Outboard Wiring Distance

[soundtrack2life]

I have run out of space in my racks at my mix position and just about filled up my wall rack. However I have room behind my mix position for 2 table high racks on either side of the couch. I want to start making my own compressors / pre's along with some high end gear and I am considering mounting them there. In order to do this I would have to run an aproxx 23' - 25' cable length to my pacth bay. The big thing that concerns me is that some things would be unbalanced. Is this to long of a run. I always see pictures of racks behind the mix position but to accomplish this does / should everything have to be balance?
Joe

 

[Chuck78]

I have seen unblanced run farther than that and have no problems. So I would say you wouldnt have a problem, but some people will probably tell you that you can't.

I work for a live production company and some of the gear, ie. tape deck (some people still use them :shock: ) are unbalanced and have cabling on them about that long. We also do installs in churches and so forth and most of that stuff is consumer products and I have ran hundreds of feet before.

Now if you have a radio or tv station close by to you you may have problem if not I would say you will be just fine for 25'.

 

[PRR]

> does / should everything have to be balance?

Try it and see. Put some unbalanced gear over there on a chair, run a long cable back to the patchbay, and run some signal and silence.

It varies a LOT. Some places in NYC, you could not get away with a few feet. Most of the places I hang, 100-foot line-level lines are no problem as long as I don't drape them over large transformers or motors.

If it seems to work, leave it "live" to a speaker and check it over the course of a day. You might find it is OK except when your neighbor uses the blender, or something odd like that.

 

[adrianh]

Try it just as PRR said!

The cable capactance will make your high freq drop a little.
But you should get by with 100' using prosumer gear.

PRR suggestion to let it run a day is a very good one.

I used over 4 miles of wire in my studio!
Run that wire and have fun.