wiring a furman hds-6 system

[googacky]

hello all and welcome back to the board. isn't it great to have it back? anyway... i just signed a lease on a studio space! exciting stuff. it's a space that was a studio before, so it's well on its way to becoming awesome. i'm in the process of purchasing a furman hds-6 headphone system and i'm wondering how best to wire this thing up. i have a big live room and two iso booths. i'll be putting mic panels in the booths and figured i'd distribute the furman to each room. since i won't be daisy-chaining them i need to know how to hook all this up. i understand that i need some sort of patch panel to distribute the output of the base unit to the different rooms. what will work for this and where do i get it? thanks to each of you lovely people.

[sonicmook56]

you could use an Ethernet patchbay with the I/O in it in your new live room. then use the neutrik (xlr form factor) Eathernet connectors in the iso's where the pannels are..You could always put a loop threw on the pannels for more flexability when things get harry.

[wyman]

furman also makes a breakout box, the HR-6SPLT... 1 pair in, 5 pair out. you could hard wire a couple of cat-5 pairs in each room. i'm in the middle of doing something similar.

http://www.furmansound.com/products/pro ... /index.php
(scroll down about 3/4...)

when the HDS-6 was fisrt introduced, they supplied instructions for splitting it using a telephone wiring block... that might also fit the bill.

good luck!

[googacky]

awesomeness. i don't know how i missed that on their website. i do have one more question, however: can you still daisy chain units using this thing? i think five units will get me through, but you never know.

brian

[wyman]

i'm pretty sure you can daisy chain, even after using the splitter... i did the diasy chain thing after a wiring block setup, and it always worked fine. there's gotta be a limit on how much you can split the signal, but i never found any limitations in any practiacl use.

cheers!

[Mark Alan Miller]

What about the HR-6 / HDS-6 system? Can this be star-wired (split) instead of daisy-chained? I've heard horror stories about the reilability of the RJ-45 connectors for audio - anyone care to refute/support these stories?

[googacky]

that's the system that we're talking about. read the thread for the info on star-wiring these little bastards. anyone care to chime in on reliability?

[Mark Alan Miller]

that's the system that we're talking about. read the thread for the info on star-wiring these little bastards. anyone care to chime in on reliability?

Oh, my confusion. I got confused and read "Star Module (for use with HDS-6)"
as 'Star Module (for use with HDS-16)" That's what I get for staying up too late and trying to think. Thanks.

Now, about those RJ-45's?

[TapeOpAndy]

I haven't had any of my RJ45-equipped cables for my Furman or Aviom systems fail on me yet.

But I have ton of CAT5E cables lying around just in case. And a crimping tool with a bag of RJ45's.

The RJ45 plugs in my panels are all Neutrik, and they've worked fine w/o any problems.

[Mark Alan Miller]

I haven't had any of my RJ45-equipped cables for my Furman or Aviom systems fail on me yet.

But I have ton of CAT5E cables lying around just in case. And a crimping tool with a bag of RJ45's.

The RJ45 plugs in my panels are all Neutrik, and they've worked fine w/o any problems.

Allright! One great positive vote there. And sound advice on top of it. Thanks.

Others?

[psinglet]

I've never taken the time to do it, but this is how I invisioned doing mine:

Run two cat 5 cables from amp to first location you might need a headphone box, and then two cables from that location to the next location, etc. Put as many in as you think you might ever need and then put in a couple more. Wire the four cables as female conectors into a box (there will be only two wires at the last location in the chain). Use two short jumpers to connect the signal from the amp to the next location, creating one long cable run to the last location. Then wherever you want to insert a headphone box, disconnect the jumpers and insert a box into the "loop" using four cables.

I don't know if there is a maximum cable length the system can feed. If so, this way could cause a problem.

[danno2]

I have this very set up, as psinglet described, in my place. There is just one cat 5 pair that comes off the rack and it terminates into a switchbox with 4 female cat 5 recepticles. Two go into the HR-6 and two are connected to the HR-6 output and are daisy chained to the next wall panel/HR-6. I move the HR-6's around to the wall panel locations I need them at and just jumper any empty cat 5 sockets. It's somewhat costly to get set up, ( with the cat5 wall plates and connectors ) but it's very convienient and leaves you relatively cable free if you can do it while the walls are open.

the cat5 has had no probs- although all my wiring is in the walls and stays put. I don't think cable length is really an issue but you can only run 6 HR- 6 stations per rack.

The sound quality is usable and they drive my 7506's pretty well. Mainly it's great to let the players mess with their own heapdhone mixes. The only gripe I have with them is the transformer (?) hum in the rack module. While not unusable, it is ever present in my small control room.