analog snake or alternative measures?

So, being a small provider there are two things that I am almost always running short on. The first is real estate in my cargo van; there are a whole host of reasons why I could justify moving up to a box truck, but far too many other reasons why I choose to stick with a cargo van (that will be a topic all of its own). The second item is cash to buy gear; as soon as the money comes in it seems to disappear back out the door to pay the bills and can leave a tight budget to spend on new gear that is needed.

I am a firm believer in the concept of growing a small service business by renting the equipment that you cannot afford to purchase right away until you come to a point where you can afford to purchase some of the items that you find yourself renting the most. This approach allows you to be much more flexible and aggressive in going after the bigger contracts that you could not approach if you were married to your in house inventory. By the time you factor in maintenance, storage and insurance costs of owning your own equipment the benefits of renting become quite obvious.

“How does this relate to a snake?” you might ask at this point. Well recently I have been taking on many different types of work and have been renting snakes on a per gig basis. I have found myself at a point where I need an (in-inventory) solution that would typically be covered by a conventional analog (copper) snake. The issue I am running into is choosing what type of snake I need to fit the jobs. If I was only operating sound for bands, then this would be a pretty straight forward process. How many sends? How many returns? About a 150’ ? SOLD!
The issue is that in a typical week of work, my snake needs can change dramatically from day to day and show to show. Here is where we run into the issue with the Van space and the budget; most frustrating!

I simply cannot afford to purchase and store/transport the different models of snakes that I would need to carry to satisfy all of my needs. To complicate matters, a simple approach of buying the biggest one I can afford and using it for everything does not appeal to me as I do quite a bit of work where a large multi-core cable would not be easy to conceal or protect adequately. So what is a small sound provider to do? My answer comes from the Yamaha digital mixing console that I have in my inventory. I use the 01V96v2 for most all of my work and it offers a nice work around for people in my situation.

I have decided instead of going with a conventional snake system, to go with a smaller snake system and a Tablet PC that will control the digital mixer and let me setup my mix position anywhere in the house via a wireless network. In order to make this work for me, I will be employing stage snakes that will allow me to get my mixer and FOH gear to a location that is both concealed and accessible should I need to get to it during the show for any reason. This will usually be backstage or just tucked in behind a speaker stack side-stage. The mixer is fairly small and with a black scrim I can make it and the rack it lives on top of blend into the scenery perfectly.

In the rack lives a Dell D-600 Laptop running Yamaha’s SM-2 Studio Manager software (to control the mixing board) and DBX Driveware to control the DriveRack 260 speaker processor. This will be connected to a wireless router that will allow my Tablet PC to connect wirelessly to the network from anywhere in the area running Remote Desktop to operate the software running on the PC in the rack. This will allow me to roam the room while I mix and will also eliminate the need for snakes of different lengths and sizes. Keeping the gear in an accessible location backstage is the key here as you still need to be able to run the show should something go wrong with the wireless technology.

At this point, if you have not already started writing a response about the cost involved, I would be very surprised! I will say that although the idea of buying two computers seems expensive, consider the following. All you need are two fairly capable computers. There is no audio processing going on here, just a bunch of control data going in and out. A laptop capable of running the aforementioned programs along with perhaps itunes or similar media player (remember that this one does not need wiFi...just an ethernet connection) is fairly easy to find on both eBay and Craigslist for under $500. I was also able to find my Tablet (a Toshiba M200) for under $400 online in excellent condition. I already owned the Dell, so this alternative was quite cost effective for me. I would guess that it would be fair to assume that anyone using this approach and therefore owning the digital console, already has a computer that they use with it for studio manager control in some manner.

I will be putting the finishing touches on this setup in the coming weeks and will post some pictures and details of the how-to and setup of it all. This is a concept that may sound challenging at first, but can be accomplished fairly easily and on a very reasonable budget when you consider the results you get.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments!