I'm setting up my studio, and I need a snake to get 8 XLR cables from
one room to another, and I'd like it to look neat and professional.

All recording snakes seem to just be cables, without a box like on
stage snakes.

I'd rather use one with a box, so it looks better.

Are stage snakes good enough quality for recording?

Thanks

"Andy Milk" wrote in message
om
I'm setting up my studio, and I need a snake to get 8 XLR cables from
one room to another, and I'd like it to look neat and professional.

All recording snakes seem to just be cables, without a box like on
stage snakes.

I'd rather use one with a box, so it looks better.

Are stage snakes good enough quality for recording?

Depends on the snake, but tell the truth most of the more obvious benefits
of a better snakes relate to durability, not sound quality.

I do some recording through a 150' Rapco stage snake, and I get good tunes
coming out the other end if I do everything else right.

Arny Krueger wrote:


Are stage snakes good enough quality for recording?


Depends on the snake, but tell the truth most of the more obvious benefits
of a better snakes relate to durability, not sound quality.


Exactly right. As long as the connections are all good and the signals
are flowing properly, the stage snake will not be any problem.

Rob Adelman wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:


Are stage snakes good enough quality for recording?


Depends on the snake, but tell the truth most of the more obvious benefits
of a better snakes relate to durability, not sound quality.


Exactly right. As long as the connections are all good and the signals
are flowing properly, the stage snake will not be any problem.

However, the stage snake may not meet fire code for installing behind walls
even in conduit. Cables for permanent installation need to meet various
flame tests for legal use.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Arny Krueger wrote:

Depends on the snake, but tell the truth most of the more obvious benefits
of a better snakes relate to durability, not sound quality.

What a timely comment...

Got to fiddle around with a Whirlwind snake for the first time the
other day. Looking at it, you can tell it had seen battle yet despite
it's appearance, you could "feel" that it was a much better product
compared to say a HOSA. I was impressed...

I do some recording through a 150' Rapco stage snake, and I get good tunes
coming out the other end if I do everything else right.

Somewhere, I recalled reading that for every contact connection in a
signal path, there's "X" amount of degradation. Would you (or
somebody) happen to know what that amount would be? I'm eyeballing
another tidying up project.

Thanks,
Andy

In article ,
says...
Arny Krueger wrote:

Depends on the snake, but tell the truth most of the more obvious benefits
of a better snakes relate to durability, not sound quality.

What a timely comment...

Got to fiddle around with a Whirlwind snake for the first time the
other day. Looking at it, you can tell it had seen battle yet despite
it's appearance, you could "feel" that it was a much better product
compared to say a HOSA. I was impressed...

I do some recording through a 150' Rapco stage snake, and I get good tunes
coming out the other end if I do everything else right.

The problem *I* see with using snakes is the delay involved. A
100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference. In my
earlier years it drove me nuts when the monitors were run off the
same board as the mains, and it was 100' out off the stage. The
delay was hard to compensate for. If you run *everything* through
the snake it shouldn't be too bad, although the performers
monitoring it may not care for it too much.

Somewhere, I recalled reading that for every contact connection in a
signal path, there's "X" amount of degradation. Would you (or
somebody) happen to know what that amount would be? I'm eyeballing
another tidying up project.

That *amount* of signal degradation will be somewhat dependant on
what type of connectors, how clean they are, what they're made of,
how they're made, etc. The degradation is real, however; I observe
it on a 'scope daily. Ringing, slewing, noise, etc.

---Michael (of Gambit)...

Michael wrote:

The problem *I* see with using snakes is the delay involved. A
100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference. In my
earlier years it drove me nuts when the monitors were run off the
same board as the mains, and it was 100' out off the stage. The
delay was hard to compensate for. If you run *everything* through
the snake it shouldn't be too bad, although the performers
monitoring it may not care for it too much.

I'm sorry, I just don't find this funny.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
Michael wrote:

The problem *I* see with using snakes is the delay involved. A
100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference. In my
earlier years it drove me nuts when the monitors were run off the
same board as the mains, and it was 100' out off the stage. The
delay was hard to compensate for. If you run *everything* through
the snake it shouldn't be too bad, although the performers
monitoring it may not care for it too much.

I'm sorry, I just don't find this funny.

I got exactly the same thing going with Billy Crystal.

dtk

In article ,
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Michael wrote:

The problem *I* see with using snakes is the delay involved. A
100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference. In my
earlier years it drove me nuts when the monitors were run off the
same board as the mains, and it was 100' out off the stage. The
delay was hard to compensate for. If you run *everything* through
the snake it shouldn't be too bad, although the performers
monitoring it may not care for it too much.

