X32 Discussion

Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

Declan Slater said:
So Dan, a couple questions... First, why the yellow power cable dude?
Click to expand...

Safety, dammit! Can't you see that peoples lives are at stake and it's my responsibility to keep them safe?!?!

(Does your country have the TV shows where they talk like this? I love doing it....)

Seriously, though, the yellow cable makes it easier to see in the grass or wherever. Unlike some people ITT, I can't always route cables where they will be untouched by audience members, and I like it that they are visible so people can avoid them. The combination of yellow and black meaning "Danger!" has been evolutionarily implanted in us because of the many nasty yellow and black striped things that are bad for us. When the snake cable assemblies are finished rather than temporary like the one in the most recent pictures, they inherently have yellow and black stripes.

Some people hate it. I like it.

Onstage is a different story, of course. Everything is black there.

Declan Slater said:
Second, was your cat-5 shielded or not, shield connected or not, cat-5 or 6?
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Cat 5e, this stuff:

TecNec Neutrik Ethercon / Belden Data Tuff CAT5e Cable Assemblies by TecNec CAT-5 Cables at Markertek.com

They don't say what it is other than Belden Data Tuff, but I ASSume it's this

Belden Belden 7923A Paired - Category 5e DataTuff Twisted Pair Cable Bulk Category 5/5e/6 Cable at Markertek.com

since that's the only Data Tuff cable they have in bulk. It appears to be unshielded. Someone either here or in the other forum suggested it when I was looking to buy, and the price seemed reasonable for what it is.

Declan Slater said:
Third, most importantly, did you try a different cable - it may work with other systems, but random problems can be difficult to trace.
Click to expand...

Not yet; I got the Belden 200' because the Gepco Tactical 4 wire, which seems more rugged by far, was on a boat somewhere, and I had a deadline. The Gepco has since arrived, and that's what will be on two of my three digital snakes. Haven't opened the boxes yet.

And this is my only digital system, so I haven't tried it with other systems to see if it glitches when pulled/squeezed.

Declan Slater said:
I find that most emi from power cables get's canceled out inside itself by the neutral and ground wires, if you put a clamp on ammeter over the whole cable it reads 0 amps. Are there ethercons on your cable?
Click to expand...

Yes to your emi comment, except that the cancelling is due to twisted pairs and not to the presence or absence of neutral or ground wires.

And yes to the Ethercons.
 
Re: Monitor out noise

Robert Lofgren said:
You forgot about the 6 auxes so that's 38ch in total :-)) (ok, they're maybe not fully featured... But still.)
Click to expand...

You answered with the reason I said what I said!

:roll:

If you need 33 full-featured inputs, the X32 is not the right console.

:smug:

If you need 32 full-featured inputs, and some other ones up to 6, the X32 can maybe work.

:razz:
 
Re: CAT+power-cable test results

Darren Scaresbrook said:
Hi Brett,

Thanks for the feedback.
What cable are you using and where did you get it?

Cheers,
Darren
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Hi Brett

I am doing basically the same as Darren with my overall available length off the reel at about 90 metres

This is the cable I am using

305m Pull box - Cat6 / Cat 6 Ethernet Network Cable - In Stock at www.thecableconnection.com.au

It's only 2 months old and only even been reeled out to a total of about 50 metres and been used about 10 times thus far, but it works a treat for me and it's fairly cheap

I carry the rest of the box in the truck and can quickly make up another if/when it fails

Cheers
Michael
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

Ha! That's Awesome. "YOU DONKEY! YOU COULD HAVE KILLED SOMEONE!" (Gordon Ramsey, yelling over underdone chicken).

Is your cable wired for A or B?

So, your in Austrailia right? it's 240v, 50hz. (Hot, neutral, ground) right? The neutral and ground would then serve to help mostly cancel the EMF field in the cable, reducing it's radiation to near zero (compared to without them) - from what I remember from electrical tech school back in the day... So, anything getting picked up in the cat-5 should be negligible, right? At least I've never had any problem like that with my Roland stuff, and I've tried to be mean with that stuff over the years... I've only had the s16's now for a couple weeks, and the 250' cat-6 utp cords I made up worked fine so far...

Dan Mortensen said:
Safety, dammit! Can't you see that peoples lives are at stake and it's my responsibility to keep them safe?!?!

