Help with Cables!

[emjohnson]

Hello! I am responsible for miking a 22 person pit orchestra, and I have no idea how many cables I will need to do that... can someone help? I also are they XLR cables or something else? Help please, I am a first time designer...

 

[MarshallPope]

We really need more information to be able to help you. There is no way to guess what/how many instruments you are micing, (Individually? In pairs? A couple of area mics for the whole pit?) how far from an input, etc. Your first step should be to figure out how many mics you need, where you can plug in, how the orchestra will be arranged, and go from there.

 

[JLNorthGA]

The composition of the orchestra is rather important. As an example, for a small musical, I had to put microphones on the drums (four microphones), an input for the bass, an input for the guitar and four cables for the two keyboards. So that was 10 cables - I also had another microphone cable for the voice over part for a total of 11.

How you plan on getting to the mixer is also important. In this instance, I had a 16 channel 100' snake that tied into the mixer feed. So I was able to use shorter cables.

 

[emjohnson]

Thank you so much, the composition of the orchestra is 1 set of drums, 1 guitar, 1 bass, 2 cellos, 2 violas, 4 violin, a piano, an organ, 4 reeds, a trombone, a french horn, and 2 trumpets, plus a percussion section. I plan on using Shure SM87s, Neumann KM 184s and Sennheiser e904s. I hope to mic each instrument, and in our pit there is a patch box that will feed to the board. So do I need an XLR cable for each mic that I will use, just in varying lengths? I appreciate the help! :-D

 

[cmckeeman]

as long as the cable can reach the patch box you will only need one for each mic, but this is a very basic concept for someone who is supposed to be designing and mixing an orchestra to have, are you sure you are not over your head?

 

[Footer]

Your mic inventory is also all over the place. 87's, 184's, and 904's is not a complete mic package to do what you need to do. That many condensers in that small of an area is going to be a real headache. While that mic package is nice, especially the 184's, you really need to add some dynamics to make everyone's life a bit easier. How much cable you need is really the least of your worries. A 22 person pit can easily eat up a 40 channel desk. I'm kind of with the "your in over your head" camp. Cables are really the least of your worries. For a long and short of what we usually pull for a gig, take your number of inputs and pull 50% more cables then inputs of varying sizes. If you have sub snakes you will need less. If you don't you need more. But, once again, you need to re-examine your entire mic inventory. I don't think you are going to be happy with any pit mic'ed with just those mics.

Edit: Just re-read your second post. Just throwing this out there.... every single mic needs its own channel on your mixer, you can't "two-fer" or combine mics together on one channel. So, for every mic, you need a cable that plugs that mic into the patch box in the pit. Every jack in that patch box needs to be patched to a separate channel on the mixer. So, how many channels do you have? How many jacks are in that stage box in the pit?

 

[JLNorthGA]

Thank you so much, the composition of the orchestra is 1 set of drums, 1 guitar, 1 bass, 2 cellos, 2 violas, 4 violin, a piano, an organ, 4 reeds, a trombone, a french horn, and 2 trumpets, plus a percussion section. I plan on using Shure SM87s, Neumann KM 184s and Sennheiser e904s. I hope to mic each instrument, and in our pit there is a patch box that will feed to the board. So do I need an XLR cable for each mic that I will use, just in varying lengths? I appreciate the help! :-D

Each line would need its own feed to the mixer through the patch box. You would need a cable for each feed. Is the piano an electric piano? If acoustic it would probably need two microphones. If electric, a DI box or two and two cables. The organ would probably need two cables. You may be able to use area microphones to minimize the cables for the rest of the instruments.

I usually get packs of XLR cables in 20' or 30' lengths. I also have some small ribbon snakes so I don't have cable going all over the place. The ribbon snakes make for a cleaner pit (or stage).

 

[museav]

Thank you so much, the composition of the orchestra is 1 set of drums, 1 guitar, 1 bass, 2 cellos, 2 violas, 4 violin, a piano, an organ, 4 reeds, a trombone, a french horn, and 2 trumpets, plus a percussion section. I plan on using Shure SM87s, Neumann KM 184s and Sennheiser e904s. I hope to mic each instrument, and in our pit there is a patch box that will feed to the board. So do I need an XLR cable for each mic that I will use, just in varying lengths? I appreciate the help! :-D

I've seen drums handled with 1 or 2 mics but I've also seen them use more than a dozen mics, do you know what is needed or appropriate here? Are the guitar and bass direct inputs (e.g. direct outputs on their amps, an amp/speaker emulator, etc.) or mic'ed cabinets? Does the organ have audio outputs or will it have to be mic'ed? Is the piano acoustic or electric? What comprises the percussion section? Does everything have to be reinforced? How many system inputs do you actually have in the pit? How many mixer channels are available for the orchestra? I don't expect answers to all of these questions but they are just some of the factors that could affect how you approach the situation and that is without even getting into actual microphone selection, personal preferences or actually mixing everything. It is a rather complex issue to try to address via a forum and you'd probably really benefit if you could find someone there with relevant experience to help guide you.

 

[len]

Whatever the number, you should have more than that, and different lengths, too. To try and manage an exact number of cables is nearly impossible.