Designing a stage box / snake

[structuredloud]

I'm designing a stage box / snake. It will be pretty specialized, with the idea of compact recording rigs in mind. My plan is to use Dsub 25 as the primary connection. There will be lots of cool things such as optional xformer mix splits + DI options, facilities for quick daisy chaining, and best of all - almost every kind of fan tail option is already available in dsub format. I've got pretty much everything all set, but I thought I'd see if anyone had any requests. Again, this will be designed for people who are bringing the rig in the trunk of a car etc. not for trucks with their own three-phase power etc.

Also, has anyone seen or used any kind stage box that had a PCB which facilitated connections? I'm a bit leary of this but given that it will likely only be 6x6" (the box will be about the size of a mac mini) or less I think cross-talk and durability wil not be an issue. I guess I could try it and then throw it against a wall for a couple hours.

Lastly, I plan to make these available on a limited basis, so stay tuned it sounds like something you'd like.

[Remoteness]

I love when folks take on the task of designing their own stuff, even when it available for sale to others. Kuddos to you and your efforts.

The compact recording rig idea sounds solid.
But, IMHO, DSUB25 connector is not a robust (enough) connector.
I did say IMHO so YMMV, but they break and get squashed easily for my liking.
With that said, ELCOs are also not the great type of connector to use on an everyday basis.
We have ELCOs in the field, but I make sure my associates and crew handle them.
Many folks never bother to check pins and outer shells before interfacing them.
That's a big NO NO on my dates.
With plenty of love and care I'm sure the DSUB25s can handle it.
...But, I ask you, how much love and care IS there in the world we live in today?

I like your options idea. I happen to have a sub snake that has four direct boxes and four XLRs.
It comes in very handy. And, it's a very clean look.

I'm interested in your quick daisy chain idea. Can you please explain that further?

I don't know too many (if any these days) audio trucks that are running three-phase power.
Usually it's single phase power -- 208V or 240V, etc. Some are running balanced power, but I digress.

I know a guy that has designed a pretty awesome splitter that uses PCBs.
It's a very cool looking box. Each channel is on a PCB, connectors and XFMRs are attached to each PCB.

Throwing a freshly fabricated design or just built item against the wall for a "couple hours" sounds like an event at my shop...
I swing or spin around patch bays we have just wired a bit then re-test them before we install them just for extra measure.
If they can handle that abuse, they're ready for the "remote life."

All the best and good luck on your idea and project at hand.

[structuredloud]

Killer response Steve! Trying to figure out a good idea for the connectivity. Whirlind MASS would be my first choice if it weren't A: Expensive, and B: Proprietary.

In terms of daisy chaining I'm just thinking of ways to carry around less shit:

Say you have a sixteen channel box connected up with 16 pair wire, but you want 10 channels at the drummer and 6 for a horn section. If all your XLR jacks are doubled on multi pin (just soldered, no electronics) then you just daisy chain the horns to to the drums or vice versa and they both have "access" to those channels with only one snake running back to the rig. Obviously you'd still need the same amount of multi-pair running back to the rig but then you could "bus" stuff around the stage, etc in groups of eight very easily.

So maybe each box could have some kind of more robust connection available if it were the "main" connection carrying 16 or 24 channels back to the rig, then there'd be two or three dsubs for chaining sub snakes to it. I guess the idea is basically to build your setup out of sub-snakes that can share a common interface and only use what you need + have the option to move around D.I's + splits / or jack types.

Also thought about having all the jacks on the sides so that there's less stress on cables and less visible mess.

[bishopthomas]

Whirlwind Mass connectors are very expensive, but there are some copies out there for far less money. They seem to be the most widely used multipin, and that's the reason I went with W4 for my rig.

I like your DI subsnake idea. I actually started rebuilding stage boxes at the church where I worked but I moved away before finishing. Now that you bring it up I think I may refit one of my sub snakes to have DI's built in. Any good source for decent transformers?

