Mystery of the invisible snake...

[Ryan.]

I was just at a show at a place called The Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento. And as usual the sound guys were about 200ft back center from the stage. But I didn't see a line running from stage to their booth, so do they hide the stage under the floor or go around or what?

 

And what do they do at outdoor concerts? I was at Boreal here in CA for the Warped Tour, and didn't see one either. Do they dig a trench in the dirt before hand? Or is it wireless?

 

Anyone know how they accomplish it?

[Mogwix]

Some auditoriums have the snake system built in, or perhaps it was run over-head.

 

As far as outdoor concerts, they may have run the snake around the immediate audience area. They have to get signal and power to FOH somehow. Generally it's a good idea to run your snake out of the way and out of sight, less opportunity for the general public to cause it harm.

[Ryan.]

Well how far can a snake go and be effective?

 

I've always been told (by GC employees of course) that speaker cables start getting weak as they approach the 100ft length... but obviously there are 200ft snakes so...?

[Mogwix]

 

I've always been told (by GC employees of course) that speaker cables start getting weak as they approach the 100ft length... but obviously there are 200ft snakes so...?

 

Speaker cables are a different matter. The distance you can run them depends on the gauge of the cable and the impedance.

 

Lo-Z mic and signal lines can go upwards of 300ft just fine.

[donnievaz]

 

Well how far can a snake go and be effective? I've always been told (by GC employees of course) that speaker cables start getting weak as they approach the 100ft length... but obviously there are 200ft snakes so...?

 

 

I think in most, if not all cases, the power amps are under or behind the stage, therefore the speaker runs aren't an issue.

[Coaster]

balanced lines can go a long way. the old telephone system used balanced lines, and i could talk to people thousands of miles away.

[Craig Vecchione]

 

Well how far can a snake go and be effective? I've always been told (by GC employees of course) that speaker cables start getting weak as they approach the 100ft length... but obviously there are 200ft snakes so...?

 

 

 

Well, the terminology is that losses become significant with long *speaker* cable. You need to use substantially thicker gauge cable, and the cost and weight become prohibitive. Much easier in most cases to locate the amps closer to the speakers. This is an issue that requires careful calculation and consideration.

 

Balanced audio cable is a different animal. 300ft runs are commonplace in large venues without any problems, even further if required.

 

Venues sometimes have buried cable tunnels from stage to FOH and monitor world. Or they might have been using wirele$$ $y$tem$.

[Craig Vecchione]

balanced lines can go a long way. the old telephone system used balanced lines, and i could talk to people thousands of miles away.

 

 

Of course...as long as you kept the string tight.......

[Coaster]

Of course...as long as you kept the string tight.......

 

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

[Flogger59]

Systems like Optocore use fiber optic cable, 512 channels on a cable the size of a microphone wire. Whirlwind makes a wireless transmitter for their E-Snake.

[dennis a]

 

balanced lines can go a long way. the old telephone system used balanced lines, and i could talk to people thousands of miles away.

 

I think you can go about 600' before you have to start thinking about amplification...line loss is noticeable (but liveable) at even 300'.

[agedhorse]

MemAud doesn't have a tunnel BUT it is possible with fairly small cable to route under the floor. It's also possible that there was wireless but not very likely. It's also possible that you just didn't see it, it would have been routed along the outside of the floor or even along the pony wall of the first mezz.

 

I agree with Dennis, 300' is no problem and as things get longer SOME mics might start showing some degredation but usually it's a very small amount.

[coyote-1]

This.

 

Systems like Optocore use fiber optic cable, 512 channels on a cable the size of a microphone wire. Whirlwind makes a wireless transmitter for their E-Snake.

 

Ethernet can be used for the whole thing, and of course anyone with a notebook nowadays knows ethernet can be wireless. All you need get to the mixing console is AC power.

[crowguitar]

if you look at those yellow or black plastic things on the ground that look like little long speedbumps, the wires are usually under those.

 

Toured on the Warped Tour and other outdoor festival tours for years.. always the same thing.. Power amps, monitoring systems, main snake and most outboard are under or side of the stage, while there's a main hub that has cable(s) that go out to the main board. They run it thru those little "runners" I was just talking about.

 

The wireless systems are too costly and problematic for most tours (especially multi-stage festivals), but I've seen them as well (just not as frequently)

[Ryan.]

 

if you look at those yellow or black plastic things on the ground that look like little long speedbumps, the wires are usually under those. Toured on the Warped Tour and other outdoor festival tours for years.. always the same thing.. Power amps, monitoring systems, main snake and most outboard are under or side of the stage, while there's a main hub that has cable(s) that go out to the main board. They run it thru those little "runners" I was just talking about. The wireless systems are too costly and problematic for most tours (especially multi-stage festivals), but I've seen them as well (just not as frequently)

 

 

Warped Tour boreal looked like a bitch and a half... just a giant dust bowl! How do you even try to keep all the electronics clean!?!

[crowguitar]

 

Warped Tour boreal looked like a bitch and a half... just a giant dust bowl! How do you even try to keep all the electronics clean!?!

