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Junior Varsity
Help with small rack cabling.
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<blockquote data-quote="Chris Nixon" data-source="post: 10034" data-attributes="member: 1947"><p>I'm putting together a small outboard rack containing 2 in 2 out FX, 2 in 2 out EQ and 6 in 6 out of compressors. It will mainly be used in small venues up to maybe 300 seats with GL2400's and similar. It's not impossible that I'll run into a console with balanced inserts, but 90% of the time it won't be. I want to make up the cabling for this myself mainly to get more experience soldering (and possibly some experience troubleshooting cabling problems :roll: ) but also so that I can get a cable with the exact connectors I need.</p><p></p><p>I would like it to be about 5 metres long and it would be very nice if it fit in the back of the rack. The rack hasn't been purchased yet. The deepest unit is 9cm deeper than all the others, which leaves some extra room for cable to be stored inside.</p><p></p><p>It comes out to 20 lines which means using a 24 channel multicore if I put it all in one cable (can't find a 20), or a 12ch cable for compressors, and two 4 or one 8 channel cable for the FX and EQ, maybe 16ch for comp and FX, 4ch for EQ...</p><p></p><p>...but then I'm carrying around two or three outer sheathes rather than just one.</p><p></p><p>FX will be on balanced TRS connectors and I'll carry TRS - XLR adaptors for it.</p><p></p><p>EQ will be on XLR, I think. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>The most versatile way of cabling the compressors seems to be to run them to "dual point" balanced TRS on the console end and use (2) TS F to (1) TRS M adaptors to get into unbalanced inserts, which has the advantage of letting me swap the send / return configuration by just flipping that adaptor. I could plug into XLR inserts too with some short adaptor cables. I like this, but I'm aware that I'll be mostly unnecessarily carrying quite a lot of metal.</p><p></p><p>The other way I could do it is unbalanced with dual TS on the rack end single point TRS on console end, and carry adaptors to get into balanced consoles. That still lets me swap tip / ring send at the rack, but means I can never use balanced insert lines. It does mean I'm not using adaptors most of the time, and it does seem logical to employ adaptors for the exceptions rather than the norm.</p><p></p><p>How much of a problem are unbalanced lines of about 5 metres, generally? Is the level difference from using unbalanced lines into a device expecting balanced just a matter of setting the compressor threshold 6 dB lower?</p><p></p><p>I know most of this is stuff I need to decide for myself, but any advice from experience would be appreciated.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Chris</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Chris Nixon, post: 10034, member: 1947"] I'm putting together a small outboard rack containing 2 in 2 out FX, 2 in 2 out EQ and 6 in 6 out of compressors. It will mainly be used in small venues up to maybe 300 seats with GL2400's and similar. It's not impossible that I'll run into a console with balanced inserts, but 90% of the time it won't be. I want to make up the cabling for this myself mainly to get more experience soldering (and possibly some experience troubleshooting cabling problems :roll: ) but also so that I can get a cable with the exact connectors I need. I would like it to be about 5 metres long and it would be very nice if it fit in the back of the rack. The rack hasn't been purchased yet. The deepest unit is 9cm deeper than all the others, which leaves some extra room for cable to be stored inside. It comes out to 20 lines which means using a 24 channel multicore if I put it all in one cable (can't find a 20), or a 12ch cable for compressors, and two 4 or one 8 channel cable for the FX and EQ, maybe 16ch for comp and FX, 4ch for EQ... ...but then I'm carrying around two or three outer sheathes rather than just one. FX will be on balanced TRS connectors and I'll carry TRS - XLR adaptors for it. EQ will be on XLR, I think. :) The most versatile way of cabling the compressors seems to be to run them to "dual point" balanced TRS on the console end and use (2) TS F to (1) TRS M adaptors to get into unbalanced inserts, which has the advantage of letting me swap the send / return configuration by just flipping that adaptor. I could plug into XLR inserts too with some short adaptor cables. I like this, but I'm aware that I'll be mostly unnecessarily carrying quite a lot of metal. The other way I could do it is unbalanced with dual TS on the rack end single point TRS on console end, and carry adaptors to get into balanced consoles. That still lets me swap tip / ring send at the rack, but means I can never use balanced insert lines. It does mean I'm not using adaptors most of the time, and it does seem logical to employ adaptors for the exceptions rather than the norm. How much of a problem are unbalanced lines of about 5 metres, generally? Is the level difference from using unbalanced lines into a device expecting balanced just a matter of setting the compressor threshold 6 dB lower? I know most of this is stuff I need to decide for myself, but any advice from experience would be appreciated. Chris [/QUOTE]
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