Hybrid Cable. Mains + 4 Data + 8 Audio: Join the 3K Club?

[Mark Payne]

"The Big Boys"

 

Interesting view. Define how you measure Big (wanna take the Companies House challenge? only costs you about £1.50 a go)......

 

Anyway yes good point. We have floated the idea to Wigwam Skan and Adlib for starters.

 

PM5D vs Venue? We are in the business of stocking what people want to hire. We have it all as far as it makes sense to us.... If we see a revenue stream that can make money, we buy it. We did, so its here ;-)

 

Cheers

 

Mark

 

And yes we will tape all this up if we cannot find a way of doing the pretty one cable thing.

 

 

AWG 24 is not made of glass! Its made of copper!

And when its in that VDM with all its mates its not going anywhere.

 

HAHA. Love it!

 

This cable sounds interesting. If only yamaha had put some AES outputs on the stageboxes! Or as options.

 

The Pro6 ethernet tunnel is a good solution for regular network control of dsp etc through their AES50 system. Also the tie line system on it is well thought out.

 

Personally I'd just loom up an 8 way multi, 8 way cat 5 and your Power. Lighting now increasingly is using Artnet or similar due to the huge numbers of universes required, so an extra couple of lines for this is worth considering if your going to play together. You could still multipin the two 8ways and have rackmount breakout pannels at either end. It would also allow you to flip flop your yamahas or just have two out front for big channel counts from the same multi.

 

I would use 4mm2 or even 6mm2 TRS on a 100m run though. Keep the voltage from dropping and let you draw the 16amps if you need it. 4mm2 fits into 16a ceeforms but for 6mm2 it obviously gonna have to be a 32a ceeform. I've used jumpers to keep it at 16a ceeform each end but just to take advantage of the thicker copper.

 

As you say you not so worried about weight or bulk so looming the individual items seems best to me. I gues you'd be looking at no more than 500m of the cable so getting another 2500m worth of orders might be tricky. Have you tried some of the big boys to see if they are interested?

 

I came to you PM5D class a while back and remember talking to you about the Digidesign Desks. What made you take the plunge over just getting another 5D? Sorry OT! PM.

 

Keep pushing boudaries.

 

 

A concurrent post has been automatically merged from this point on.

 

Sorry I get you

 

Yes we considered going fibre for this. It is indeed an easy win to convert 802.3 Layer 1 + 2 network devices into fibre media using stuff that is already about. We just dont want to pull fibre multis for audio at this time.

 

Too many bad experiences with our DVI over fibre solutions from the AV side. We have no inhouse repair for this and I hate stuff I cannot fix. Sorry... not progressive enough!

 

M

 

 

 

you overlooked the first point in what I said. any data can theoretically be encapsulated into a higher bandwidth core, most likely at this point to be fibre. some solutions already facilitate ethernet over a proprietary link, and so in theory the same could be done for multiplexing many data lines down a single fibre optic link. how on earth do you think BT manage? ;)

 

sometimes multiplexing is better than multicore.

[waster]

SSE, Wigwam, Britrow etc.

 

Companies that have the mega stocks of equipment who would be more likely than the smaller players (not saying yourselves) to buy into the 3k Club to have a play with it and see how it works out. I'm just speculating here, I freelance for companies much further down the list. But also work venues and see and use the kit coming thorugh from the big players. Geekily I am always interested to see the line systems.

 

Edit: Plus the companies you already have mentioned etc...

[ianl]

my origonal response was wow , what a good idea.

 

however thinking about it, I'm too am put off by the 2.5mm mains, I would want to see 6mm mains on a 100m multi as the voltage drop would be out of regs with 2.5.

 

have you considered the option of having a "data and audio" cable made and then everyone can tape their favorite mains able to it. this would also possibly be neater with the multipin/ceeform. just wondering if this would interest more people and reduce the cost and therefore interest even more people?

[Dj Dunc]

Just curious as to the cost of such an investment (by the metre? plus cost for termination) Is it still cheaper to go down the cables+tape option or explore this multicore option? I can see the use in the environment in which I work where its a pig to get power to the mix position, and then run a multicore in for sound, and then video lines, where we have one day for a show fit up, and it would be ideal for a fast pack system compared to lugging around a loom which can get tatty very easy.

 

However if it costs a lot more, then the cost v/s time and neatness and ease saving is pointless, in the sub 50m runs. (personally I would be interested in say a 20-30m run.)

