Recommend a 24ch splitter stage snake

[thesedaze]

Hey guys,

I'm looking for a best bang for the buck 24-channel splitter stage snake. I'm thinking 100ft will be fine for the total snake length, maybe 25ft for the split.

I know there are various ways to do the split, some more effective than others.

If any of you have experience in this realm, any help will be much appreciated.

I'm looking to use the split for recording up to 24 channels on the side stage, where a monitoring board would typically be.

Thanks!

[JeffBarnett]

If you are looking for a strictly analog splitter, we can get you a custom-built snake with a splitter built in. We can also get 24-channel mic splitters (without the snake attached) from ProCo or Whirlwind.

But if you are doing digital recording, you might be better off getting a set of digital preamps with analog outputs. Units like the DigimaxFS (http://www.sweetwater.com/digimaxfs/) by PreSonus will give you an 8-channel optical output to send to your computer / digital recording rig, and line-level analog outputs to send to your FOH console. It might prove to be much more cost-effective than an analog split.

Another way to do it is to use a FOH console with direct outputs on each channel, and send those outputs to your recording rig.

[thesedaze]

Most boards have post gain direct out, which can be quite crappy sounding into a recording source. I've heard it's best to split before the FOH console.

I haven't thought about going through the recording source first...

So if I set the recording unit up next to the FOH board, I could run all the channels from the stage snake into my recording rig, then run from the digimax/firestudio setup to the FOH console? That sounds easy enough, and much more cost effective.

Although, I'm thinking that the internal preamps of the recording unit are going to affect the levels of the output to the FOH Console, will it not?

[cmchamp]

Yes, but depending on the console, they may be pre-fader, but post EQ.
C.