multicore to speaker stack

[Rob_Beech]

My speaker multi's Soca to a stage box with 8 NL4's on it use 18 core 2.5mm cable. (2 cores aren't used). I don't use them with anything at the moment, as I don't have any panel connectors on my amp racks to use them with so they're sat in the unit unused. But it does show that the cable is available.

It wasn't alot of money.

 

I bought them off ebay as box to box with NL2's for next to nothing. they're 10m each. and I paid about £40 for the pair.

I took the box off one end of each and swapped the nl2's for nl4 on the other end and away you go.

 

So do look around for bargains like this. if you only need the cable, don't be afraid to buy it with alsorts of weird and wonderful ends on it that you can chop off, you never know they might be useful for something else, or might sell. The boxes I took off I've put XLR's on and with the use of some 12 pair multicore and a step drill for 4 more holes, made 2 10m 12 way sub multi's.

[The Boogie Man]

That's kinda the way I tend to think most of the time :) The last post about the stage boxes was me going hmmm where is there cable and breakout in one place, then I remembered the cable diameter. ;) Doh!

[Jaysound]

Interesting reading here. I have a great mental image of you turning up to gigs with Ceeform 16 amp distro covering the back of your cabs, maybe even 32's on the bins.

 

First, forget Soca and any lampy stuff, its way out of what you should spend as in investment in your PA, considering component cost.

 

Neutrik NL4, or at a push NL8, is 100% the way to go here. NL8 may be stretching things a bit as 8x 2.5mm cable may also be too costly. I'd go with a couple of runs of colour coded (red tape on the bass ends or whatever) 4x 2.5mm OFC with NL4's per stack, with some clever internal wiring and loop through cables. If you're feeling flush, make a 19" breakout panel on the back of your rack. Canford, Studiospares or whoever would sell you the bits.

 

By the sound of things you entire set up could do with a bit of a re-jig with regard to amp loadings and overall efficiency, and the pics are helping us to come up with ideas - any chance of one of the back of your boxes and maybe the front and back of your rack/racks?

 

 

(Edited for my inability to spell Neutrik...)

[The Boogie Man]

Hi Jay, Welcome to the Blue room.

 

All comments from everyone are always helpfull for keeping the old grey cells going, but could I suggest maybe a quick re-read of the whole thread.

 

Nl8's have been suggested, and discounted, at least 14 core is required. A breakout box for the amp Rack, what amp rack. The system is modular.

 

I'm not quite certain that the rig needs a re jig as the load from each amp is exactly what each driver wants to see. And after a lot of work the sound from the stacks is now what I built it to be. Transparent.

 

Sorry to be negative.

 

Baz

[bruce]

Nl8's have been suggested, and discounted, at least 14 core is required.

 

discounted, despite them being possibly the best all-round answer. B-)

 

The big advantage of using NL8s - or even NL4s - is that it's a standard connector in this environment. You can buy the cables off-the-shelf, or hire them, if you need a spare in a hurry, or need an extra-long one for a particular gig. If you have a custom cable, and one gets damaged or lost, you're stuffed...

 

It also means that the cables are manageable - as someone said earlier, if you go for a big multicore speaker cable, it ends up about the size of a fire hose, heavy and not very manageable. That's fine if you have a crew to set up, less so if you're shifting the gear yourself. Personally, I'd run in a couple of more manageable cables.

 

 

Also, looking back at the original post, you mention that you're using looms of jack connectors at the moment. This suggests that it's not a particularly high-current environment, using multiple lower-powered amps and speakers. Moving from a jack-based environment to a top-end cabling system, while not changing any other components, may be overkill.

 

Obviously I don't know the details of all your speakers and amps, but before spending several hundred pounds on cables and connectors (12-core 2.5mm is about 4 pounds per meter, the 14+ core you want will be higher) it may be worth stepping back and seeing if your setup would be better served by rationalising in other ways.

