What is a microphone bay in a studio but a snake built into the wall, and we solder the end the XLR males are hanging off to a 1/4" or Bantam/TT patch bay. The beauty of the snake, is its portability and value. As for cable quality?.. They come in all kinds of flavors, from quite budget and decent, to the same multipair Mogami or fancier stuff we use when building multi million dollar rooms, and much of this cable is not as spendy as you would think. Mogami 8 pair balanced in their super soft OFC copper is only $3.00 a foot. Nice tip Joe!
Good idea, but it only works if you're using mic preamps for your microphones. If you want to use them in mixing, or as a audio effect it doesn't work. A patchbay is necessary. Still, I do want one now you've shown how useful they are for recroding drums. We've always used long wires, and what the hell, it's getting me down.
Thanks for the video, Joe! I'm glad this idea is pretty common and others are doing it as well. For a while when I got stage snake for my home studio and mic inputs I wasn't sure if this was the most ideal way. But if it works it works! Thanks for the reassurance that I'm not the only one!
Great one. Spooky. I was wrestling with same issue. I bet many home recorders do too as they start to add equipment in their small rooms and can't easily get behind everything. One thing I did too was build my own rack boxes out of MDF and put them on my desk. Saved a lot of money. This got my gear off the floor under desk where connections were really inconvenient. Then I set the DIY desktop racks (2 4U boxes stacked) on top of a lazy susan so I can easily turn the racks to reach the backs.
I've been doing this for years, the sends are set up for head phone cues up to 4 mix's & if you do drums it's a no brainer. Get a 16 x 4 you'll use those inputs quick w/drums.
Dead on Joe. When I built my drum room in the garage I needed a way to practice with mics on the kit, snake solved it perfectly. Then I just drag the snake to the living room when I need to set up and track for a song in there. It's also labelled to my different pres. This is a huge tip for home studio people.
I use snakes/looms where-ever possible; saves running back and forth between gear; both studio and live sound. Have done so for decades. Like all gear there's cheap crappy ones and good ones for moderately more money. I started off making my own. Was cheapest option. But with the global reach of the interwebs, its now more cost effective to buy assembled looms/snakes. Thanks for spreading this idea around with this video.
Purchasing my snake was one of the best investments I have made. It helps so much in my house and when I have a recording gig I can take it out and it's now part of my mobile rig.
Good idea for extending the mic inputs of course. But how would you easily now patch in other external hardware gear, such as compressors and such? Maybe another small snake would do for "other" dedicated hardware and have some of those TRS connections put to use for going in/out to the preamps and the same for other gear you might use while tracking. Essentially then, you'd have a mobile patch bay! THX Joe... good ideas.
Hy I have a question for you: Does it make sense to invest in a balanced cabel for my In ear monitors? I own the Stage 5, its a custom made monitor from Rhines Custom monitors in German. Graet stuff. I run them from a Hifiman 901 music player. Balanced cabels for iem Headphones tend to be really expensive, so i am wondering if the possible benfits of balanced cabels can justify the investment. Please let me know what you thing about this topic.
If I ever get a studio again, I'm going to make it all virtual. 1) A interface that accepts 2 guitar inputs & MIDI (In, Out, Thru) 2) electronic drum kit with MIDI OUT to trigger any virtual drum sounds. 3) Speakers/Monitors 4) A wall mounted TV as a Display monitor for viewing my DAW software. That's about it, other than software.
I'm setting up a home studio and I'll build a recording booth. Do you think that this equipment works well as a patch bay substitute for booth inputs/outputs? Sorry about my ignorance but I have a question that may sound a bit stupid: What if I have to connect a microphone that needs phantom power and this microphone is inside the booth? I've been checking your videos a lot lately and today I was doing some searching on booths/patch bay and seems that by fate your video came across. Man, you cover everything, is amazing how much content you talk about. Through your very spontaneous, clear and straight away method of explanation you ended up with what is in my opinion the best audio channel in youtube! Thanks man, you deserve good things!
