Roland S-4000 Digital Snake

[foxyloxy]

I'm moving back to Southern Africa in a couple of months with the intention of doing some live recording of both conventional gigs as well as musical groups in more remote areas where studios are few and far between..... I had the chance to use a Roland S-4000 digital snake recently and what I found most attractive about it was the fact that you get 40 channels of 24 bit 96kHz digital audio down a single Cat5 cable and also that all the mic pres and A/D converters are in the main stage box. Great from a cable maintenance point of view and for easy in and out.

Does anyone know of any alternatives to the S-4000?

(The idea is to record straight to my DAW on a G5 and do a live stereo mix on an O2R96 which I can give to the band to listen to before we do the final mix elsewhere.)

Thanks

Keith

[foxyloxy]

Anyone used one for recording and been able to evaluate the quality of the pres and converters compared to say API/Millennia, Radar etc..??

[foldback]

I've never seen this before. It looks cool but I wonder what it sounds like. Roland is not the first brand I think of when thinking of professional remote recording.

A single run of cat 5 would be pretty cool and convenient compared to my current 32x4 which is almost 1.25 inches in diameter.

[thenewyear]

There have been a couple threads about pres that are remotely controllable over Cat5 (like these SSLs)

But this Roland thing is the first thing I am aware of that also provides signal over the Cat5s as well.

I am guessing they are aiming this at the live sound market as opposed to us location recorders.

[bjornson]

Don't knock it if you haven't tried it....
It sounds almost as good as as all but the best snake- preamp combos when running a long distance. Damn convenient too.

[Remoteness]

DAce,

So, have you tried it?

How does it sound?

Originally Posted by bjornson

Don't knock it if you haven't tried it....
It sounds almost as good as as all but the best snake- preamp combos when running a long distance. Damn convenient too.

[Jim vanBergen]

I've demo'd the Roland, Aviom, and the E-snake.

They are ok...but nowhere near as good as a high-end preamp with copper, YET. We saw some scary results on an AP when testing the lines, which suprised even the manufacturers reps who were with us.

I think in a few more years they will be better, but for now, I'm passing.

You have to listen to the unit you like and compare it. If you use high end pre's and simply do conversion, it may be OK for you. If you use the preamps they sell with these units- be careful.

If you go for it, great for you, and tell us how you like it! I'm ready to have my mind changed!

[bjornson]

I use it on huge industrials where my FOH has to be in excess of 500' from the source. On gigs where exposed cable runs are a huge nono, and where flying 1000 feet of cable would cost too much dough and time. One was the national flute association where I a/b'd it to long copper runs and millennia pres. It sounded pretty darn good. The ability to use a venues installed cat 5 and just drop the boxes anywhere is huge. I used it at the MLB allstar game 06 as well. Not extremely challenging source material, but I found it too useful to discount. Not one hiccup in terms of reliability. YMMV

[foldback]

Cat 5 would be like disposable snake cable. You could just keep a 1000 foot roll on the truck and abandon it, compare that to the cost of two or three stagehands... free network wire with every job! It's a marketing and sales feature.

The ability to use exisiting Cat 5 would be a big plus but who puts RJ45 by the stage and outside the building?

Still, I'd love to hear one of these RSS digi snake systems. My 36 chl snake is over an inch OD and weighs over 150 pounds on its reel so I'd be open to something thin and light weight but I'm afraid I could not give up my Grace preamps for Roland. In my mind I envision them to sound like the preamps in a portable all in one multitracker, good, but not great. My clients pay me for "great", they can do "good" without me.

I did a lot of design and installation for Busch Entertainment and got a chance to hear digital snake technology about ten years ago (I know that was like the stone age), we were listening to some very expensive systems. Every now and then we'd get a digital burp of noise. The sales guys would always try to distract you to some good feature when that would happen. We'd be like "what was that?" and they'd be like "What?". Almost as funny as our seriously deaf rep for Crest amplifiers, "don't buy those Crown amps, they sound like crap", "really?" we'd respond, "WHAT? what'd you say?".

Intercom would be a problem too, Roland needs to do interface boxes for Clearcom and RTS. A couple of video feeds would be nice too. Everything through Cat 5. One of my wire sales guys has some cool siameese Cat 6 which would double the throughput and still be dirt cheap.... if it sounded good :-)

[foxyloxy]

Originally Posted by foldback

My clients pay me for "great", they can do "good" without me.

[foxyloxy]

Roland Systems Solutions will be at NAMM - for anyone going and interested in checking out this digital snake.

I believe they're due to announce Mac support so you can run a Cat5 cable straight into an Apple laptop.

And there's an interesting thread on PSW, although it's about 6 months old.
http://srforums.prosoundweb.com/inde...g/14443/0/0/0/

[bjornson]

Originally Posted by foldback

The ability to use exisiting Cat 5 would be a big plus but who puts RJ45 by the stage and outside the building?

BION, alot of these building have serious fiber running to every meeting room/space!