(Does your country have the TV shows where they talk like this? I love doing it....)

Seriously, though, the yellow cable makes it easier to see in the grass or wherever. Unlike some people ITT, I can't always route cables where they will be untouched by audience members, and I like it that they are visible so people can avoid them. The combination of yellow and black meaning "Danger!" has been evolutionarily implanted in us because of the many nasty yellow and black striped things that are bad for us. When the snake cable assemblies are finished rather than temporary like the one in the most recent pictures, they inherently have yellow and black stripes.

Some people hate it. I like it.

Onstage is a different story, of course. Everything is black there.



Cat 5e, this stuff:

TecNec Neutrik Ethercon / Belden Data Tuff CAT5e Cable Assemblies by TecNec CAT-5 Cables at Markertek.com

They don't say what it is other than Belden Data Tuff, but I ASSume it's this

Belden Belden 7923A Paired - Category 5e DataTuff Twisted Pair Cable Bulk Category 5/5e/6 Cable at Markertek.com

since that's the only Data Tuff cable they have in bulk. It appears to be unshielded. Someone either here or in the other forum suggested it when I was looking to buy, and the price seemed reasonable for what it is.



Not yet; I got the Belden 200' because the Gepco Tactical 4 wire, which seems more rugged by far, was on a boat somewhere, and I had a deadline. The Gepco has since arrived, and that's what will be on two of my three digital snakes. Haven't opened the boxes yet.

And this is my only digital system, so I haven't tried it with other systems to see if it glitches when pulled/squeezed.



Yes to your emi comment, except that the cancelling is due to twisted pairs and not to the presence or absence of neutral or ground wires.

And yes to the Ethercons.
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Re: CAT+power-cable test results

Darren Scaresbrook said:
Hi Brett,

Thanks for the feedback.
What cable are you using and where did you get it?

Cheers,
Darren
Click to expand...

Hi Darren,

Not sure about the cable type, it's on a Shill (sp?) reel.

I bought it from Liteworks in Morwell (Welcome to LiteWorks)

It was around $500-600 but it's proper ethercons, good cable and a few link leads and such.

I've found most gigs since buy this are under 50m .. so i may never reel out the last 30 :)
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

Declan Slater said:
So, your in Austrailia, it's 240v, 50hz. (Hot, neutral, ground) right? The neutral and ground would then serve to cancel the EMF field in the cable, reducing it's radiation to near zero (compared to without them) - from what I remember from electrical tech school back in the day... So, anything getting picked up in the cat-5 should be negligible, right? At least I've never had any problem like that with my Roland stuff, and I've tried to be mean with that stuff over the years... I've only had the s16's now for a couple weeks, and the cat-6 utp cords I made up worked fine so far...
Click to expand...

Hi Declan,

I looked at your profile after writing the below and found that you are in Minnesota and not in Scotland like I thought. We're even, then, in thinking we are each using a different AC grid. :lol: I'll leave the below as an FYI for those in Australia and Scotland. Or Norway or Vietnam or...

I'm in the city of Seattle, state of Washington, USA. 60 Hz, multiple AC formats: 120v, neutral, ground; 2 x 120 volt (240 across them), neutral, ground; 3 x 120 volt (208 between any two), neutral, ground. There's voltage and wire configurations above that, but they are only commonly found on top of telephone poles or in larger trunk distribution systems, or are locked away somewhere and difficult to get at. There are also some no-neutral configurations, but they are typically only used for electric motors and will only affect you when you are least looking for them but find yourself in an industrial warehouse or something and not paying attention. Then it's bad when you connect your electronics to them...

Regardless, the properly functioning combination of
-----a spiral twist in the conductors in any cable carrying clean AC that we would choose to run along side our signal cables, plus
-----the spiral twisted pair(s) in the signal cable, plus
-----balancing across each twisted pair in the signal cable along with well-designed Common Mode Rejection Circuitry at the ends of the balanced cable

makes induced noise a non-issue in modern Cat-whatever, microphone, or preamp level distribution systems.

Changing any of those variables can result in problems.

Specifically, if the AC wires were parallel to each other, I don't think that the reduction in EMI would be the same as for twisted conductors, or that the mere presence of neutral or ground wires in a parallel bundle is enough to adequately cancel the EMI like it does in a twisted conductor configuration.