Thanks for sharing this great idea. This is the perfect solution for the home studio owner who may be recording in different rooms. Just not having to deal with plugging in the back of the board several times a session makes it well worth the investment.
Go with the PATCHBAY!!! MUCH MORE VERSATILE & NOT ALL THAT EXPENSIVE.... THE BEHRINGER PATCHBAY PX 300O IS A SOLID EASY TO USE TOOL... VERY FLEXIBLE PLUS THE SWITCHES MAKE IT SO EASY TO USE & CHANGE SETUPS ...YOU WILL NEVER REGRET IT BUT WONDERED WHY IT TOOK YOU SO LONG.
I do this Simple genius. having worked with patchbays I think half the time they're more of a mind spank than hands and knees/telephone light business Necessity being the mother of invention. Top job. Better than listening to moaning trainspotters gripe about inconsequential bollocks. The set up is about money in the end. I'd like a Numann mic, let alone the rest. The adventure, and evolving creative process makes the magic. Otherwise, it's just an office job.
Is this not just what snakes are for? Is there a difference that I'm missing? I'm not trying to be a jerk I'd really like to know if I'm missing something, I've been looking at buying a patch bay
It seems to me like a half measure to be honest. Longer cabling is not significantly more expensive if you solder it up yourself, it's the connectors that cost the most if you want quality and adding a snake means twice as many connectors while the cabling in the snakes is the same as if you used installation cabling without all that shielding and flexible rubber around it to make it last a long time used in regular balanced or starquad cabling. If you are satisfied by installation cabling as far as shielding and flexibility goes (and you must be if you are satisfied with a snake like this which is the same stuff inside) then installation cabling from the same quality manufacturer of your choice can be as much as 3 times cheaper than cabling that is expected to be constantly abused, per 100m or 300m roll (probably other brackets for the imperial measurements over there in the US) Also, It is cheaper to have 10x 20m mic cables than 1x 15m snake and then 10x5m cabling to go out from that snake into your microphones. The snake option means twice as many connectors and extra electrical resistance and contact corrosion and other such issues. You will be running deoxit on both your mic cables and those snake connectors in a couple of years. The only reason the snake solution seems cheaper to you is because you have a cheap snake and then probably more expensive mic cabling from back in the day but if you are introducing a cheap element into your signal chain then you might as well have it all cheap for the same money straight to your mic and keep your older cabling to use on shorter runs. The most economical thing one can do is to get cabling on a large roll and then get connectors bulk then keep that in storage and only make the cabling you need for a particular session and slowly build up your inventory of finished cabling. You don't have to run to the store and pay exorbitant prices - you grab the soldering gun and crack open a beer the day before the session and make what you need for a fraction of the cost and maintaining high quality throughout your whole signal chain. A 100m roll of high quality cabling is probably about 150-350 dollars depending on which sensible product you prefer, cheap stuff is 50-100 dollars. High quality installation cabling can be had for similar price to cheap regular cabling and in that snake you at best will get cheap installation cabling type of stuff and a cheap aluminium box to hold cheap connectors unless they are expensive connectors in which case it will be reflected in the price of the snake - there is no magic solution here, you have to pay for the parts wether you make it yourself or let redco make it. Redco is a good company but they are not cheap so for a short specialist loom it might be a good choice but for simple soldering like making single mic cables it's a waste of money imho and again if you want long cables, buy large rolls and save a lot of money. Even a dollar of a difference per 1m of cable is a 100 dollars for a 100m roll. Like stage mic stands, stage cabling solutions do not really work all that well in the studio - you are wasting space, signal quality and end up with extra crosstalk and other issues, some which might come up as your connectors age. If that snake develops some sort of mechanical problem then all the strands are worthless unless you plan on stripping it all out to salvage the good ones. If you want a patchbay for outboard, make it yourself by using installation cabling that terminate into female installation connectors (the ones that can be screwed into a rack plate) and that way you will cut out the need to patch everything in the back and on the front of patchbay since you are already sorted back there, it's just a matter of getting it done on the front. You can also mix and match any type of connector that way and have XLR, jack, phono, whatever all near each other with custom made spaces for labelling and so on. A patchbay that has similar qualities would cost a bank and still require twice as many patch cables to make it work. I can run about 60 line inputs at the same time on my A/D but that does not mean I have all that cabling at the ready all the time, if I need more I just solder more up. The bane of short cabling that can't reach is of those who refuse to get a 30 dollar solder gun and a 1kg roll of good old timey lead filled solder in all it's polluting goodness for an extra 30 dollars that will last you years and years of getting high on fumes and getting perfect studio cabling ;) If you are spending big for all that other crap and getting preamps with say a better transformer in them then it seems silly to me to not just have a few rolls of the cabling you need and a whole box of connectors so that you can solder up any kind of line, mic or high-z combination needed. I recently made my self a whole web of hi-z cabling and made platforms for all of my guitar gear on different heights so that I don't have to crawl on the floor when I experiment with my signal chain.