 

many thanks

[Mark Payne]

Hi Ian

 

Hmm, Take a Yamaha PW800 PSU (for 5D and M7). Maximum power is 1KW. Say 5A worst case.

Ok we use two but this is a load share so its still the same answer.

 

Now 2.5mm copper is about 8 Ohms per Km worst case. 0.8Ohms per 100M

 

Voltage drop = 0.8 * 5 = 4V.

Would a FOH position be worse tha twice as bad as this? Ever? Say 10V absolute worst case once I have powered up the world and his wife. Do I care? Is it that bad really?

 

Ok I am not going to run dimmers or big switched mode power amps on the end of this! This is control mains.

 

However, your comment about unbundling the mains from the package we will have to think about. We also saw a shorter on-stage distribution role for this cable and we like the mains in it for this reason also.

 

Cheers

 

Mark

 

 

my origonal response was wow , what a good idea.

 

however thinking about it, I'm too am put off by the 2.5mm mains, I would want to see 6mm mains on a 100m multi as the voltage drop would be out of regs with 2.5.

 

have you considered the option of having a "data and audio" cable made and then everyone can tape their favorite mains able to it. this would also possibly be neater with the multipin/ceeform. just wondering if this would interest more people and reduce the cost and therefore interest even more people?

[Heapsy]

Just curious as to the cost of such an investment (by the metre? plus cost for termination)

 

Looking at the question from another angle, how much would you be willing to pay per metre?

 

Mark

[Mark Payne]

Just curious as to the cost of such an investment (by the metre? plus cost for termination) Is it still cheaper to go down the cables+tape option or explore this multicore option? I can see the use in the environment in which I work where its a pig to get power to the mix position, and then run a multicore in for sound, and then video lines, where we have one day for a show fit up, and it would be ideal for a fast pack system compared to lugging around a loom which can get tatty very easy.

 

However if it costs a lot more, then the cost v/s time and neatness and ease saving is pointless, in the sub 50m runs. (personally I would be interested in say a 20-30m run.)

 

many thanks

 

About £12.50 + VAt perM budget for the cable spec we are discussing.

 

Termination is termination. The cost is more or less depending on your skill and in-house capability. The way we like to do things is going to be expensive in terms of termination cost but this has nothing to do with multicores or separates. It is what it is.

 

M

[brownie]

Hi Mark,

Im liking the sound of this idea,

Im also seeing the use of it as a dedicated lighting control multicore...

mains, 4x 5pin DMX (8 universe) plus ethernet for Artnet etc...

 

 

Ian

[ianl]

Hi Ian

 

Hmm, Take a Yamaha PW800 PSU (for 5D and M7). Maximum power is 1KW. Say 5A worst case.

Ok we use two but this is a load share so its still the same answer.

 

Now 2.5mm copper is about 8 Ohms per Km worst case. 0.8Ohms per 100M

 

Voltage drop = 0.8 * 5 = 4V.

Would a FOH position be worse tha twice as bad as this? Ever? Say 10V absolute worst case once I have powered up the world and his wife.

 

Mark

 

I was working on about 10A max current draw which using the voltage drop figures from BS 7671 gives 19v drop on 100m which is well outside their permisable value which from memory is 12v on a 230v supply

 

would having the mains in the centre also reduce its capacity due to heating or would it actualy improve it, too early for my brain

 

 

Do I care? Is it that bad really?

 

I guess it depends, presumably switch mode supplies would be quite happy. we use furman power distros in all our racks and they are quite fussy about voltage drop (ie they turn off)

[Mark Payne]

There is your problem then!

Take them right out for a start ;-)

 

 

I guess it depends, presumably switch mode supplies would be quite happy. we use furman power distros in all our racks and they are quite fussy about voltage drop (ie they turn off)

[Chappie]

I'm too am put off by the 2.5mm mains, I would want to see 6mm mains on a 100m multi

I've always run 2.5mm to FOH on our multis up 100m and have never (ever) had a problem with it. I really don't see the need for anything bigger.

[tjdjeffery]

Klotz had such interest in this cable that they have gone ahead and manufactured the cable. Its far more flexible than we had anticipated :-)

 

We have taken an intial delivery of 1000m to build into multi-core systems and a new stage box system and we are also currently looking at a number of connector options.

 

If anyone is interested then feel free to pop in and take a look, it really does open up some interesting possibilities.