dSnake problems

[RB]

Hi guys,

I have a GLD80 for 6 months now and luckilly I didn’t experience any of these issues at the time beeing and I have used the console at high temperatures, moisture, near the sea…
But I have had one problem… Sometimes I can hear a hiss when I unmute a channel. I have tried to change the cables and everything at that channel, but them the hiss switches to another channel. 2 times recently I have used the small black ethernet cable that came with my AR audio rack and didn’t have that problem.
Can this be a problem with my dSnake CAT 5 cable that I have purchased with my console?

[Stix]

Very unlikely i would think – Its digital signal cable which does not induce hiss noise. Have you checked if you have a pad turned on on the noisy channels and the gain then set to high to compensate? PAD should always be off unless you can’t reduce the gain enough for that channel.

[BobWitte]

Very slight chance of a Possible grounding issue? Are the AR’s and GLD on the same power source? Usually though, this would result in 60Hz related “hum” and not “hiss”. And this still would be an analog issue with respect to the instrument and its power and the AR and then the GLD – which I believe, with the shielded Cat cable connects the frame grounds via the “cable” whereas a non shielded CAT cable would not…..

Not 100% sure about the above…..

[TJCornish]

The A>D conversion happens in the stagebox, so ground loops (in the conventional analog sense of a hum) cannot happen between the surface and the stagebox. I would look at the pad setting, as suggested above.

[BobWitte]

I do understand where the A/D and D/A conversions take place. However, the power ground for the AR and the power ground of the GLD can still be an issue since the shield of the CAT5E cable (if shielded) will connect the two grounds (which could be 200 feet apart worst case)). Then it also depends on the power source for any instruments….. Highly unlikely this is an issue as it is minimized with the AR’s close to the stage. But transformer isolated DI’s are still needed to eliminate ground loops between the instrument and the AR’s. Again, RB stated HISS not Hum, so the PAD and gain setting are 99% more likely an issue. But IF the only change is truly the ethernet cable……

[RB]

Thank You guys for the replies…
Is it possible that the CAT5 cable got damaged somehow, the Neutrik connector or the cable itself? Although I have never used it without the cross cable protection…
I have had this problem on the mics and the DI’s… The mic at the point was Senheiser MD421U and I am using Klark Tehnik DI’s…
I usually set both the stage box and the console on the R phase of my power distribution…

The pad mistake is not the case for sure cause I hear it and I always notice when I need to much gain especially on DI’s and vocals…

[TJCornish]

I do understand where the A/D and D/A conversions take place. However, the power ground for the AR and the power ground of the GLD can still be an issue since the shield of the CAT5E cable (if shielded) will connect the two grounds (which could be 200 feet apart worst case)). Then it also depends on the power source for any instruments….. Highly unlikely this is an issue as it is minimized with the AR’s close to the stage. But transformer isolated DI’s are still needed to eliminate ground loops between the instrument and the AR’s. Again, RB stated HISS not Hum, so the PAD and gain setting are 99% more likely an issue. But IF the only change is truly the ethernet cable……

The stagebox has an earth ground connection, and is therefore grounded to stage power, so there’s really no chance of a classic ground-loop issue here due to the snake cable shielding. The surface being on separate power is irrelevant. This is a significant benefit of a digital snake system, not to mention eliminating several thousand feet of analog snake cabling and associated EMI.

[GCumbee]

One thing I have noticed about GLD that I am sure you guys have too is the pres have a LOT of gain. When I first started testing one back in Sept that was one of the first things I heard. Then this past weekend using them for the first time on a live TV show I had some problems with high gain. I had instruments with DI’s or miced that I had the pad in and the trim all the way down and they were still hot. I know many were not sending me line level and in a few cases I was bordering on not being able to get them down enough. I was on the iso split of a 3 way splitter so there was a little insertion loss through that transformer. Compared to analog consoles I have used for years these seemed to have a little too much gain if you ask me…Of course if we were using ribbon mics for everything that might be OK.

FTR: I have not noticed the problems mentioned here…I made up some long shielded Ethercon cables and used the supplied CAT5 Purple cables for jumpers…

[RB]

In my experience I only have to use a lot of gain for the drums, kick drum (audix D6), snare drum (sm 57) and toms (senheiser e 604)… All the others sound fine at maximum 6 lines of gain, which is at the half of the little screen… If any signal is to high, the pad button helps a lot… And there is always the pad button on the DI box or the condenser mic, if there is any…

[Author]

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