I am not sure what your saying
that your FOH speakers and monitor speakers were 100 feet apart and the
1/11th of a second delay was unbearable, esp when the monitors were not
faceing you

or that some how the return signal to the foh speakers traveled at a
diffrent speed,than the monitor return ,through the snake causing a
delay?
or you could not function with the foh stack and monitors all 100 feet
away but essentially playing in unision was beyond your abilities to
cope with

I do not understand where your delay between the foh and monitors comes
fromor why it mattered if the monitors were mixed at the foh desk, the
signal to the monitor amps still returned that 100 feet at approx 186000
miles per second

sorry this math may not be right beacuse i am estimating it in my head

186,000miles per second or 982,080,000feet per second
or your 100 foot distance would create a delay of .00001 second of delay
I can see now how that is unbearable
George

In article writes:

Are stage snakes good enough quality for recording?

In general, yes, unless it's a "distressed" snake that's had a lot of
hard PA use.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Michael wrote:

The problem *I* see with using snakes is the delay involved. A
100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference.

I don't think so. The delay due to 100 feet of snake is on the order of
100 nanoseconds. That's less than a millionth of a second.

To put it in perspective, it would take about eight miles of wire to
cause the roughly same delay as moving your ear one millimeter farther
from the source of the sound.

Electricity travels a LOT faster than sound.

"George" wrote in message
...

186,000miles per second or 982,080,000feet per second
or your 100 foot distance would create a delay of .00001 second of delay

In a vacuum only. Light travels slower through different materials which of
course is how lenses work. Don't know what the speed is for electrons
through a copper wire, though. I'd be surprised if it was even a couple of
nanoseconds per foot.

Sean

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message


Correction:

It would take more than bat-like ears to hear 169 nanoseconds worth of
delay.

"Sean Conolly" wrote in message

"George" wrote in message
...

186,000miles per second or 982,080,000feet per second
or your 100 foot distance would create a delay of .00001 second of
delay

In a vacuum only. Light travels slower through different materials
which of course is how lenses work. Don't know what the speed is for
electrons through a copper wire, though. I'd be surprised if it was
even a couple of nanoseconds per foot.

Yes, cables have more propigation delay than a vacuum. The *slowest*
standard cables have a propigation speed that is about 0.6 that of a vacuum.
That is 589,248,000 feet per second or about 2 nanoseconds per foot.

In short, no joy for people who think they hear the delay in a 100 foot
snake.

Sean Conolly wrote:

"George" wrote in message
...

186,000miles per second or 982,080,000feet per second
or your 100 foot distance would create a delay of .00001 second of delay

In a vacuum only. Light travels slower through different materials which
of course is how lenses work. Don't know what the speed is for electrons
through a copper wire, though. I'd be surprised if it was even a couple of
nanoseconds per foot.


Electricity isn't exactly light, either. But the difference between the
speed of light in vacuum & the speed of electricity through copper on a
day of average temperature & humidity isn't big enough to change the
conclusion.

In article , says...
Michael wrote in
news:MPG.1aa55e1d668429709896bb@newshost:

The problem *I* see with using snakes is the delay involved. A
100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference

Ha Ha Ha Ha, that's so funny.

I'm glad I entertained you all. 8^) However, I do percieve
a delay when the instruments are mic'd and run out to the
board and back to the monitors. I understand the electronics
of the mixer, EQ, etc. have a very slight delay (on the order
of degrees of phase) as the signal passes through them. I'm
not hearing an echo off the back wall, especially in an outdoor
environment. So where's the delay coming from, if not there?
---Michael (of Gambit)...

WOW...




in article MPG.1aa5894e7bddb87a9896bc@newshost, Michael at
wrote on 2/24/04 2:16 PM:

In article , says...
Michael wrote in
news:MPG.1aa55e1d668429709896bb@newshost:

The problem *I* see with using snakes is the delay involved. A
100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference

Ha Ha Ha Ha, that's so funny.

I'm glad I entertained you all. 8^) However, I do percieve
a delay when the instruments are mic'd and run out to the
board and back to the monitors. I understand the electronics
of the mixer, EQ, etc. have a very slight delay (on the order
of degrees of phase) as the signal passes through them. I'm
not hearing an echo off the back wall, especially in an outdoor
environment. So where's the delay coming from, if not there?
---Michael (of Gambit)...

"Michael" wrote in message
news:MPG.1aa5894e7bddb87a9896bc@newshost...
In article , says...
Michael wrote in
news:MPG.1aa55e1d668429709896bb@newshost:

The problem *I* see with using snakes is the delay involved. A
100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference

Ha Ha Ha Ha, that's so funny.

