. I can see from your last statement that you (like our guy), are just not comfortable with wireless. That's ok. Old School works great and cables deliver great sound and control. If you have no need for wireless, no problem. But seriously, We've been using it for years just like they do on TV, it really works and sounds great. It gives performers a lot of freedom. It also makes a nice neat stage when the lights go down. What you eliminate is anyone tripping over and ruining your expensive cables (and possibly suing you). It also makes setup a breeze. So we have to charge some batteries. I can live with that.

Still, those Axiom digital personal monitor systems are sweet too (ethernet)!

http://hubpages.com/hub/Aviom-Personal-Mixer-A-Personal-Review
 
Clarification

Just to clarify,

We have been using wireless for vocals flawlessly. When we use wireless of instruments we have had no issues. I really do not understand why we do not go to a full wireless setup. I suspect we will within the next year. All of the wireless mics and earbud monitors that we have been using are great. So it kinda makes you wonder why our guy is more than happy to use wireless for vocals and ear buds but not for instruments or to replace the snake. Every time we have tested the concept it has worked fine. :)

Things that make you go hmmmmmm...
 
Well, I am very glad that you have not been experiencing problems with your wireless. I have only been doing live sound for 15 years, but an average week is about 60+ hours for me. There have been plenty of shows where I have had very few if any issues with wireless, but at the same time, I have had far more shows where wireless was a constant issue regardless of brand, model, paddles, helicals etc.... ANY touring professional will tell you about the countless headaches that people run into when using wireless. Especially now that we just lost a bunch of frequencies and more and more other items are using wireless.

When we do big shows we have use wireless frequency monitoring software to keep track of other frequencies and changes around us. We have to do this to keep things running smoothly when running critical or multiple channels and it gets to be a real pain in the ass. Add to that the quality of sound from most all wireless mics in comparison to wired ones, gain structure limitations and receiver noise, RF Hits and flicks, the issues are many.

As for mixing from a laptop, sure. It works, but I still don't like the thought of my show stability relying on my wifi connection. In addition to that, running a 40 channel show on a laptop with 10 monitor mixes, 4+ FX sends, center fills, main L&R, delays etc... can be a very tedious process trying to run studio manager or D-Show from a laptop. to me it is far too slow to use a mouse to try and run a large band with all those options in any sort of timely manor. Digital consoles have come a long way and there are some pretty nice ones in some pretty compact packages. Have a look at the DigiCo SD9, Digidesign sc48, or even the yamaha LS9 for that matter. There is jsut no way to move around as efficiently on a laptop. Add to that that many of these consoles have digital snake options that run on a pair of BNC cables, and thats a pretty quick easy setup.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top