In the US electrical system, the neutral conductor is carrying current unless the load is exactly balanced across two or more hot conductors in the proper phase relationship, and a complete absence of harmonics on the neutral. So that wouldn't be a cancelling factor any more than another hot wire, right?

I think we are agreeing on the result, just not why it gets to be that way. And we seem to be learning in this thread that a shield is not necessary for a quiet signal cable.

Thanks,
Dan

PS Your confusion about my location made me realize that the cause was laziness on my part in not filling out my profile more. That is partially done.
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

Peter van Gils said:
Hmm. Maybe this helps pinpointing the issue: I have a 50m CAT6 on a drum reel. Last Sunday I had it unrolled for about 10m and the drum reel was standing close to a wall outlet. During a break of the band I unplugged a battery charger from that wall outlet and got a short burst of noise followed by a short silence (of background music) due re-syncing of X32 and S16. You may have had a similar issue: a sparking switch near the cable (eg cat cable close to a power supply cable of a fridge)?

I don't consider this as a real issue as long as the system keeps sync when the charger (or anything else) is unplugged from a more distant wall outlet. I think all digital connections will suffer from this...
Click to expand...

The fact that it was cable on the reel is a real issue. Cable wound on a reel forms a transformer. with that much of the cable still on the reel, you probably had a transformer in the neighborhood of 1:100 picking up the disturbance from the wall outlet.

With any kind of signal cable, the very worst thing you can do is to have it neatly wound on a drum or coil. A random pile (rats nest) of cable is far better at rejecting induced noise.
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

Touch wood this hasn't had any noticeable issue for me, but i will de-reel the whole cable if this happens in the future. Some of the gigs i have done have been in some medium size rooms, but i always have stayec well away from LX guys and keep all th gear on the one circuit/phase so i guess i have been lucky on the small number i have used it on
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

Richard Pyne said:
The fact that it was cable on the reel is a real issue. Cable wound on a reel forms a transformer.
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To form a real tranformer, the current has to flow one side, in this case all pairs have a differential current of zero, at least that should be. So not a transformer. That is the nice thing with differential / balanced connections.

However all sorts of other things can happen (coupling between cables is one), so I wouldn't advice to have large reels either!

I know lot of people won't agree with me, sorry, I don't want to start that discussion in this thread. Back in the days with unbalanced connections, one would have a point for sure.
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

Richard Pyne said:
The fact that it was cable on the reel is a real issue. Cable wound on a reel forms a transformer. with that much of the cable still on the reel, you probably had a transformer in the neighborhood of 1:100 picking up the disturbance from the wall outlet.

With any kind of signal cable, the very worst thing you can do is to have it neatly wound on a drum or coil. A random pile (rats nest) of cable is far better at rejecting induced noise.
Click to expand...

Coiled in a figure of 8 maybe!
Dave
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

I think this whole "don't leave your cable on your metal spool" is hocus pocus. Seems to me that most actual work in a balanced audio connection comes from the transformers or active electronics at each end, canceling out the extra noise picked up along the way, and much less about the twist in the cable... I'm sure the twist helps some, but anything near what the cmr stuff does.

I did my 2 years at electrical tech school, and one thing I know is that the neutral and ground wires help reduce the EMI in the regular 120v cable, as well as provide current return path and safety ground. If you put a clamp on ammeter around a hot and ground or hot and neutral, it reads 0. I'm thinking that inside the cat-5 wiring scheme that there is also some form of "balancing" system to reduce the cables EMI output, and this also prevents this from acting a pure wire wrapped on a spool, acting like a choke. I think the whole "I got a burst of static out of my system" thing should be addressed by someone from KT or Behringher as to in what possible weird condition could that possibly happen! There was only one person stating this as a problem, as far as I know, and he's working on setting up to use a different cable (so it might have been a bad connection or cable anyway). I doubt we need to worry about pulling all the cable off or coiling the cable weird for the gig's we do. Sorry for the rant, but that's what forums do best, eh?

Sorry I thought you were in Austrailia, Dan.