I'm glad I entertained you all. 8^) However, I do percieve
a delay when the instruments are mic'd and run out to the
board and back to the monitors. I understand the electronics
of the mixer, EQ, etc. have a very slight delay (on the order
of degrees of phase) as the signal passes through them. I'm
not hearing an echo off the back wall, especially in an outdoor
environment. So where's the delay coming from, if not there?

If you can not identify delays and echos outdoors I question your ability to
hear the .0000001 sec delay cause by running monitors from foh
and anyway the foh stacks would have the same delay as the monitors
what your saying is just foolishness
kinda makes the monster cable with the directional arrows seem like hard
science
Pe4ace
George


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.593 / Virus Database: 376 - Release Date: 2/20/2004

In article writes:

Somewhere, I recalled reading that for every contact connection in a
signal path, there's "X" amount of degradation. Would you (or
somebody) happen to know what that amount would be?

Connectors work pretty well when they work, and they don't really
degrade the audio. What they do is degrade the reliability, or
increase the chance that the signal will be missing or noisy when it
needn't be.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article MPG.1aa55e1d668429709896bb@newshost writes:

The problem *I* see with using snakes is the delay involved. A
100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference.

Are you suggesting that you can hear the caused by electricity running
through 100 feet of wire? That's about 100 nanoseconds give or take an
order of magnitude.

Or are you saying that the fact that the audio comes out of speakers
100 feet away and that's the delay that bothers you?


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Michael wrote:


I'm glad I entertained you all. 8^) However, I do percieve
a delay when the instruments are mic'd and run out to the
board and back to the monitors.

Not sure what delay you are hearing, but it isn't from the electrical
signal running through 100 of wire. Must be from elsewhere.

Sean Conolly wrote:

In a vacuum only. Light travels slower through different materials which of
course is how lenses work. Don't know what the speed is for electrons
through a copper wire, though. I'd be surprised if it was even a couple of
nanoseconds per foot.

Depends on the cable, but for 110 ohm balanced pair, figure 15 inches or so
per nanosecond.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article writes:

In a vacuum only. Light travels slower through different materials which of
course is how lenses work. Don't know what the speed is for electrons
through a copper wire, though. I'd be surprised if it was even a couple of
nanoseconds per foot.

The actual speed of molecular movement is about 5 miles per hour.

The velocity factor, the reduction in the speed of light/electrons
when travelling through a phyisical medium is generally .6 to .85
depending on the material, so for this purpose, it's unlikely that
you'd be able to tell that it was less than unity.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Mike Rivers wrote:


The actual speed of molecular movement is about 5 miles per hour.



If the molecules are packed tightly enough in the material, shouldn't
movement on one end result in instantaneous movement at the other end,
no matter how long the distance? Where does any delay come from?

Michael wrote:

In article , says...
Michael wrote in
news:MPG.1aa55e1d668429709896bb@newshost:

The problem *I* see with using snakes is the delay involved. A
100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference

Ha Ha Ha Ha, that's so funny.

I'm glad I entertained you all. 8^) However, I do percieve
a delay when the instruments are mic'd and run out to the
board and back to the monitors. I understand the electronics
of the mixer, EQ, etc. have a very slight delay (on the order
of degrees of phase) as the signal passes through them. I'm
not hearing an echo off the back wall, especially in an outdoor
environment. So where's the delay coming from, if not there?
---Michael (of Gambit)...

Arguably, the fastest clocked humans on the planet can hear differences
of about one millisecond. What you describe does not account for a small
fraction of that.

--
Les Cargill

Rob Adelman wrote:
Mike Rivers wrote:

The actual speed of molecular movement is about 5 miles per hour.

If the molecules are packed tightly enough in the material, shouldn't
movement on one end result in instantaneous movement at the other end,
no matter how long the distance? Where does any delay come from?

That is the speed of a pulse, and THAT is a good fraction of C.

However, the speed of any given electron within the material will be
extremely slow.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Michael wrote:

I'm glad I entertained you all. 8^) However, I do percieve
a delay when the instruments are mic'd and run out to the
board and back to the monitors. I understand the electronics
of the mixer, EQ, etc. have a very slight delay (on the order
of degrees of phase) as the signal passes through them. I'm
not hearing an echo off the back wall, especially in an outdoor
environment. So where's the delay coming from, if not there?

If there's one or more digital devices in the chain, there could be some
latency in the electronics. That's not uncommon.