There are standards, in the studio and on the stage - your solution falls below studio standards. Is the home recording movement about pretending that we are doing things right or actually doing things right just on a smaller scale, being smart, economical and putting in effort instead of wads of cash and scaling with our needs instead of investing millions upfront? Instead of a patchbay you just need to terminate your outboard at a wall panel and mount that in your rack - that is a solution for a home recordist trying to save money on a patchbay using readily available parts. Your solution is no solution at all - you just took a stage device and told people to use that in their studios instead of what should be used instead. That snake does not solve the same problems a patchbay does either - all it does is makes setting up mikes on the stage easier by having a box there with you rather than by the board. If you want a similar studio solution, look into preamp satellites or maybe even a sidecar right there by the drums - something that can improve quality rather than diminish it like the snake. You say no wads of cash, I say effort. You say no effort I give up. Maybe watching a sitcom about sound engineering is a better choice for someone who has neither money nor ability nor can exert effort of any sort. You obviously can do whatever you want but I simply disagree with your advice as being the correct thing to do in the studio. It is miss-leading which is why I wanted to chime in - your "solution" also does not fit economically other parts of your own home studio. That rockwool there din't get framed and got hang up there by itself - yet you still have it, soldering is no different.
Borys Pomianek Eh...you're probably right. But just because there are better and cheaper options doesn't mean mine falls below "standards." I've found that a lot of times when people get super obsessive about stuff like "standards," they're not actually making much music. Whereas using this snake I've been recording some incredible stuff.
HomeStudioCorner I've been making some incredible stuff with a clothes hanger, some of them include hanging my clothes, hanging other peoples clothes, getting my car keys from out of tight spots where my hand won't fit... Just because you take time to have the proper tool for the right job does not mean you are obsessed, it just means you are following the "rules of the art" so to speak. The point of wiring is not only to get signal from one device to the other, it has to do so reliably and you have to be able to trust it so that you ultimately can go beyond worrying about gear and just create. It's the same about studying music regularly - so that when you do get a chance to create you can go beyond the physical constraints and do your job as an artist effectively, especially with other people around making it difficult. In your other video I checked you mentioned amp buzz - that amp buzz can be due to lights but might as well be due to your signal ground being messed up for any number of reasons, maybe the casing of a device like that snake is connected to signal ground and then the casing is not properly grounded or maybe grounded to a different phase in the building or any number of mystical reasons why all of us still have issues with hums now and then. The buzz can even be on a line you have not even armed up in your DAW but the crosstalk means you are getting some of that buzz on your other line in the snake and then have some sort of dynamics processor that is making the situation worse when the signal is lower. Doing wiring properly I think is very important - a ton more important than getting just the right monitors or picking the right eq. There is reason in respecting standards since we want to make records right? I can make music with pots and pans but I need properly installed cabling so that I can trust my gear to do it for me when the time comes. If you had a punk studio I would not raise this subject at all but you have all these nice pieces of hardware and took the time to arrange everything and then you argue that "soldering, meh". I understand that it's possible to do all kinds of in the box wizzardry, but again that is effort - effort that can be spent on other more important elements of the setup or the ever so hated soldering. There are people who are really new to all of this and they might think that they could never solder, that studio quality cabling costs thousands and then they go and buy monster cables and are unhappy, stuff breaks, it's to short, too long etc. Sound Engineering in my opinion should start with getting the signal from point A to B. People are doing sidechain processing and can't figure out the different impedance levels used in their gear and that is why they don't progress ultimately because they always got that hum, that one thing always sound thin and so on. So just my big jar of cents - peace.
