Snake cable with stage box

[High Peaks]

My band needs to get a snake since we finally have a sound guy!!

We need a 16 channel snake with box.
All i can find is an all xlr snake locally.

Here is our setup:
(2) monitors, (2) mains.
Each poered from their own power amp.
(4) vocal mics
drummers will come thru in (2) channels from their mixer.
(1) bass
(1) rythym guitar
(2) lead guitar
(1) keys
Anybody know more about sound?? Im lost on this subject.
Are there conversion adapters that we could use??
The mains and monitors only have 1/4" or speakon connectors.What is balanced, unbalanced?

[mutant_dan]

Many years ago you could go to radio shack and purchase a hi-z to low-z converter. They worked like a charm. Wish I would have kept the dozen or so ones I had. They were built very solid. Doesn't look like the shack carries them anymore.

Check this out:

http://www.samash.com/catalog/showitem.asp?ItemID=16483

[waldo041]

usually the speakers and monitors are run seperate from the snake, so noise is not added to your line signals. the signal line to the amps can run from the snake, but i am pretty sure not the powered ones to the speakers.

this is a good read on balanced lines;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_audio_connector


hth

peace,
waldo

[myoung6923]

You would run an unpowered signal (as Waldo said) up to the stage - put your power amps close to the stage, and then you can run the cables from the amps to the speakers pretty easily.

There's a couple of advantages to this:

- noise - as waldo also mentioned. a long run of powered cable is susceptible to noise and signal loss. It's better to keep them as short as you can get away with.
- snakes commonly come setup for this - without speaker cable runs in them. Often you can get them with 1/4" balanced lines that are used for sending the unpowered signal. you can get dedicated separate speaker cable snakes if you really need to do this.
- speaker cables are pretty expensive - long runs of speaker cables cost quite a bit.

All that said - if you have to settle for one that just has XLR connectors, you can get adapters to go from XLR to 1/4" to run whatever you need. If you order one you should be able to get one with 1/4" runs in it though.