Rebuilding a studio: Adding Gear

Day two and three of the studio rebuild consisted mostly of placing the gear into the racks and wiring everything up after all the snakes and looms had been run and prepped. The layout of the outboard gear is crucial. By grouping similar gear together one can simplify the usage of looms and snakes. For example, by dedicating one rack to dynamics. A single snake can be dedicated to dynamics and run directly to the rack instead of stretching fan-outs between racks and running extensions and such. Also, it is very important to realize how much heat certain gear generates. Typically, any gear with tube based circuitry will generate a fair amount of heat, along with any high voltage speaker amplifiers. For this type of equipment is is crucial that there be at least 1U of space above for adequate ventilation. Heat can build up quickly and is most harmful to sensitive (and expensive) equipment.
A DL termination on a snake, DL connectors are unique in that they are "zero insertion force" connectors. Meaning that the pins do not wear out from frequent use.

A rack of pre-amps and processing. Notice the 1U spaces between some of the gear for ventilation and cooling.

There will be lots of wires, lots and lots of wires.

This is a fan-out, or sometimes just called a fan or breakout. This fan terminates a DL snake into 1/4" TRS connectors for connecting to outboard gear (In this case, for headphone monitor sends).

Ahh, gear.

Rebuilding a studio: Wiring the rack

I've been helping out in the studios at Ai to rebuild the racks of gear and simplify/tame the many snakes, looms, and rat nests of cable. Here are some pics from Day One, you see the many fans of cable have been lain out on the floor for more work room inside the rack. The ultimate goal here is to keep all of the looms out of the floor from in front of and from behind the rack. The solution? We run all the cable under the rack, bringing the DL looms out from under in the back to mate with the fannouts for connecting to the gear.