Borys Pomianek You're making great points. Wiring is important. But I just know from interacting with thousands of people that a lot of them are easily distracted by doing things super properly vs actually making music. The snake is a great solution for me.
9 ปีที่แล้ว +3
"You haven't checked the website in a while" Oh god, he sees right through me O_O
I wished it was this simple. You should change the title to hobo patch bays for studios one just a couple mics. No way this shit is replacing a real patch bay. Why do you think they didn’t do this from the beginning ? Because this is far from a problem solver. The gear I got requires more then 16 xlrs and 4 returns. Very misleading video.
This is going to solve our problem as well. Extremely helpful video; it got right to the heart of our issue in our little home studio. Thank you!
What is a microphone bay in a studio but a snake built into the wall, and we solder the end the XLR males are hanging off to a 1/4" or Bantam/TT patch bay.
The beauty of the snake, is its portability and value.
As for cable quality?.. They come in all kinds of flavors, from quite budget and decent, to the same multipair Mogami or fancier stuff we use when building multi million dollar rooms, and much of this cable is not as spendy as you would think.
Mogami 8 pair balanced in their super soft OFC copper is only $3.00 a foot.
Nice tip Joe!
Good idea, but it only works if you're using mic preamps for your microphones. If you want to use them in mixing, or as a audio effect it doesn't work. A patchbay is necessary.
Still, I do want one now you've shown how useful they are for recroding drums. We've always used long wires, and what the hell, it's getting me down.
Thanks for the video, Joe! I'm glad this idea is pretty common and others are doing it as well. For a while when I got stage snake for my home studio and mic inputs I wasn't sure if this was the most ideal way. But if it works it works! Thanks for the reassurance that I'm not the only one!
Great one. Spooky. I was wrestling with same issue. I bet many home recorders do too as they start to add equipment in their small rooms and can't easily get behind everything. One thing I did too was build my own rack boxes out of MDF and put them on my desk. Saved a lot of money. This got my gear off the floor under desk where connections were really inconvenient. Then I set the DIY desktop racks (2 4U boxes stacked) on top of a lazy susan so I can easily turn the racks to reach the backs.
Lazy Susan = Great idea!
Great tip. I have 2 16 channel snakes doing nothing in my garage. I'm going to use them now.
Great idea Joe! Thanks for the tip!
I've been doing this for years, the sends are set up for head phone cues up to 4 mix's & if you do drums it's a no brainer. Get a 16 x 4 you'll use those inputs quick w/drums.
I will probably end up doing this. Fantastic tip, buddy! :)
Dead on Joe. When I built my drum room in the garage I needed a way to practice with mics on the kit, snake solved it perfectly. Then I just drag the snake to the living room when I need to set up and track for a song in there. It's also labelled to my different pres. This is a huge tip for home studio people.
I use snakes/looms where-ever possible; saves running back and forth between gear; both studio and live sound. Have done so for decades. Like all gear there's cheap crappy ones and good ones for moderately more money. I started off making my own. Was cheapest option. But with the global reach of the interwebs, its now more cost effective to buy assembled looms/snakes. Thanks for spreading this idea around with this video.
+Mal Cooper very cool you built your own
Purchasing my snake was one of the best investments I have made. It helps so much in my house and when I have a recording gig I can take it out and it's now part of my mobile rig.
Can we connect our mics to our interfaces and route them to different mic pre-amps?