Jacks on the side are completely up to you, but I personally don't like them. Maybe for a front snake where you don't want to see the connectors, but I think it's a lot easier to patch into a "normal" snake.

[Remoteness]

Leif,

Connectivity is everything.
The amount of connections you have to make for each channel and extension especially with oxidation and such.

There are smaller robust connectors out there for sure. The MASS series of connectors even the smaller MASS is to many circuits for your 16 channel box.
With that said, you could consider making a serious combat proof hood for your DSUB25 idea.
When buying the parts you can specify a harder metal for the pins.

When you said "daisy chaining" i thought you were thinking of chaining XFMRs to the box or something to that affect. My bad...

Daisy chaining is a common practice for sure, but I do not see a great benefit to having a multipin sub snake on a 16 channel box. I guess maybe two 8 channel subs isn't a bad idea at all...

You would normally find 8, 12 or 16 channel sub box multipins on a large (input channels) stage box.
IMO, a few XLR sub snakes would workout just fine on a 16 channel system.
Furthermore a 16 channel stage box with or without XFMRs and DIs is really not a lot a stuff to carry around.
I guess I'm saying this since we usually have 52 to 58 channel systems on location. and, someetimes multiples of them.
It's a treat when we take out the 8 or 24 channel system for gigs.

Why not home run sub snakes directly to your rig? All you have to do is take the "sub" out of sub snake and call it a multiple snake system.
Way back when my second truck (1984 to 1987) had two then four 19 channel cannon LK connectors for this exact concept.
I wanted to home run each snake to where it needed to be.
I could have four separate snakes going to four locations or three going to one location and the forth going to FOH for audience mics and FOH feeds and such.
I could split up the stage and have one box stage left the other stage right and yet another up or down stage.
This setup ended up making it into my third truck, Jethro (1987 to the present) a Few years in I updated the four 19 pair multipins to two 52 channel MASS and two 19 channel LK57s.
A more standard audio multipin connector in the TV is an FK37 twelve pair also known as a (Whirlwind) DT12 connector.
Elroy has three 56 channel MASS W4s and eight 12 channel (Canon FK37s) DT12s. That's 264 channels of I/O besides the 96 or so XLRs also available for routing to something nice and sweet.
And the coolest thing about all those inputs/outputs is the fact that you don't have to use them all when it's not applicable.
I come from the belief that it's better to have all those options and not need them then to need them and not have them.

Whirlwind has a sub snakes that have the jacks on the side. They make a mini 6 and a 12 channel subsnake. We have a few of those puppies and they work wellwith regard to keeping everything looking neat.

You have a great idea -- GO FOR IT!! It works in any input/output count!

[Yannick]

Black Box Network Services - Product Detail

is a db25 hood that is quite strong IMO.
We have a few, standing on them won't do any harm, maybe someone here could convince me to put one leg of my piano one an empty one.

[LX3]

Originally Posted by Remoteness

I know a guy that has designed a pretty awesome splitter that uses PCBs.
It's a very cool looking box. Each channel is on a PCB, connectors and XFMRs are attached to each PCB.

Hi Steve, do you mean me? Or did someone else also have the same (slightly crazy) idea? That splitter took me two years on and off. I love the thing, as long as I don't think about the hours that went into building it.

I had a huge hunt the other day for the photos I took of the insides of the splitter while I was building it, and couldn't darn well find them. Grr... I have so many boxes full of prints, you'd think they'd be in one of them.

When I get some spare time I will take the back off the splitter and get some new pics. Whether I'll actually remove a module to photograph it is another matter... but the modules are the coolest bit, so the desoldering tool might have to come out.

Or I could just find those bloomin' pictures!

Paul

[Gravity]

I've been looking for something like this for a while. I'd be surper interested if you manage to come up with something. I've been looking for a small 16ch box that had soem sort of multi-pin and split options.


If the price is right.... ;-)