Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back to the channel. For this episode I thought we would talk about cable management for a neat, clean, safe and efficient stage. A clean stage not only looks better for performers and the audience, but also reads better on camera. And importantly, it's safer for performers and presenters by mitigating and eliminating trip hazards. It makes troubleshooting easier too. I have Dave here to help demonstrate some do's and don'ts. So let's get started. First, start with a plan for the cable paths. Try and stick with straight lines and 90 degree angles as you group your cables together. Usually this will mean an upstage cable path and a downstage cable path with everything meeting at the audio snake, preamp or onstage mixer. You don't want a stage that looks like this. Next, run your microphone cables from the audio snake, preamp or onstage mixer to your mics and DI's. There's a tendency for people to want to start with the mic and work backwards to the snake cable or mixer. For one thing, the onstage console or snake cable is not likely to move, while the microphone very well could need to move before setup is finished. It's better to have the slack at the mic in a loose coil than it is at the snake cable. But bigger picture, every cable is going to the multi-pair box or onstage console. If all the cable slack goes there, it'll look like this. And that will only get worse with every line ran. Starting at the microphone with the cable is also how you connect at the snake and then look back and see this. I call this the clothesline effect. Starting at the snake cable or the mixer avoids all of the slack of every cable in every channel ending up in that one place, the snake or the mixer, and keeps things much neater, easier to troubleshoot and easier to reposition mics and DI's if need be as the setup goes along. On that same thought, monitors. If you have passive wedges and monitor amps, start at the amps with the speaker cables. Don't leave all of the slack for the wedges at the amps in a growing pile of spaghetti. Instead, bring the slack to the wedge and leave a coil at each wedge. If you have powered monitors, start at the console or snake with the driveline for each wedge and bring it to the wedge. Slack at the wedge. All of this can be accomplished without spending any money. It's just a matter of pinning the stage with a plan. But that said, if you do want to spend a little money, adding a subsnake or two, even a fan to fan snake, can help to neaten the stage as well as speed up the pinning of the stage. You can use a fan to fan snake to connect your monitor drivelines to an amp rack, for example. I recommend adding some tape for better labeling so it's easier to read the channels for quick setups. You can add subsnakes that run from your main snake, preamp, or onstage mixer to centralized points on the stage, like to the drums or near the drums for an upstage connection point, and another downstage for vocals or downstage instruments like an acoustic guitar or whatever might be on the stage plot. With subsnakes, many times you can use shorter length mic cables which can speed up setup and especially speed up the after the show strike. With a subsnake for your drums, you could even create a loom of mic cables dedicated to the drums, all marked and made to length for a neat and clean drum riser. On the subject of labeling, you can use board tape or gaffer's tape to label your subsnakes and cables. For multiband shows, it's much easier and quicker to label the cables and share channels than to repin for each band. And digital consoles allow us to save band settings from soundcheck and recall them instantly when the band takes the stage. Once the stage is pinned, we need to make sure we don't leave any trip hazards. If any cables are in a likely walkway, you can dress them with gaffer's tape. Or purchase some cable ramps to create a cable path that even a car could drive over if that's what you need. These days there are some inexpensive smaller cable ramps that work well on stage for a quick way to protect cables and protect people from cable trip hazards. I'll leave an Amazon affiliate link to these small cable ramps in the text below. In this video, I mention terms like upstage and downstage. If you don't know what these terms mean, I'll leave a link to a video that explains commonly used stage terms. It's a helpful reference, especially for anyone learning the ropes. I'll leave Amazon affiliate links in the text below for items like the gaffer's tape, the board tape, and the fan-to-fan snake. If you like information like this, please like and subscribe to the channel. Click the bell for notifications. The Patreon page link to support the channel is in the text below. Please check out the other videos. Thanks for watching and I will see you next time.