steve, wiring racks and organization

[alphajerk]

i am getting kicked out of the one room i had in my house to mix in [and in the throws of trying to build a new mix room.... but i sit and look at all my outboard gear and want to move it all to flight cases for taking to other studios [which i now have to do to track] and and looking for solutions on how to go about it in the most clean way [i have seen the backs of your racks and jealous]

should i keep all my stuff use dependant? any particiular size? how about connections on the back side? leave it open and run lines direct with just power distributed to a single output for rack or should i wire all the I/O to some sort of back panel connector and build breakout snakes. which begs the question, TT, 1/4" or XLR or a mixture? or all of the above?

just looking for ideas that i can easily hook up in the room yet pull out to go remote when needed. mixwise [and im sure flames are coming on this one] but i stay fully ITB so that part of the studio would stay intact for the most part but need a version to travel.

[Beech]

I've been considering doing something like that. How would an xlr patchpanel on the back of each rack work? A 4u panel would be plenty. Just a thought.

[Remoteness]

Alpha,

Moving your stuff into flight cases is a good idea.

Deciding on the right size case is the first step. Will you be transporting this gear in a car, SUV, van or truck? Hollywood Steve had custom 4 spaced racks made. He wanted them to handle extreme transort conditions but, didn't want height and size issues hold him back when he was on a one person gig. At Aura Sonic, our road cases surround 8, 12, 16 & 20 spaced racks. Boy, I would love to put our 4 space SKB portable rack gear in "Hollywood Steve" styled road cases. We use the SKB stuff in smaller recording situations when a van or truck is not applicable.

The next thing to think about is interconnection between the racks and studios you facilitate. The back of our racks have multipin or XLR connections or a combination of the two. Some of our racks even include BNC connectors.

All of our 16 spaced racks have ELCO connectors which are short loaded. The upper channels (13-24) are jumped to another ELCO's lower (1-12) channels. We use four 90 pin ELCOs to make this so. The top half of the connector is wired 1-12. The bottom half (13-24) is wired to another ELCO's channel 1-12. This way you can run only one 24 channel ELCO snake to an input then jump the input to another rack's input. Or when only one rack is needed you can still run one 24 channel snake to the input and jump the upper 12 channels (13-24) of the input ELCO to the racks output ELCO (1-12). To handle any combination of interconnection we've built ELCO adapters in every denomination. We have ELCO to ELCO or XLR or TRS or TS or DSUB25s, even ELCO to TT (Bantam) jacks for use with Bantam patchbays.

The majority of our racks are left open except where the connector panel is mounted. Our racks have front and rear rack rails. The rear rack rails are used for the connector panel(s), lacing bars and such. Some of our racks are completely sealed and connectorized because we needed to install additional transformers or patching. There are chassis mounted connectors for power, audio, video, control, etc.

When the equipment exceeds 12 channels and cannot be setup with our "Flip Wilson" concept we wire the additional channels to chassis mounted XLRs. Our Mic Pre/EQ RACK I has 8 ATI Pro6s and 4 Midas XL42s equaling 16 mic pre/EQs inputs and outputs on two ELCOs. The remaining 8 channels (17-24) of I/O show up next to the ELCOs so you can run an input and output ELCO snake to the rack and have the additional 8 mic pres (or whatever) show up on the same snakes back to the Patchbay or wiring harness.

So, the long story short -- Sized up your equipment racks, put, multipins on your racks, build a few multipin to multipin snakes and attach the various (prebuilt) adapter harnesses to handle the majority of your work load. If the studios you work at have TT bays, build a couple of TT harnesses. If your setup needs XLRs make XLR adapters for your multipin to multipin snakes. When you're at your own studio keep it simple and interface to your multipin panel one, two, three...