Dave Lorentz said:
Coiled in a figure of 8 maybe!
Dave
Click to expand...
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

Hi Dan and Darren,

I'd like to take the opportunity to advise on some statements/postings which were made in the course of this discussion. First of all, Behringer did not and does not endorse the use of UTP (unshielded) CAT5 cable for two reasons. On one hand the international regulations, i.e. FCC and EN, are very strict about radiated electro-magnetic interference, and we can only ensure reasonable dB margins when even the tiniest contributions are controlled--here shielding actually makes a difference. And on the other hand, there may be common mode interference by extreme spikes from neighboring lighting cables for example, which we rather do not want to allow entering the console at all. Of course, the receiver's CMRR will prevent mis-interpretation, but it is definitely sage to prevent any sort of uncontrolled HF noise penetrating the console, if there are so simple means for achieving it. (Needless to say, when we are talking about shielded TP, the shield obviously needs to be reliably connected to ground on both sides)

Nevertheless, I think we are all in accord with a couple of crucial facts:
> For good reasons the X32 has got the best available CAT5 connectors using orginal NEUTRIK Ethercon.
> It has got one of the most robust networking interfaces, which is 100% Klark Teknik FPGA based SuperMac technology, the same as MIDAS.
> AES50's physical layer is 100 MBit Ethernet based, all proven and mature technology for many years.
> AES50 provides extremely solid clock propagation, superior to many other networking standards (which is why it was chosen by MKT in the first place).
> The X32 has successfully passed all the international certifications, which includes radiated and received electro-magnetic interference.
> The S16 and X32 (... and P16) are performing flawlessly, are set up with ease and have absolutely no inherent communication issues
> Considering roughly ~35k units (X32 and S16) out there, working in all sorts of venues, simple and insane applications, operated by skillsets from seasoned audio pro's to absolute beginners...
And what we are talking here about is less than a handfull of non-reproducible glitches...

People who have followed us during the market introduction of X32 and S16 know that we are considering customer concerns v e r y seriously, and I garantee we are doing our best to spot any room for improvement. In this case however, it seems there are outside factors, fairly unrelated to the products, that generally would deserve attention. There are many recommendations and best-practices, which apply to basically every digital sound reinforcement system, digital networking or mixing console in the audio world:
> use the same power lines for all audio equipment
> preferably use power line filters and/or a quality UPS with integrated filters
> prevent running audio and lighting or other high-current or switched-mode equipment from the same outlet etc.

These general precautions have helped improve the reliability in many applications throughout the industry, and using the S16 / X32 is no exception to these rules.

The people who had visited us at WNAMM13 in January, might have noticed how easily we had setup a system of 13 X32 consoles (including the first prototypes of the new models) with all sorts of Wifi routers attached and Protools PC feeding the multitracks. Everything was working 5 days in a row in an odd tradeshow environment, without the slightest glitches whatsoever. ;-)

BTW, the development of the new babies is proceeding extremely well, and we started purchasing some of the production material already... I am too curious hearing about your first-hand experience with these incredible new products.

Best,
Jan
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

Jan Duwe said:
Hi Dan and Darren,

I'd like to take the opportunity to advise on some statements/postings which were made in the course of this discussion. First of all, Behringer did not and does not endorse the use of UTP (unshielded) CAT5 cable for two reasons. shielding actually makes a difference.
Click to expand...

Thank you, this is very clear, do you also have some recommendation of good types of cable or manufacturers.

Should it be FTP, SFTP, CAT5(E) or better, 6?
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

Jan Duwe said:
First of all, Behringer did not and does not endorse the use of UTP (unshielded) CAT5 cable for two reasons. On one hand the international regulations, i.e. FCC and EN, are very strict about radiated electro-magnetic interference, and we can only ensure reasonable dB margins when even the tiniest contributions are controlled--here shielding actually makes a difference. And on the other hand, there may be common mode interference by extreme spikes from neighboring lighting cables for example, which we rather do not want to allow entering the console at all. Of course, the receiver's CMRR will prevent mis-interpretation, but it is definitely sage to prevent any sort of uncontrolled HF noise penetrating the console, if there are so simple means for achieving it. (Needless to say, when we are talking about shielded TP, the shield obviously needs to be reliably connected to ground on both sides)
Click to expand...

Antoon van den Oetelaar said:
Thank you, this is very clear, do you also have some recommendation of good types of cable or manufacturers.

