Audio Organization: Cables

Re: Heat shrink labels for audio cable and cable ties

When terminating thousands of cables while building radio studios, we use standard, Brother P-Touch labels and put clear heat shrink tubing over them. The same thing works on some connectors, too.

You just need to be careful how you heat your shrink. All of those style of label maker use a thermal process to print the label and so if you apply too much heat in the wrong spot, your whole label goes the text colour (black on a default label). And yes, this is experience talking ;)
 
Re: Heat shrink labels for audio cable and cable ties

When terminating thousands of cables while building radio studios, we use standard, Brother P-Touch labels and put clear heat shrink tubing over them. The same thing works on some connectors, too.



Yep, the usual thing when building theatre shows is to put electrical tape down, P-Touch label, and then clear tape (not scotch tape, clear tape!!!) over that for temporary cable labels and clear heat shrink for installs. However I have used some heat shrink tubing that you can put through a p-touch, it was expensive but I have had a few clients who like the look of it better than regular labels.
 
I don't know what condition this left the cables in, but in a few venues/hire companies that I've seen around, the XLR cables have been wound around garden hose reels.... Connecting each cable end to end, and having one reel per cable length, makes for a good idea to just pull off what you need and wind it up when you're done, but I can imagine it being any good for the internal conductors or the connectors themselves..


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I don't know what condition this left the cables in, but in a few venues/hire companies that I've seen around, the XLR cables have been wound around garden hose reels.... Connecting each cable end to end, and having one reel per cable length, makes for a good idea to just pull off what you need and wind it up when you're done, but I can imagine it being any good for the internal conductors or the connectors themselves..


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I'm a big fan of doing this as a theatre venue for XLR cable. Keeps them in MUCH better condition than letting rental clients ruin everything with their coiling. I find the diameters of the hose reels tend to be too small for NL4 cable though, and you can't fit as much.
 
Tie line,velcro or other easy methods work fine. As far as marking them, E tape is an inexpensive method, one color for type, another for length. The important thing is a system that everyone follows. The drop where last used is not a good method but unfortunately happens in many theatres.
 
I've got 12 of these
Everbilt 25 lb. Handy Hook-01209 at The Home Depot 25Lb hooks from Home Depot. I have the luxuary of a solid wood door for my audio storage. I have them aranged in offset rows of 2, 3, 2, 3, 2. And i just Load them up with XLR. I dont have many differnet sizes but I keep the really long 75ft-100ft's in the top row which i don't get to that often, the 20-35fts in the middle 3 rows, and the 10-15fts in the lowest row. the smaller quantities of TRS that I have just get placed in a square milk crate and sat on a self. Short adapters (with any cable length less then 5ft go in a tool box, with barrel connectors and such sitting in the"small parts storage" in the lid. The hooks at less then 2$ a peices, milk crate at 8$ (and it's a real milk crate), and toolbox at 15$.

I also have velcro straps on all my cables. Amazon sells some packages that are like 100 for 3 dollars, while cheap, they do an adequate job. would not be so good though for heavy duty cables like NL4, or electrics.
 
Alpha sound and Lighting has some great velcro ties that i use on all our XLR cables - black fro 25', red for 50', yellow for 100', then i use monoprice velcro ties for the DMX blue - 5 pin, white - 3 pin. Works great and is easy for telling volunteers what you need them to grab from the back room.
 
Hi all,

Quick question for you all..how do you tell your cables from hired/venue cables?

I have seen stickers and zip ties used but am not a fan of using these for my new cables.

What do you guys use/recommend?

Thanks :)
 
Transparent heat shrink tubing from Thomas and Betts, among others
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I don't have any personal cable so no issues there. But I ID my venue's cable to show length anyway around each connector/end with a distinct color of tape. We rarely need to rent additional cable. When a group comes with their own cable, ours is still more than easy to differentiate with the tape.
 
We do the tape thing as well. We have a tape color code system that that tends to do it. Beyond that, I tend to like to have us supply ALL of the cabling or none of it. Same thing goes for 1/4", DI boxes, etc. Makes the out a bit simpler. We also mark up our stands, and all parts of them.
 

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