The system works very well for us. Anything is possible with this type of an arrangement. Even when you need multiple channel harnesses of "this" to "that" you have it. Let's say you need (24) channels of male XLR to (3) DSUB25s, all you do is grab an ELCO to (24) MXLR snake or harness and attach it to an ELCO to (3) DSUB25 with a turn around adapter. All (most) of our ELCO harnesses or snakes are wired to male ELCOs. All of our chassis mounted ELCOs are female. If you want to combine ELCO harnesses or snakes you need a F/F ELCO adapter.

[Remoteness]

Here are some shots of the front and back or few of our rigs...

[djui5]

Elco's are definiatly the way to go in this type of scenario. They make things simple and clean.

[alphajerk]

this "flip wilson" concept... who is it named after? im still trying to grasp my feeble little mind around the concept of "jumping"... so is this multiing the i/o? i have re-read it like 15 times now, im just either super dense right now or really tired. or both.

are all your ins on elco 1 and outs on elco 2? i just ask this thinking of how i would hook up my system. say i have my convertors and such on elco1=INPUT, and my preamps on an elco2=OUPUT, i could connect ELCO>ELCO between the two with a single wire but the output needed might require a different connector to "plug in" to the studio.

hollywood steve, you mind chiming in with your racking/wiring/connections? pics ;)?

[hollywood_steve]

I'd like to be helpful, but you've got to remember that I'm working with extremely limited track counts, and that makes things very simple. My 8ch GX9000 is in one 4RU shock rack, my API 7800 / 8200 rig is in another 4RU shock rack and the required 8ch of mic preamps are in a variety of 4RU (and smaller) cases. 4RU for the Averill / API 500 series rack, 2RU for the Vintech preamps, etc. My SV3800 is in yet another 4RU rack as is my Tripplite UPS and power distribution panel. And that is all the gear that I would ever bring to a gig.

Setup begins with getting power to everything. The UPS and the power distribution panel both go straight into the nearest clean outlet. The UPS is only used for the Genex recorder. (my goal is safe shutdown without loss of files.) Everything else gets plugged into the distribution panel with it's nominal filtering, and regulation capabilities. That's it for power.

When dealing with 8ch (or less, I still do a lot of stereo pair gigs....) worth of inputs, I have decided that I didn't need to get involved in a lot of custom cabling. The Genex and API 7800/8200 can be wired up in a couple of minutes thanks to their exisitng DB25 connectors. Several 8ch DB25-DB25 snakes (3 to 6ft long) and my rig is almost done. All that's left is to tie the 8 mic preamps into the system and for that I've decided to stick with individual XLR-XLR cables (3ft to 6ft). Because I have a variety of mic preamps, and they are packaged differently, there is no single multi-channel cable that would work in all situations. And with just 8ch (or less, often less) its easier to just spend 2 minutes pluggin in 8 single xlr cables.

At that point my rig is fully wired, except for pulling cables from the mic positions back to the mic preamps. And that is a unique situation on every gig, so no pre-fab rig would help.

I realize that my situtation is not very applicable to someone recording rock bands and using 48 inputs. Now that my rig has been "complete" for a little over 6 months, I'd say my best ideas were the use of 4RU (or smaller) racks to keep everything manageable by a single person, and the installation of rear rack rails on all racks. The need for rear rack rails differs on almost every rack: sometimes you need a patch panel on the rear of the rack, sometimes you just want to mount a power strip or a lacing bar.

Good luck.

[Remoteness]

The “Flip Wison” concept is a simple one…

Well, kind of. An ELCO or EDAC 90 pin basically has enough pins for twelve balanced channels above and twelve balanced channels below the actuating screw. There are other pin holes that surround the actuating screw rounding off the remaining 90 pins but, we don’t use them on our twenty-four channel setups.

When you look at the back of the rack from left to right the first ELCO is the input and the second ELCO is the “Flip” of the (input’s) bottom 12 channels to the top 12 channels of the second ELCO. Are you still with me? Am I making any sense? The third and forth ELCOs are wired just like the first two but, are wired as outputs.

