John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

hi,
what is the maximum cable length for mic/line and headphone cables (high quality) before there is too much loss?

is there a limit in length with USB/Firewire cables?

What about Midi cables?
There are these very expensive midi cables? is it worth it to buy the costly ones?


What kind of cable connenctions do you find important to connect the CR with a seperate Video Editing workplace (besides Ethernet)?

thanks

bump

Hi Dreamer,

Sorry for the delay. Just getting settled back in from being on Vacation, so it's taking me a little longer to get everything answered.

what is the maximum cable length for mic/line and headphone cables (high quality) before there is too much loss?

Here's a link to the catalogs for the different cables. They have spec sheets w/ frequency responses and signal loss. Each cable is a little different.

Typically, the shorter the cables, the better.

http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2533

is there a limit in length with USB/Firewire cables?

I'm sure there is, but I haven't had to research it yet. When I've got a little time, I'll see what I can find out.

What about Midi cables?
There are these very expensive midi cables? is it worth it to buy the costly ones?

What's your application and how long are they. If I remember correctly you really want to run them more than 50 feet. But I've also had people tell me not to run them longer than 10 or 12 feet.

What kind of cable connenctions do you find important to connect the CR with a seperate Video Editing workplace (besides Ethernet)?

I don't know your exact needs. If you're running the 2 rooms on just a network, you've got 2 choices. Ethernet (use Gigabit) or Fibre. If you require other sources for video (eg: sync, blackburst, etc) then you'll need additional cabling run.

Are you networking or ???

Thanks Aaron,
the longest MIDI-connections would be about 20m, mainly for synths and a midi-drumkit.

I have no experiemce with this sync-stuff, but down the road this year i will need to syncronize my DAW with the computer the video-cutting will be made on, cause it plays out the picture.
but as I said, I'm new to videoediting, but need it in future.

soon I'll start constructing my studio, so I want all the cables in the wall. I will also include small ducts for "upgrades" but they will not be very wide in diameter. so most of the lines have to be fix in walls.

another question:
I'm not sure if I should go for wall plates with jacks/XLR/midi and so on, or if I instead just lay all the "finished cables into the booth, etc.
I mean, what is the loss in quality of wall plates, if any?
I plan to use very high quality Sommer-cables. Famous brand in europe.
Neutrik Jacks and XLR.

I don't know why the post above appeared as guest???

The site uses cookies to identify you; so if you dumped yours recently, it wouldn't have logged you in, it's easy to not notice that. Also, sometimes it just happens; I've had it not log me in one time, and do it the next, with no change I was aware of...

Cables - midi will start to lose bits through pulse rounding somewhere around 8 meters, depending on the sender and receiver modules and cable capacitance; generally cheaper midi cables are more likely to have higher cable capacitance and will start dropping bits at shorter lengths. For the lengths you want, you'll probably have to get some midi through boxes to insert along the way;

commercial midi cables come in up to 20 foot (6.5 meter) lengths; I have a couple of those, and haven't seen any dropped bits. However, I've NOT done any tests to see how much TIMING error they generate, I've just tried to keep them on slower stuff, like string pads and NOT drums, just in case.

Firewire - 4.5 meters is considered max without a repeater (hub) but these guys have other options -

http://www.unibrain.com/1394_products/cables/cables.htm

More, including pinouts for firewire -

http://www.pccables.com/cables/firewire_cables.html

USB -

http://www.motu.com/techsupport/technot ... 74677/view

http://www.vpi.us/usbc5.html

Basically, you will need to use some kind of extender boxes to get the distances you need; probably the cleanest way to do this is with Cat5 cable, it seems most stuff can be extended this way now (including 16 channels of 16/44 digital audio on one Cat5 - google the words QSC and RAVE for more on this.

Jack plates - good quality ones won't hurt NEARLY as much as stepping on a cable that runs clear back to your mix position with no breaks, and having to either shorten the cable or pull a new one;

For syncing video and digital audio WELL, you may want to budget for one of these

http://www.nanosyncs.com/nanosyncs.html

Around $1400 is best street price. This can lock to video and output locked audio word clock, etc - check the link for more... Steve

thanks for the info steve!!