In article MPG.1aa5894e7bddb87a9896bc@newshost,
Michael wrote:

I'm glad I entertained you all. 8^) However, I do percieve
a delay when the instruments are mic'd and run out to the
board and back to the monitors. I understand the electronics
of the mixer, EQ, etc. have a very slight delay (on the order
of degrees of phase) as the signal passes through them. I'm
not hearing an echo off the back wall, especially in an outdoor
environment. So where's the delay coming from, if not there?

I dunno, unless there's latency introduced by an AD-DA conversion
somewhere in the signal chain. The air gap between the stage monitor and
your ears will account for more delay than a couple hundred feet of
microphone snake in an analog signal chain.

Michael wrote:

A 100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference.

I want some of what you're smoking.

If the info moves down that snake at even a quarter of the speed of
light, how long will it take to go 100 feet? Get extra points for using
a decimal point.

--
ha

Scott Dorsey wrote:

Michael wrote:

The problem *I* see with using snakes is the delay involved. A
100' snake is enough for me to hear a timing difference. In my
earlier years it drove me nuts when the monitors were run off the
same board as the mains, and it was 100' out off the stage. The
delay was hard to compensate for. If you run *everything* through
the snake it shouldn't be too bad, although the performers
monitoring it may not care for it too much.

I'm sorry, I just don't find this funny.

It's alright, Scott; I covered your back on this one. No technical depth
needed.

So you owe me, but not much.

--
ha

George wrote:

I do not understand where your delay between the foh and monitors comes
fromor why it mattered if the monitors were mixed at the foh desk, the
signal to the monitor amps still returned that 100 feet at approx 186000
miles per second

I think that what happened is they used directional cable for the snake
and had it rigged backwards. Electrons hate that.

--
ha

Arny Krueger wrote:

Yes, cables have more propigation delay than a vacuum. The *slowest*
standard cables have a propigation speed that is about 0.6 that of a vacuum.
That is 589,248,000 feet per second or about 2 nanoseconds per foot.

In short, no joy for people who think they hear the delay in a 100 foot
snake.

Is Nousaine on this yet? New ground and all.

--
ha

maybe switch off your software monitoring ;-)

cheers,
Bob

Well, the molecules themselves don't move too much (unless you're using salt
water for cables :-) - next topic for the rec.audio.high-end crowd ), but
the speed of free electron movement is related to the probabilities of each
of them moving from atom to atom. And I think at this point the analogies of
physical objects butted up together breaks down...

Ryan

In article writes:

If the molecules are packed tightly enough in the material, shouldn't
movement on one end result in instantaneous movement at the other end,
no matter how long the distance? Where does any delay come from?

They aren't that tightly packed and they just sort of bump around.
It's like you had a bar full of drunk people. Eventually a couple of
them would make it out the door.

I won't go through the calculations for you, but I'll give you some
clues if you want to prove it to yourself (or prove that I'm wrong and
it's actually 8.273 miles/hour). There may be some things you'll have
to look up. There must be a web site somewhere. In fact, there's
probably even a web site with the proof written out for you.

First, you have to assume a current. 1 ampere is defined as the
movement of 1 couloumb of electrons past a point in one second. Then
you have to know the number of electrons in a coulomb, and the size of
an electron. Do the math.

Geez, who'd have thought that such a simple question would generate
such a long series of responses.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

(Scott Dorsey) wrote in
:

Depends on the cable, but for 110 ohm balanced pair, figure 15 inches
or so per nanosecond.

So inside a 3 gHz computer, light travels 4 inches per clock tick.

"Carey Carlan" wrote in message
. 203

(Scott Dorsey) wrote in
:

Depends on the cable, but for 110 ohm balanced pair, figure 15 inches
or so per nanosecond.

So inside a 3 gHz computer, light travels 4 inches per clock tick.

....which is one reason that the only place that 3 GHz travels in that
computer, is on the CPU chip.

"Carey Carlan" wrote in message
. 203...
(Scott Dorsey) wrote in
:

Depends on the cable, but for 110 ohm balanced pair, figure 15 inches
or so per nanosecond.

So inside a 3 gHz computer, light travels 4 inches per clock tick.

Well, that kind of puts some perspective on how fast CPUs are now.

dtk

"Mike Rivers" wrote ...
Geez, who'd have thought that such a simple question would
generate such a long series of responses.

The original question was conventional enough.
It was the follow-on statement about being annoyed by
a few picoseconds of "delay" through the 100-ft snake :-)

Carey Carlan wrote in
. 203:

(Scott Dorsey) wrote in
:

Depends on the cable, but for 110 ohm balanced pair, figure 15 inches
or so per nanosecond.

So inside a 3 gHz computer, light travels 4 inches per clock tick.

And that's why I have a computer. It's FIVE inches. D'oh!