Long run of XLR cable

[bradneal]

We are currently in the process of setting up a remote location in our church building to run sound for our streaming audio. We have a Yamaha LS9-32 that I want to tap into via Ethernet, and control the output to the live sream using Studio Manager.

I want to tap into the mixer and run a couple of cables from the main outputs to a pair of studio monitors at the remote location.

My question is, how far can I run the mic cables before the signal begins to weaken? Depending on the room they give me, it could be up to a 500 foot run.

Thanks,
Brad

[Brad Weber]

Originally Posted by bradneal

I want to tap into the mixer and run a couple of cables from the main outputs to a pair of studio monitors at the remote location.

My question is, how far can I run the mic cables before the signal begins to weaken? Depending on the room they give me, it could be up to a 500 foot run.

You wouldn't be dealing with microphone signals, the outputs of the mixer would be balanced, line level audio. I'd usually say that long distances aren't a problem there but 500' is getting to be a rather long distance and at that point it could get into the specifics of the devices and cable. Of course you also can't run Ethernet 500' without some device in the middle so maybe an audio buffer amp could also be inserted somewhere in the audio run.

[bpalermini]

I tested this myself a number of years ago. I think there might be an old thread that reported on this test.

I connected enough various length mic cables together to make a 500' run. We put a SM58 on one end and the other was to our M7CL mixer. We also had a SM58 connected to another channel with a 25' cable. We set all of the eq, gain, etc to the same settings for both channels.

In a blind listening test none of us (5 techs and musicians) could tell the difference between the two cable lengths.

I don't think you should have a problem.

[waynehoskins]

I expect it would work fine.

An interesting test to do would be to take a 200-250 foot concert snake with returns (or turnarounds) and loop a test signal, like pink noise, back and forth down it (down mic 1, loop mic 1 to return 1 on the other side, return 1 to mic 2 on the first end, and so on) and observe it on a scope at different numbers of loops up and down the snake. Theoretically there should be a point where you start getting high frequency rolloff due to the shunt capacitance in the cable, and it would be neat to see where that starts becoming visible on a scope and where you can start hearing it. I suspect it will be longer than 1000 feet.

[tdangelo]

500' for a mic level audio signal is pushing the envelope. 500' for a line level balanced audio signal should be fine.