 

 

you dont. almost everything from the Speakers to even guitarists pedals and cases get covered in that {censored}. horrible. I swear I've come home from tours with wildlife/dirt samples from every state in the US in my gear.

 

the best we can do is ...normally you see those thin blue plastic tarps? you just try to cover stuff the best you can and let Dust remover spray do the rest.

[agedhorse]

Wireless is not reliable enough, especially at very high density, for most tour pros who have the stress to make the show happen (drama-less) every day. When it's your butt on the line, and there's some real healthy liability involved, you will find that conservative becomes the rule ofthe day.

[Mogwix]

 

Wireless is not reliable enough, especially at very high density, for most tour pros who have the stress to make the show happen (drama-less) every day.

 

Or perhaps for the newer systems, where all the signal processing goes on at the stage rack? I'd imagine there's not too much traffic over the network of an iLive system.

[crowguitar]

 

Or perhaps for the newer systems, where all the signal processing goes on at the stage rack? I'd imagine there's not too much traffic over the network of an iLive system.

 

 

THe A&H iLive system is pretty killer, but mostly for permanent installations where the board isnt gonna hafta be carted, tossed in a truck/trailer, exposed to tons of unknown and variable weather conditions and possibly fried out due to generators or power going fritzy.

 

If you're doing larger touring (and especially outdoor) events, its more practical and not really that troublesome to just use the tried and true workhorses, verses iffy "bells & whistles" systems.

 

If one of my compressors in the rack blows, I have more. If the dsp goes in the iLIVE, you're totally {censored}ed cuz it's all in one.

[Mogwix]

 

If one of my compressors in the rack blows, I have more. If the dsp goes in the iLIVE, you're totally {censored}ed cuz it's all in one.

 

I suppose the same can be said for most any digital board.

 

Having mixed some big shows on the iLive, first impressions are glorious. Looks and feels about as well built as any road-tested piece of professional equipment. Time will tell, of course.

[NUSound]

 

THe A&H iLive system is pretty killer, but mostly for permanent installations where the board isnt gonna hafta be carted, tossed in a truck/trailer, exposed to tons of unknown and variable weather conditions and possibly fried out due to generators or power going fritzy. If you're doing larger touring (and especially outdoor) events, its more practical and not really that troublesome to just use the tried and true workhorses, verses iffy "bells & whistles" systems.

 

 

*mounts high horse*

 

I've realized that most of the digital nay-sayers are guys who have little or no experience using a digital console. I'm pretty confident in saying that most of the larger tours are on digital systems and a lot of smaller tours are for the same reasons. The size/power/simplicity of digital is much more practical than analog in most situations.

 

 

If one of my compressors in the rack blows, I have more. If the dsp goes in the iLIVE, you're totally {censored}ed cuz it's all in one.

 

 

If one of your compressors goes in the middle of a show, I'll give you no more than 60 seconds before whatever killed the comp kills the mixer and the rest of your rack gear (for the sake of argument, let us assume that we're not in a dive bar and a fight has not broken out). While you're tracking down new rack gear for the next night's show, I'll be calling the local production-company, and be uploading my show file into their board the next morning to be right back to 100%.

 

Out of curiosity, does anyone here actually have first (or second) hand experience with a show stopping digital-console failure?

 

*dismounts*

[Redbassman86]

 

*mounts high horse* Out of curiosity, does anyone here actually have first (or second) hand experience with a show stopping digital-console failure? *dismounts*

 

 

Yes, the Digico didnt wanna work (for me), musta been broken. So I tossed it to the side (where it was ready to go for the next act in .5 seconds when that acts FOH engineer uploaded his settings to it). I settled into the backup the old standby (Heritage 3000), and mixed the show there, with 3 VCA groups not working, and a headache from having to reset another BE's settings when I was done.

[agedhorse]

 

Or perhaps for the newer systems, where all the signal processing goes on at the stage rack? I'd imagine there's not too much traffic over the network of an iLive system.

 

 

Perhaps and this may indeed be the way of the future, but I was specifically focusing on audio snakes and the momumental task of sending that much data over copper and the cost of doing it all via fiber. It's expensive no matter what.

[agedhorse]

 

*mounts high horse* I've realized that most of the digital nay-sayers are guys who have little or no experience using a digital console. I'm pretty confident in saying that most of the larger tours are on digital systems and a lot of smaller tours are for the same reasons. The size/power/simplicity of digital is much more practical than analog in most situations. Out of curiosity, does anyone here actually have first (or second) hand experience with a show stopping digital-console failure? *dismounts*

 

 

Yes, an Pro-6 {censored} the bed and that engineer ended his relationship with digital consoles that moment. Large well known act and engineer so no names.

 

Not saying it can't happen with any console, but it SEEMS to be more common with the more complex digital consoles.

[Flogger59]

I saw a prototype Roland go wonky at NAMM a couple of years ago. The head amp was randomly changing levels by about 40db. That was fun. The BE chewed out the first Japanese he saw.