Good places to buy patch cables?

[jkowtko]

As I increase the size of my rack and board, my wealth of 6 foot patch cables have suddenly reached their limit. I need to get something a bit longer ... in the 8-10 foot range.

I also want to look at 6, 8, and 12 channel patch snakes to improve space usage and tidiness in our cramped booth. TRS and XLR.

I'd like to take inventory on where people have found good places to buy cables (presumably on-line). What I have found so far:

* Orange County Speaker (GLS Audio), where most of my individual patch cables come from. Unfortunately they jump from 6 to 12 feet in length with nothing in between, and have no multi-channel snakes.

* Hosa makes a few multi-channel snakes, of which I already have a couple.

* Seismic Audio -- I just discovered through EBay. Their products are fairly inexpensive, but don't know the quality.

Any other suggestions on where to look would be most appreciated. As you can tell from the above, I'm not looking for premium-priced cables right now, as our gear doesn't get much wear.

Thanks. John

[avkid]

Hosa makes junk, I gave up on them a while ago.
My insert snake, mic cables and mixer case are all from Audiopile.
http://www.audiopile.net/products/Pa...tch_snakes.asp

[BillESC]

Search for Whirlwind and CBI dealers. Top of the line gear.

[soundlight]

We get our rack/patch snakes from MCM electronics. They sell Stellar Labs' snakes, which are not on par with Whirlwind or CBI, but they get the job done. We recently installed 3 20' XLR>TRS snakes in our studio theatre during our upgrade. They eliminated the clutter that consisted of a dozen or two three-channel snakes running all over the place, because there was a sale on three-channel cable and it was used for the job with the first upgrade. We've used them to patch our Q-Lab interface (AudioFire 12) into the console (LS9) as well.

Also, I opened them up, and maybe we just got lucky but the solder joints and XLR connectors don't look half bad. The molded TRS plugs leave soemthing to be desired, but they work fine if you're going to just plug them in and then not unplug them put them away often. I also really like the color-coding of the snakes.

[derekleffew]

This company is terrific, and it's easy to become a dealer: Conquest Sound.

[howlingwolf487]

Learn how to make your own and buy cable/connectors in bulk. It'll be a good learning experience AND you can make whatever length cables you need with whatever combo of connectors will suit the application.

If you don't want to/can't go that route, I would recommend Audiopile simply from word-of-mouth about them.

[museav]

The EWI cables they sell at audiopile.com have a very good reputation as do the Whirlwind and ProCo offerings.

Amazing how terminology can differ, when I see "patch cable" I immediately assume a patch cord used with patchbays and I would call a cable used to directly connect two devices together an interconnect cable (or an insert cable for inserts). I also usually view a patch as being an intentionally temporary and reconfigurable connection rather than a fixed connection.