making the L6 Link go further then 50 ft.

[gapchurch]

Just curious if anybody has successfully made the m20d soundscape work beyond the recommended 50 ft. cable lengths for the L6 link ?  

[SiWatts69]

The 50ft "limit" is one which Line6 has set and is likely one within which they can assure us that the digital signals being carried can be guaranteed to arrive uncompromised. The general concensus is that it is a nominal limit and that in many situations, a quality, clean cable run in excess of 50ft would perform perfectly adequately.

 

What I would say, however, is that when attempting to run out beyond the recommendations, use the best quality aes/ebu cable you can acquire and top notch connectors to minimise your risks. Then test before putting yourself in a live situation.

 

DO NOT connect cables together to make longer runs.

 

I've never had need of a run in excess of 50ft so haven't tested.

[gapchurch]

yea I studied the issue of connecting cables together and as you pointed out its a bad idea. I am looking into a digital snake. I am surprised Line 6 haven't looked into incorporating this into their M20d soundscape. This would eliminate so many cable issues and would give greater cable lengths.

[SiWatts69]

Regarding a digital snake, I'd not waste your money. I'd guess you *could* use one if you are going to remotely locate the M20, closer to the first of your speakers (thus avoiding the 50ft limit) but whatever, you can't feed the L6Link into or through a digital snake.

You could run all your mics and inputs into one digi snake box, along the run and back out of a second digi snake box before feeding in to the M20d but it seems an awfully expensive route to take. Even the entry level digisnake box (the S16 for the X32) is more expensive than a plain L2m and you need two, plus the interconnect cable. Likely upwards of £1.5k (approx. $2k) though behringer gear may be cheaper than I think over the other side of the pond).

 

For the price of an L2m you could have a first run of 100ft just by hiding that L2m away and setting its gain all the way down. It would enumerate the digital signal enabling it to be fed on at full strength for the second run of 50ft. The M20d can "manage" up to 18 L6Linked cabinets. What might be interesting would be for Line6 to consider making a standalone enumerator that could eliminate this problem.

[dboomer]

yea I studied the issue of connecting cables together and as you pointed out its a bad idea. I am looking into a digital snake. I am surprised Line 6 haven't looked into incorporating this into their M20d soundscape. This would eliminate so many cable issues and would give greater cable lengths.

 

 

You can plug mic cables into the input for probably 1000 feet.  The limit is on the digital cable for L6 link.  We are pushing 8 channels of audio in a system that is really intended for only doing 2 channels so there becomes a tradeoff of distance for cable length.  What happens with distance is that eventually the little pulses that comprise the digital code being sent become too smeared and then become unreadable.

 

Now if someone would only invent lossless cable  ;)  ;)  ;)

[gapchurch]

dboomer  I was aware of the analogue connections having 1000 ft lengths so its not a problem . Just like the idea of sending the  all the mics and speakers down a cat 6  or fiber optic cable. I am surprised you guys didn't  considered a cat 6 or fiber optic Link. I work with the stuff all the time and when it works its the best of the best, nothing affects it except really tight bends . I am considering a product (cant remember the name) that takes any signal and converts to optical light and then converts it back to what ever the signal that was feed into the device. I've used the product to feed dial tone up to 4 miles without a hitch. I think if can find a couple of the devices it would work here thus eliminating the 50 ft. limitations. I did talk to Canare and they suggested stepping down the 110 omh cable to 75 ohms and then vice versa (using some  baluns that Canare makes), not sure if that would work , they claimed it would work up to 300 ft. Sometimes these things work for awhile and then they begin to attenuate and drop the signal.  Maybe its worth a shot ??? Siwatts69 your idea sounds interesting I'll have to look into it. The behringer digital snake was the one I was actually looking at, the cool thing about their set up is you only need 1 s16 and the cat 6 feeds right into their mixer, very nice concept to alleviate a huge 16 port snake. Your right about the pricing if I were to use it for the M20d its $899 x 2 plus the cables. Well I think we may try  the fiber optic route.

[SiWatts69]

Just intrigued...

 

The main point of the M20d it is an "on stage" mixer, aimed at bands who do their own sound. If they do have a sound guy, the commonest control method is the iPad app which has all the controls of the M20d EXCEPT the two hardware mute buttons (mute mics / mute all). Thus, with the iPad and WiFi there's no real need for a two way (sends and returns) snake. I could understand your desire for a snake to get the mic/line signals to the M20d if you were positioning the M20 nearer to the first speaker to alleviate the 50ft limit, and I could understand you wanting an L6Link compatible snake if the desk were on stage and the first speaker were more than 50ft away, but I'm struggling with the need for sending the mics/lines to the M20 and then returning the main outs back to stage. I might be missing something though so forgive my ineptitude!

[gapchurch]

I agree with you about the on stage mixer concept but as a church it doesn't work for us. We prefer a sound guy at the back  of the church, just have to figure out how to get the L6 Link to go beyond 50 ft. We looked at the Ipad concept but not sure we want to go down that route. someone forgets the ipad for church , we lose the wireless signal we forget to charge the ipad battery etc etc etc. just not a big fan of that concept. We have to set up every service as its not our building so the ipad is one more piece that can mess up our service. We prefer someone running the m20d then using a ipad.

[dboomer]

So you can do al of that.  You just cannot use L6 link but you can use regular analog connections.

[SiWatts69]

Not that I want to put a dampener on anything, but I'd imagine the ruggedness of optical links (and particularly the cables) to be less than ideal for a "live touring" situation such as yours where the cabling isn't installed.

 

As don says, if you're willing to gorego the benefits of L6Link, just run out a standard 18/6 multicore or, as you've considered, use the Behringer S16 (x2)

 

Out of interest, what is the distance you need to accomplish for the first run?

[SiWatts69]

The behringer digital snake was the one I was actually looking at, the cool thing about their set up is you only need 1 s16 and the cat 6 feeds right into their mixer, very nice concept to alleviate a huge 16 port snake. Your right about the pricing if I were to use it for the M20d its $899 x 2 plus the cables. Well I think we may try  the fiber optic route.

Pretty much all the production quality digital desks now have some form of digital snake system, whether it be Yamaha, A&H, Studiocraft. The Behringer is simply a more affordable "copy" as is their way. As you say though, the concept of digitally converting at the stage box and building the mic pre's into the stagebox too then transmitting down a single cat5 "dSnake" cable is very appealing. But we're talking top flight gear for touring companies, not gigging band gear which is where the M20 is aimed fair and square. As is often the case, manufacturers research a target market and make their equipment accordingly. For the money the M20 costs, I firmly believe we get a hell of a lot of bang for our bucks!