Now, the top (first set of) 12 channels of the first ELCO are wired to the 12 inputs of the gear in the rack. The bottom 12 channels of the first ELCO are wired directly to the second ELCO. The next pair of ELCOs are used in the same way as the first pair but, wired as outputs. You can either patch the input’s second ELCO to another rack’s first input ELCO using a long 24 channel ELCO jumper snake or you can patch a short ELCO jumper snake to the same rack’s first (third position) output ELCO so you can use only one 24 channel snake per rack. In the latter scenario the input’s second ELCO is wired to the output’s first ELCO which is (again) in ELCO position three. When the rack has less than 12 channels of outboard we wire the remaining channels to chassis mounted XLRs next to the four chassis mounted ELCOs.

When we use the racks with a patchbay, I like to have 24 inputs per tie line row so, we patch the input’s second ELCO to another rack’s first input ELCO using an ELCO jumper snake.

So, to make this long story even longer – There is no multing of the I/Os going on here. The first set of ELCOs (positions 1 & 2) are the inputs and the second set of ELCOs (positions 3 & 4) are the outputs. Think of the second and forth ELCOs as extensions of the I/O. They are only used when you want to jump additional channels to another similar rack or when you want to use one 24 channel ELCO snake as an input (first set of 12) and an output (second set of 12). In this setup the first 12 channels of the snake are inputs and the second set of channels are outputs. We have made special ELCO snakes with Female (1-12) and Male (13-24) XLRs so we wouldn't need to find turnarounds to make this work when you're not using a patchbay.

Remember, the first ELCO’s inputs 1 through 12 are wired to the inputs of the rack’s outboard gear. The first ELCO’s inputs 13 through 24 are wired directly to the second ELCO’s channels 1 through 12. The same goes for the third and forth ELCO. The third ELCO’s outputs 1 through 12 are wired to the outputs of the rack’s outboard gear and channels 13 through 24 of the third ELCO are wired directly to the forth ELCO so you can jumper to another ELCO.

If anyone is still confused about this setup, just post a note and I will try to take a picture of the backside of the ELCO panel. It should explain everything.

I hope this helped.

[Remoteness]

What about Flip Wilson?

Here's what "The Wilson Flip" looks like from the front and back (wiring) sides of the ELCOs.

[pan60]

Steve
very nice and clean!

[alphajerk]

THANKS! man, now seeing it visually it is ALL CLEAR... and two more elcos than i was trying to picture in my head lol.

[alphajerk]

how about that flip wilson story?

[Remoteness]

Originally Posted by alphajerk

how about that flip wilson story?

Ah yes, the “Flip Wilson” also known as the “Wilson Flip”…

I came up with the name while I was explaining my ELCO (EDAC) 90 pin wiring scheme to some new crew members. It was around the time I formed this ELCO flip idea. The ELCO90 Wilson Flip is used on most of our short loaded racks. When the racks have twelve channels (or less) I usually place a second ELCO90 and flip the upper channels of the first ELCO over to the second ELCO. I do this for the input and output ELCOs.

Like I stated before, when you look at the back of one of our outboard racks from left to right the first ELCO is an input, the second ELCO is the “Flip” of the first ELCO's upper 12 channels (13-24) wired directly to the second ELCO's lower 12 channels (1-12). The third and forth ELCOs are wired just like the first two but wired as outputs.

Sometimes I add strange, outlandish or unexpected words or remarks into my explanations just to see if anyone is listening or understands…

While I was explaining this new wiring idea it seemed like some of the crew members were not getting it but, they still acted like they understood the concept. I wanted to see if anyone was paying attention so, I through in the name “Wilson” for the input ELCO. I said something to the effect, “This ELCO (pointing to the second ELCO) is the Flip of the first ELCO’s Wilson." When they nodded and agreed with me I knew they had no idea what I was saying. I then had to explain it a bit differently until they all got it right. In any event the name stuck and the ELCO90 Wilson Flip was born.