FOH furniture for sound?

rsmith

Member
FOH furniture?

hi folks,
Our H.S. auditorium will be undergoing a "minor" renovation, (it really needs a "major" renovation but its just not going to happen!) We will be doing a complete seat replacement, therefore seats, rows, everything will be reconfigured for current codes. I typically set up 1 to 2 tables to hold all sound equpment when we do our musicals. (between last row and entrance doors, probalby as many of you do or have done). This upcoming renovation this summer would be my chance to get something in place permantely. I have found one piece of "furniture" made by Raxxess, its nice but not big enough for what I want) If I can find something that I like it sounds like they might get it and install it (even though there is no equipmnet money for any "tech-update!). ... take what I can get! ...I can use my current equpiment and buy more in future. I also put out the idea that after the old chairs are removed to install a large conduit in the floor to run from pit to FOH location (I would love to not run snake under chairs at somepoint in the future) Maintenance Department or Building Committee is certainly not going to do any research for me. Its up to me and my tech freinds out there, ... please send any ideas, suggestions, etc.
thanks
Ray
 
Call a local cabinet company, they can do most anything you will want for much cheaper then you think, and you will get exactly what you want. When I was in high school, our TD was a cabinet maker (the only reason he was was to spend time with his kids, he had a degree in theatre). Our booth was pretty insane when it came to storage because of it.
 
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I second the cabinet maker idea. They can do some pretty slick things. You might just have to buy rack rails for them to install in the gear.

But, if this or this doesn't do it, you might be asking for a bit much. The Raxxess is a solid unit, accomodates a 32 channel console, and has megatons of rackspace for EQ's, amps, and other toys.
 
Re: FOH furniture?

If you do any type of permanent type snake, I would recommend using the connectors that can be XLR or 1/4'' phone jacks, Neutrik makes them, we used them for a thing we built and they work great, its so much better to not have to use those changeovers all the time!
 
Re: FOH furniture?

In my experience sound cabinets are often custom made for the space available and equipment you've got. Sorry that won't help much.
 
One of the schools I work with regularly had a similar thing take place and they're getting a custom desk manufactured by R&R Cases. These folks are great and will build just about anything you can dream up and put a hardened coating over it. Some examples of what they do can be found here and here.
 
Thanks for the ideas, good leads to continue my search. (sorry about the double post)
Has anyone heard or dealt with a company call "Overdrive Productions" (down in Texas) they have some units that look like they have the width I want along with the rack spaces I need. I've emailed them for specs.
http://www.overdriveproductions.com/audiofurniture.php
Also I found ProCo has a snake with "breakouts" available (easier (?) to get through a large conduit for permanet installation)
http://www.procosound.com/snakeindex.htm#concertmaster
thoughts.... pro/con
thanks
Ray Smith
 
http://www.hsarolltops.com/

Those are the desks that Overdrive sells. That's on just about the priciest end short of a custom desk. Those are gonna run you quite a bit to acquire.

Same thing with the snake. Absolutely awesome, and custom configurable to your exact needs, but d*** expensive for some folks. It's amazing how much you can rack up on a custom snake. Especially a 32 or 40 channel model...

And yes, it will fit through a conduit MUCH easier. And you won't have to worry about stripping off any connectors on the way down the conduit because it's just one big MASS connector. And it's also easier to get a monitor split that way.
 
If you really want to easily make it through a small pipe for snakes you might look at a CobraNet based snake product such as the E-Snake from Whirlwind. I just put one of these in at a school with an E-Snake headend and a Yahama M7CL48 with CobraNet cards on the other end for a compeltely digital stage to DSP system. They are expensive, but not dramatically more than a quality analog snake and they saved a ton on the installation. In addition you can split it unlimited times (monitors, recording, etc.) without loosing quality or having to buy expensive splitters.
 
Are you planning to pull the snake out of the conduit once it is run, or will it be permanently installed? If it is a permanent install I would buy the cable unterminated then solder the connectors and add heatshrink myself. Multipin connectors tend to be very expensive.
 
Sometimes it's worth the extra fifty bucks per connector to not have to sit for hours with a soldering iron and a fifty pack bag of XLR's cursing every time the solder melts the heat shrink a little bit too much.
 
Until you need to troubleshoot it quickly, or have a direct dry line for ClearCom, or need to deal with gain sharing between monitor and FOH consoles (or does E-snake support gain compensation? I'm pretty sure it doesn't, but could be wrong; usually that's only incorporated into proprietary snakes for specific digital consoles, which need to be the same on both ends).

Analog has its benefits, and digital has its benefits. It's not quite a digital world just yet, though. One recommendation I will make, if at all possible, is to use digital grade cable for all your lines. Analog signal is perfectly happy on digital cable, but not vice versa, so even if you're only using it for analog signal now, it's good to know you can take any line in your space and send digital down it without a problem. It's pricier, but cheaper than having to rerun it down the line.

As for multi-connectors (Mass Connector is a brand name from Whirlwind, but there are also Wireworks (aka G-Block), Ramlatch, and a handful of others), if you've got a doghouse on the console to mount the tails in, and will be frequently (re)moving the console, then it's worthwhile. If the console is getting installed once and never moved, then it doesn't necessarily make sense, at least on the console end.

If you've got flexible enough patching onstage, in the pit, etc., it's often worthwhile to have patch boxes that both have a number of XLR jacks and multi-connectors, whether in parallel or on separate lines. That way if you need to quickly patch just a few connectors, you can use the XLR jacks, and if you want to run a sub-snake, you can drop in a mult cable and a set of tails or a breakout/break-in box.

That's my two cents, anyway, YMMV.

--A

P.S.-I went ahead and merged the two identical threads the OP created; in the future, please don't double post, it just makes it harder for others who might have similar questions to find and follow the discussion! :grin:
 
Andy does make some good points. As far as the troubleshooting of the E-Snake goes I don't think it's any more difficult or more time consuming than troubleshooitng an Analog snake (and in some cases easier) but it certainly requires a different set of skills, networking and PC skills which your typical sound tech may not yet have. The ClearCom information is correct, you cannot run it over an E-Snake period. This is why I always install a few analog tie lines from stage to FOH as well, but that's a far cry from a 48 channel snake. It's easy to fit 2 CAT5e cables and 4-6 install grade Mic lines in a conduit from FOH to stage, installing a 48 channel (or larger) snake certianly requires a bigger conduit. If you're talking about putting a multi-pin connector on the end you'll either have to do it in place (yuck!) or have an absolutely huge conduit. Gain sharing is an issue, but can usually be overcome by engineers who are aware they need to share. If your gain structure is well setup and thus tends not to change during a show it's less of a problem, if you're constantly tweaking gain you're going to get people upset.

As far as multi connector sub-snakes go... they're nice but when push comes to shove and you need to save some money it's not the end of the world to cut them out and just use standard XLR fan ends on the sub snakes.
 

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