Cable Calamity

Use long enough cables to go around the perimeter of the space wherever possible.

 

this helps:

https://www.amazon.com/Split-Tubing-Conduit-Flexible-Cover/dp/B07QQNW699

might be a little late at this point, but AVB/TSN systems only need a single Cat5e ethernet cable to handle all their I/O including synchronization and MIDI, with latency around 2-3 ms.

 

Use stage snakes and patch bays. As @QweziRider mentioned, use cables long enough to go around the perimeter and not in the middle of the floor.

 

cabling is just a part of it all, OP. good luck with your 'clean up'!

 

keep them away from power cables and you can go pretty far - but RF can be an issue, so it varies. wire guage and connector quality are factors also.

I'll go out on a limb and say you should be OK with 30'

BTW mic cables are balanced by default (3 conductor), and you can daisy-chain them together

 

Instrument cables when using a passive instrument and no pedals or buffers in between are always going to be a factor of capacitance and length. If it still sounds good, don’t sweat it. If you’ve lost too much top end, add a buffer.

XLR cables are a non-issue.

As I mentioned, use patchbays and stage snakes to simplify cabling and potentially shorten runs when possible.

 

It took me five years to wake up and stop running up to six annoying mic cables down the hall to record amps or my wife in another room. Duhhhhhh...snakes.

 

They’re definitely useful. I have stage snake for my rehearsal PA and a patchbay for my studio rack. Makes life much easier.

 

Another vote for a snake or wiring harness or patch bay for your situation. And enough inputs that you never need to unplug a cable.

I just went through this the other day when I wired in a new interface. I pulled the desk from the wall, pulled the cables out of everything and proceeded to hook everything back up using the cleanest routing I could manage. Fortunately it's not a complicated setup so hooking everything back up again wasn't difficult. That'll last for the next 2.78 weeks at most, I'm sure.

There's another post of mine recently where I show the before and after picture of my desk. Some cables have since started creeping back into the after picture.

 

It's easy. Become totally ocd like me, and the problem will go away. You should see my cutlery drawer.

 

how static is your setup? And how often do you record drums?
Like do you track drums every day or a couple times a year ?

When I went through this, I put all my outboard gear into a nice wooden rack I found on CL, then used a patchbay to connect all that for easy routing, and used a snake for all the I/O to the mixer/recorder.

If you are tracking drums often, and like to leave it all setup, then maybe another snake just for drums, and make sure it has some TRS I/O for headphones.

Another thing I did was instead of running cables on the floor, I went up the wall, across the ceiling, and then back down to the sources. Only thing was, when I wanted to move stuff around, (which I do often!) I had to move the ceiling hooks around. Wasn't difficult, just took some time.

Good luck!

 

I need you to design the liner notes for my new album.

 

I also went overhead as much as possible, including mic stands and monitors, and a snake for the drum kit. Perimeter works well too.

The instrument cables from the organ and piano are 40'. I haven't noticed any signal loss but I haven't specifically tested for it either.

 

The OPs diagram says MIDI drums. (;

 

Get longer cords to replace the ones that stay in place, and some one wrap Velcro.