Good idea for extending the mic inputs of course. But how would you easily now patch in other external hardware gear, such as compressors and such? Maybe another small snake would do for "other" dedicated hardware and have some of those TRS connections put to use for going in/out to the preamps and the same for other gear you might use while tracking. Essentially then, you'd have a mobile patch bay! THX Joe... good ideas.
dude i totally do the same thing, its a great low budget work flow. Nice one.
Awesome tip. My mystery has been solved!
Hy I have a question for you: Does it make sense to invest in a balanced cabel for my In ear monitors? I own the Stage 5, its a custom made monitor from Rhines Custom monitors in German. Graet stuff. I run them from a Hifiman 901 music player. Balanced cabels for iem Headphones tend to be really expensive, so i am wondering if the possible benfits of balanced cabels can justify the investment. Please let me know what you thing about this topic.
I'll do that and I'll paint it like the Ghost Busters trap thing
If I ever get a studio again, I'm going to make it all virtual.
1) A interface that accepts 2 guitar inputs & MIDI (In, Out, Thru)
2) electronic drum kit with MIDI OUT to trigger any virtual drum sounds.
3) Speakers/Monitors
4) A wall mounted TV as a Display monitor for viewing my DAW software.
That's about it, other than software.
I'm setting up a home studio and I'll build a recording booth. Do you think that this equipment works well as a patch bay substitute for booth inputs/outputs? Sorry about my ignorance but I have a question that may sound a bit stupid: What if I have to connect a microphone that needs phantom power and this microphone is inside the booth? I've been checking your videos a lot lately and today I was doing some searching on booths/patch bay and seems that by fate your video came across. Man, you cover everything, is amazing how much content you talk about. Through your very spontaneous, clear and straight away method of explanation you ended up with what is in my opinion the best audio channel in youtube! Thanks man, you deserve good things!
Yep, this will pass phantom power. 😊
Thanks Joe, heading to your website.
So just cable snakes with boxes on the end?
Nice vid man... Here´s and idea for a future vid: Drum recording session! :) Cheers...
They used those mostly in live rooms as an alternative to a wall plate
Great idea thanks!!!
Thanks for sharing this great idea. This is the perfect solution for the home studio owner who may be recording in different rooms. Just not having to deal with plugging in the back of the board several times a session makes it well worth the investment.
Where and how are upload 3rd party instruments (addictive drums) supposed to be uploaded from? Program folder? Vst folder? X86 folder? Thanks
wrong country
Go with the PATCHBAY!!! MUCH MORE VERSATILE & NOT ALL THAT EXPENSIVE.... THE BEHRINGER PATCHBAY PX 300O IS A SOLID EASY TO USE TOOL... VERY FLEXIBLE PLUS THE SWITCHES MAKE IT SO EASY TO USE & CHANGE SETUPS ...YOU WILL NEVER REGRET IT BUT WONDERED WHY IT TOOK YOU SO LONG.
Nice one!
"blah blah blah... It works." 'nuff said. :D
I do this Simple genius. having worked with patchbays I think half the time they're more of a mind spank than hands and knees/telephone light business Necessity being the mother of invention. Top job. Better than listening to moaning trainspotters gripe about inconsequential bollocks. The set up is about money in the end. I'd like a Numann mic, let alone the rest. The adventure, and evolving creative process makes the magic. Otherwise, it's just an office job.
Is this not just what snakes are for? Is there a difference that I'm missing? I'm not trying to be a jerk I'd really like to know if I'm missing something, I've been looking at buying a patch bay
A snake is cheaper than a patchbay. That’s all.
In presonus studio one 2
So you actually don't use a pb?
Nope!
just get a 2nd mixer. long quality cables to mixer 1 and you dont have to worry about crappy snake cables.
It's working for me just fine.
Great Idea. This is a real hack
kick ass man!!
:)
It seems to me like a half measure to be honest.
Longer cabling is not significantly more expensive if you solder it up yourself, it's the connectors that cost the most if you want quality and adding a snake means twice as many connectors while the cabling in the snakes is the same as if you used installation cabling without all that shielding and flexible rubber around it to make it last a long time used in regular balanced or starquad cabling.