Should it be FTP, SFTP, CAT5(E) or better, 6?
Click to expand...

And how is the shield connected to ground? The barrel of an XLR is an unreliable connection, and I presume the barrel of an Ethercon is the same way, if you could figure out a way to mechanically connect to it. There is not a provision to do so in the Ethercon connector.

This is all good information, thanks for posting it, but there is that one little detail....

Will this be covered in the Webinar tomorrow?
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

I'm looking into a new snake for my X32 setup and I tend to build it with this cable-->

sommer cable | SC-MONOCAT | Meterware | NETZWERK, DMX & POWER KOMBIKABEL

It's a cat7 and one powercable all in one. A friend of my uses nearly the same cable, just on a bigger footprint (with 2 x DMX, 2 x CAT7 and power) for his X32 setup and it works perfectly.
Another vendor for such composit-cables (CAT&power) is-->

Products & Solutions: LEONI Multimedia

These composit cable are very flexible, therefore easy to lay out and you run your X32 and the S16 on the same power circuit like Jan said.

Christian
 
Re: AC and signal cable of whatever type

Jan Duwe said:
First of all, Behringer did not and does not endorse the use of UTP (unshielded) CAT5 cable for two reasons. On one hand the international regulations, i.e. FCC and EN, are very strict about radiated electro-magnetic interference, and we can only ensure reasonable dB margins when even the tiniest contributions are controlled--here shielding actually makes a difference. And on the other hand, there may be common mode interference by extreme spikes from neighboring lighting cables for example, which we rather do not want to allow entering the console at all. Of course, the receiver's CMRR will prevent mis-interpretation, but it is definitely sage to prevent any sort of uncontrolled HF noise penetrating the console, if there are so simple means for achieving it. (Needless to say, when we are talking about shielded TP, the shield obviously needs to be reliably connected to ground on both sides)
Click to expand...

From page 28 of the X32 User Manual, downloaded today:

-----------
1. Connect the S16 stage box to AES50 port A on the rear panel of the console using a standard Cat 5 Ethernet cable.
-----------

From page 30, same source:

-----------
The X32 family of products, however, makes using separate FOH and monitor consoles easy and affordable. This is due to the fact that the microphone signals, once digitized, can be easily duplicated and sent to multiple locations, using a single off-the-shelf Cat-5 Ethernet cable.
-----------

From page 31, same source:

-----------
Since the X32 console works with the affordable S16 digital stagebox, the combined system makes a great solution for routing audio signals between a separate studio and control room. The S16 and various Ultranet personal monitor mixers can be set up in the studio, while the console itself is set up in the control room. A single Cat-5 Ethernet cable is all that is needed to connect the 16-32 channels of audio from 1-2 S16 boxes and all of the Ultranet mixers, a much better alternative than a thick, noisy, and expensive analog snake. In more modern homes and apartments
that have Cat-5 cabling running through the walls as part of a pre-built “structured wiring” package, the S16/Ultranet mixers and X32 console can even be set up in different rooms, with no need to run a long cable or leave any doors partially open!
-----------

From the nearly-useless S16 User Guide, downloaded today, which seems almost identical to the equally nearly-useless S16 Quick Start Guide included with every S16, page 4:

-----------
Dual AES50 jacks allow transmission of all audio and MIDI data to the FOH X32 with a single Ethernet cable, and also allow up to 3 S16s to be cascaded for maximum channel count.
-----------

which is the only mention of the type of cable to be used with the S16 in either of those value-less documents. The connection drawings don't even show Ethercon connectors on the cables...

And, other than what's buried in this thread, this is all that Behringer says in any way about what kind of cable must be used with the X32 system.

So it would seem that you are at least four months late to the party with your clarification above, and that you and the User Guides are in disagreement since a shielded Ethernet cable is hardly either off-the-shelf or likely to be commonly found embedded in non-custom built home or apartment.

Which is correct?

Sorry to be antagonistic, but I've just spent multiple thousand dollars, relying on what Behringer has said before March 22, 2013, to build what I thought was a bulletproof snake scheme, an expense I felt was justified since the snake is the lifeline of any sound system.

And certainly I'm not the only one who relied on the earlier information and bought accordingly.
 
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