audio snakes...

[rpcsoundguy]

Ok my church has two audio snakes one goes to the mixing board and the other runs into that snake as an extension as some of our mic wires are not long enough to run from one side of the platform to the other where the main snake is. I received an e-mail from one of our worship leaders regarding this and I was wondering exactly how to explain it he had asked "if we would have a delay in the sound since we are doing this," What I am asking is if someone could give me a good explanation so I can take it to him about what happens with the sound when you chain two audio snakes together?
Thank you
Dave

 

[FACTplayers]

This won't be the most explicit answer as I'm not an expert on all of the details, but the answer is no, you will not have a delay. Attenuation doesn't really occur at a noticeable rate until your cable is over 100m (correct me if I'm wrong here. That's the distance an ethernet cable can travel without attenuation.)

Note: Attenuation is a loss in quality, not delay.

Take a look at this website, it should really help answer the question..

Speaker Cable Gauge (AWG) Guidelines & Recommendations — Reviews and News from Audioholics

 

[cpf]

In practice, chaining two snakes together has absolutely no impact on audio quality, and it definitely doesn't add any sort of meaningful delay.

 

[Jsamuels201]

I may be wrong in the physics of this but since sound is turned into an electrical signal when entering cable such as a mic line or snake the signal is traveling near the speed of light (the cable has a certain impedance) and because of that a snake running off a snake should make no difference unless one of the snakes was absurdly long.

Many audio systems are built with one large snake (24, 32, 48 channel etc...) running into a stage box on stage and then several sub snakes running out to different areas of the stage so mic cables can have shorter runs. These sub snakes have never been an issue causing delay in the system in my experience. Also if you consider that the sub snake lengths are nothing compared to the lengths of cable running from stage to FOH and then FOH to your mains and other speakers even if they were to cause a delay for some reason it would be unnoticeable compared to delay caused by those other, much longer cable runs.

Really though you should tell him there's nothing to worry about, running cable into more cable is a common practice and every theatre I've worked at has had smaller snakes going into bigger snakes with no problem.

 

[derekleffew]

...and I was wondering exactly how to explain it he had asked "if we would have a delay in the sound since we are doing this," What I am asking is if someone could give me a good explanation so I can take it to him about what happens with the sound when you chain two audio snakes together? ...

At sea level, sound travels though 68°F air at approximately 1,126 feet per second.
Light travels at approximately 186,282 miles per second. ~800,000 times faster. (This is why some people appear intelligent until you hear them speak.)

Electricity travels over wire at almost the speed of light.
So regardless of the cable length, the delay is imperceptible to the human ear. This does not take into account signal degradation that may occur over long distances, but it does explain why artificial delay must be introduced into a signal feeding remote speakers, so that the sound from the "delay" speakers arrives to the listener at the same time as the direct sound from the main speakers, for intelligibility reasons. If the remote speakers are 1100 feet away from the main speakers, use a 1 second delay. If the remote speakers are 550 feet away from the main speakers, use a 0.5 second (500ms) delay. And so on.

Another example is how to calculate the distance of a lightning strike based on the time difference between when you seen the lightning and when you hear the thunder. (Count the number of seconds between the two, then divide by 5 for miles away.)

Hope this helps.

 

[thatactorguy]

Another example is how to calculate the distance of a lightning strike based on the time difference between when you seen the lightning and when you hear the thunder. (Count the number of seconds between the two, then divide by 5 for miles away.)

Hope this helps.

That sure did. I don't think I ever knew about the dividing by 5 part. I always just counted the seconds and felt relief when thunder was 10 seconds away, then nearly drop my cigarette when the next clap was half a second after the next lightning burst... :shock:

 

[derekleffew]

That sure did. I don't think I ever knew about the dividing by 5 part. ... :shock:

Makes perfect sense when you think about it:
Number of feet in a mile [5280] divided by speed of sound [1126] equals ~4.7, round to [5].
Now there is insignificant delay in the speed of light, and sound travels slower in humid air (like during most thunderstorms), so rounding to five works well.