[The Boogie Man]

Hi Bruce,

 

Thanks for input, I was talking about nl8 cable and connectors to breakout being dicounted. I will be having nl4 connectors on the end ( they're already on the amp outs )

The whole idea of a multicore was that if you run a modular system it may use anything between 2 core and 16 core. At present I'm taking in 8 individual 2 core taped together. So it has to go in if I need 2 core or 16. Yes as suggested it can be done with 2 nl8 cables which can be used together or alone.

But I've just been looking at 16 core 2.5mm cable ( I take your point on it being a low voltage system, no need for 4mm ) my tame sparky bought to my warehouse and it's only 40mm od ( not quite a fire hose ).

So the old 2.5mm cables can be split up, left in the wagon for small gigs and the multicore cable can have eight speakons on each end for the full gigs. As for multicore being expensive, I conceed it is, but as I said in an earlier post I've a "tame" sparky. Read between the lines.

[Jaysound]

Hi Jay, Welcome to the Blue room.

 

All comments from everyone are always helpfull for keeping the old grey cells going, but could I suggest maybe a quick re-read of the whole thread.

 

Nl8's have been suggested, and discounted, at least 14 core is required. A breakout box for the amp Rack, what amp rack. The system is modular.

 

I'm not quite certain that the rig needs a re jig as the load from each amp is exactly what each driver wants to see. And after a lot of work the sound from the stacks is now what I built it to be. Transparent.

 

Sorry to be negative.

 

Baz

 

Thanks for the welcome Baz! I hope I didn't come across as negative or arsey myself.

 

I did read the thread through, but I suppose I was questioning the fundamentals of this project, and suggesting a modular system being tied down by one single, massively heavy cable, of finite length, with non-standard termination, and an inherant propencity to fail due to over complication, would not be the way to go, and would indeed be a contradiction in terms. If you are trying to move away from a rats nest of jack ended speaker cables taped together, I would suggest that a single 14+ core cable with a mass of speakon plugs on the end is not really moving forwards very much. I wouldn't like to see anybody in a rush in a dark club plug their sub speaker cable into their VHF. Speaker box input panels, loop through cables and intelligent multicore wiring make for a fast and safe set up.

 

I was trying to put the thought forward that we need a little more info on your racks and stacks. If you have no racks, where do the amps live? Is it a touring system? If you have no racks, how do you cart your kit around? Do you have to patch all the signals in from your management system/crossover every gig? I like to see racks with no more than 3 or 4 amps in, breakout panels for speaker feeds, and inputs for proper power. How many speaker stacks do you have like the one shown in your earlier photo? What's in those cabs?

[The Boogie Man]

Hi Jay,

 

As per my last post. The termiation of the cable at both ends was always going to be nl4.

Connecting the fan to the cabs is always going to be via individual line on the end of a fan as the cabs are sometimes used idividually with seperate cables.

There's also no chance of them ever being connected wrong as I'm far to anal to ever let it happen. B-) I'll give you an idea of just how bad I am, the ends of the cables at present have coloured tape on them, not one piece, but seven for the bottom cab, then six, five etc. Under each piece of tape is a little lump ( I think it was tiny bits of off cut wire sleave) so even in pitch black, rub a finger over the cable and I know which one it is. Sad I know.

 

The amps live in individual 2u boxes, again for the same reason I stated earlier, sometimes I use 1 amp sometimes all seven.

So a simple multicore or individual cables from them is the simplest way to do it, as boxes that gather and use single outlets are just more boxes. ( I've got various amp racks in the warehouse, you just get sick of trying to carry them upstairs )

[Jaysound]

Gotcha, I see now. I have a couple of long lengths of nice flexible 6x 4mm that I purchased from SSE 2 or 3 years ago with fans of NL4's on the end, which I use for my centre sub block. Very handy and that, but cost far too much and are an arse to coil.

 

I'd love to get the name and type of the stuff you decide to use in the end, as it may come in handy.