If you are satisfied by installation cabling as far as shielding and flexibility goes (and you must be if you are satisfied with a snake like this which is the same stuff inside) then installation cabling from the same quality manufacturer of your choice can be as much as 3 times cheaper than cabling that is expected to be constantly abused, per 100m or 300m roll (probably other brackets for the imperial measurements over there in the US)
Also, It is cheaper to have 10x 20m mic cables than 1x 15m snake and then 10x5m cabling to go out from that snake into your microphones. The snake option means twice as many connectors and extra electrical resistance and contact corrosion and other such issues. You will be running deoxit on both your mic cables and those snake connectors in a couple of years.
The only reason the snake solution seems cheaper to you is because you have a cheap snake and then probably more expensive mic cabling from back in the day but if you are introducing a cheap element into your signal chain then you might as well have it all cheap for the same money straight to your mic and keep your older cabling to use on shorter runs.
The most economical thing one can do is to get cabling on a large roll and then get connectors bulk then keep that in storage and only make the cabling you need for a particular session and slowly build up your inventory of finished cabling.
You don't have to run to the store and pay exorbitant prices - you grab the soldering gun and crack open a beer the day before the session and make what you need for a fraction of the cost and maintaining high quality throughout your whole signal chain.
A 100m roll of high quality cabling is probably about 150-350 dollars depending on which sensible product you prefer, cheap stuff is 50-100 dollars. High quality installation cabling can be had for similar price to cheap regular cabling and in that snake you at best will get cheap installation cabling type of stuff and a cheap aluminium box to hold cheap connectors unless they are expensive connectors in which case it will be reflected in the price of the snake - there is no magic solution here, you have to pay for the parts wether you make it yourself or let redco make it.
Redco is a good company but they are not cheap so for a short specialist loom it might be a good choice but for simple soldering like making single mic cables it's a waste of money imho and again if you want long cables, buy large rolls and save a lot of money. Even a dollar of a difference per 1m of cable is a 100 dollars for a 100m roll.
Like stage mic stands, stage cabling solutions do not really work all that well in the studio - you are wasting space, signal quality and end up with extra crosstalk and other issues, some which might come up as your connectors age.
If that snake develops some sort of mechanical problem then all the strands are worthless unless you plan on stripping it all out to salvage the good ones.
If you want a patchbay for outboard, make it yourself by using installation cabling that terminate into female installation connectors (the ones that can be screwed into a rack plate) and that way you will cut out the need to patch everything in the back and on the front of patchbay since you are already sorted back there, it's just a matter of getting it done on the front.
You can also mix and match any type of connector that way and have XLR, jack, phono, whatever all near each other with custom made spaces for labelling and so on.
A patchbay that has similar qualities would cost a bank and still require twice as many patch cables to make it work.
I can run about 60 line inputs at the same time on my A/D but that does not mean I have all that cabling at the ready all the time, if I need more I just solder more up.
The bane of short cabling that can't reach is of those who refuse to get a 30 dollar solder gun and a 1kg roll of good old timey lead filled solder in all it's polluting goodness for an extra 30 dollars that will last you years and years of getting high on fumes and getting perfect studio cabling ;)
If you are spending big for all that other crap and getting preamps with say a better transformer in them then it seems silly to me to not just have a few rolls of the cabling you need and a whole box of connectors so that you can solder up any kind of line, mic or high-z combination needed.
I recently made my self a whole web of hi-z cabling and made platforms for all of my guitar gear on different heights so that I don't have to crawl on the floor when I experiment with my signal chain.
But for those of us who don't know how to use a soldering iron and have no interest in creating our own cables, a snake is a great option.
There are standards, in the studio and on the stage - your solution falls below studio standards.
Is the home recording movement about pretending that we are doing things right or actually doing things right just on a smaller scale, being smart, economical and putting in effort instead of wads of cash and scaling with our needs instead of investing millions upfront?