[Rob_Beech]

Labelled up properly then it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

 

The only issue I see is fault finding. If you have a core go down in the middle of the cable (rare but it happens), then you can get round it by running one o your current separate cables with it for that gig. However, if a core has broken in the middle of a 20m run of 14 or 16 core 2.5mm speaker cable. That's a massive waste of cable, if you're using all the cores the cables useless for that application. I'd suggest getting one with a couple of spare cores in it, eg if you need 14 cores (7 pairs) then get 16 core. You can even terminate the spare pair for a quick change.

 

As for the fire hose. Ok so it's often not THAT thick, though I was referring to your suggestion of the taping together of multiple leads and putting them in some form of sleeve/heatshrink/braiding.

 

The trouble is, if you want 20m cables which you might, the size of the overall things will be large, very large, and very heavy too, as I'm sure you'll know with your current setup. 20metres of 16x2.5 with 8 speakons on each end will weigh more than one of your amps (unless you're touring with CA18's in which case there is no wonder you don't want them all together in a rack). They'll also require a large flightcase to put them in, unless you want to carry them separately. Then again, if you flightcase them both together you'll add another 25kg for a flightcase and have a massively heavy box.

 

Just a few things to think of aside from the technical side, which should work without any problems.

[The Boogie Man]

Hi Rob, yes that thought about dead cable inside has been a niggle since I muted the idea of making a multicore.

It had crossed the junkyard I call my mind to stick with the taped cables I've got, change the ends from jack to speakon, but sleave it first.

As yet though nothing springs to mind as light and flexible, but keeps the cabling neat and clean.

Although maybe if it's only a cover for neatness then cloth, canvas?

More thought required.

 

Weight and size, How good are the speakon to speakon couplers? 2x 10mtr lenghts that can be coupled?

Maybe even a 5mtr one for when the amps are sat on side stage close to the one stack.

Means lots in the wagon, but only using whats needed for each venue.

 

Food for thought.

[bruce]

As yet though nothing springs to mind as light and flexible, but keeps the cabling neat and clean.

Although maybe if it's only a cover for neatness then cloth, canvas?

More thought required.

Polyester Braided sleeving - see http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/level5/module.j...=cpc/343056.xml

 

It's a loose-woven tube, which when "pushed together" opens up to about 2 or 3 times it's nominal diameter. You pass your cables down it, secure one end with tape or heatshrink, then "pull it tight" - it shrinks down, and then you secure the other end in the same way.

[Rob_Beech]

One way to combat this problem maybe to look at your amplifier situation.

 

Is there some way to practically have a number of amps (depending on what you require) behind each stack?

[The Boogie Man]

Cheers Bruce, as soon as I saw that I thought, I've seen this before, but where? Under the bonnet of my rally car. The electrics are covered in the stuff. Could be a neat solution.

 

Rob, I've been wondering around that idea for a while, even if only from a safetly point of veiw ( Ithought about having a board under the stack that the rachets went round, that the amps then sat on.) Would give the stack some more stability.

 

It will depend on my experiments with seperation. If I split the stack for vocal and guitar and it is cleaner then that will determine the amp configuration.

[phil dekked]

I`m gonna add another vote for soca? For what you seem to be needing it will do the job cheaply ( loadsa second-hand stuff is lurking out there) .

 

For my own stuff I run some soca runs with home made break-ins and outs, so I get a four way break out/in at either end with a bi-amped mid-top / bass and doubled up sub? I managed to get some cut-off second hand connectors and then just had the joy of soldering it all up....uck! Seems to work well and is colour co-ordinated and labelled so no excuses!

With other companies set ups I have come across most variations , the easiest being the Flash panel out with a fixed panel mount female soca for lows and highs and then bananas or speakons to the amps. One company has soca fan-outs to most configurations..( 1 x EP6 and 2 NL4 to run Flood or Res4 over 218`s) ( Nl8 for Wavefront) etc etc .

 

One niggle is the fact that 2.5mm sq is not enough to do over 20m of 2 ohm sub IMO. I did a bit of " fudging " to double up one connection on the break ins/ outs to make it a 5sq mm line for running 2 ohm subs. NCA have had a custom 16 x 4mm cable made up which lets them run a full system at 2 ohms on all channels...neat!

 

.p.