Instead of a patchbay you just need to terminate your outboard at a wall panel and mount that in your rack - that is a solution for a home recordist trying to save money on a patchbay using readily available parts.
Your solution is no solution at all - you just took a stage device and told people to use that in their studios instead of what should be used instead. That snake does not solve the same problems a patchbay does either - all it does is makes setting up mikes on the stage easier by having a box there with you rather than by the board.
If you want a similar studio solution, look into preamp satellites or maybe even a sidecar right there by the drums - something that can improve quality rather than diminish it like the snake.
You say no wads of cash, I say effort. You say no effort I give up. Maybe watching a sitcom about sound engineering is a better choice for someone who has neither money nor ability nor can exert effort of any sort.
You obviously can do whatever you want but I simply disagree with your advice as being the correct thing to do in the studio.
It is miss-leading which is why I wanted to chime in - your "solution" also does not fit economically other parts of your own home studio. That rockwool there din't get framed and got hang up there by itself - yet you still have it, soldering is no different.
Borys Pomianek Eh...you're probably right. But just because there are better and cheaper options doesn't mean mine falls below "standards." I've found that a lot of times when people get super obsessive about stuff like "standards," they're not actually making much music. Whereas using this snake I've been recording some incredible stuff.
HomeStudioCorner I've been making some incredible stuff with a clothes hanger, some of them include hanging my clothes, hanging other peoples clothes, getting my car keys from out of tight spots where my hand won't fit...
Just because you take time to have the proper tool for the right job does not mean you are obsessed, it just means you are following the "rules of the art" so to speak.
The point of wiring is not only to get signal from one device to the other, it has to do so reliably and you have to be able to trust it so that you ultimately can go beyond worrying about gear and just create.
It's the same about studying music regularly - so that when you do get a chance to create you can go beyond the physical constraints and do your job as an artist effectively, especially with other people around making it difficult.
In your other video I checked you mentioned amp buzz - that amp buzz can be due to lights but might as well be due to your signal ground being messed up for any number of reasons, maybe the casing of a device like that snake is connected to signal ground and then the casing is not properly grounded or maybe grounded to a different phase in the building or any number of mystical reasons why all of us still have issues with hums now and then.
The buzz can even be on a line you have not even armed up in your DAW but the crosstalk means you are getting some of that buzz on your other line in the snake and then have some sort of dynamics processor that is making the situation worse when the signal is lower.
Doing wiring properly I think is very important - a ton more important than getting just the right monitors or picking the right eq.
There is reason in respecting standards since we want to make records right?
I can make music with pots and pans but I need properly installed cabling so that I can trust my gear to do it for me when the time comes.
If you had a punk studio I would not raise this subject at all but you have all these nice pieces of hardware and took the time to arrange everything and then you argue that "soldering, meh".
I understand that it's possible to do all kinds of in the box wizzardry, but again that is effort - effort that can be spent on other more important elements of the setup or the ever so hated soldering.
There are people who are really new to all of this and they might think that they could never solder, that studio quality cabling costs thousands and then they go and buy monster cables and are unhappy, stuff breaks, it's to short, too long etc.
Sound Engineering in my opinion should start with getting the signal from point A to B. People are doing sidechain processing and can't figure out the different impedance levels used in their gear and that is why they don't progress ultimately because they always got that hum, that one thing always sound thin and so on.
So just my big jar of cents - peace.
Borys Pomianek You're making great points. Wiring is important. But I just know from interacting with thousands of people that a lot of them are easily distracted by doing things super properly vs actually making music. The snake is a great solution for me.
"You haven't checked the website in a while"
Oh god, he sees right through me O_O
JOE.... WHERE ARE ALL THESE RACES YOU ARE ALWAYS OFF TO????
Oops #5 MIDI keyboard.
...
I wished it was this simple. You should change the title to hobo patch bays for studios one just a couple mics. No way this shit is replacing a real patch bay. Why do you think they didn’t do this from the beginning ? Because this is far from a problem solver. The gear I got requires more then 16 xlrs and 4 returns. Very misleading video.
Sorry to disappoint!