Making 25 pin d sub snakes

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bannerj
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Making 25 pin d sub snakes

Post by bannerj » Fri Jul 08, 2011 8:06 pm

I'm a little confused why some of these premade cables are so expensive? I saw an RME cable for some $250. Even the parts. My tech bought some of the connectors from one website that wanted some $30?

Is there anything wrong with these? http://www.markertek.com/Connectors-Ada ... html?DP25B

I've got some good mogami cable and am willing to pay the money for these and wire it myself, but what is the big deal about these connectors?

I'm wiring them up for AES I/O and I know there is a different arrangement for each solder...but what am I missing?

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Post by jhharvest » Sat Jul 09, 2011 12:18 am

It's just annoying to make. You need the correct ohm multicore cable, you need the right kind of connectors, the solder points are critical so the signal doesn't reflect back or leak across the pins, the wires need to be twisted right until the solder. All sorts of little things. You can do it when you take your time.

No doubt the RME cable is overpriced but even if you work quickly (and accurately) with the soldering iron it might cost you more in terms of work hours than a bought one.

I do a lot of HD-SDI BNC at work. We paid 600 euro just for a crimp tool and cable stripper. Even so I had a replace an iffy patch cable my colleague had made just last week. Granted that signal has much higher bandwidth than just AES/EBU but still.

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Post by alexdingley » Sat Jul 09, 2011 4:58 am

I Second that! They are a huge pain to make. I wanted a set that dress nicely to the side for direct outs and line returns from my apogee boxes... I got them done and they work perfectly, but it was a whole weekend long project because you have to take breaks to rest your eyes after staring at that mass of pins n wires.

In the end, I'm happy with my cables.. But I feel the premade harnesses are undoubtedly a little more rugged and should hold up to more abuse.

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Post by The Scum » Sat Jul 09, 2011 11:38 am

If they're really so easy, make a few of them and report back.

My experience:

Get the connectors where the pins are separate, and you insert them into the shell once the wire is connected. It's a lot easier than soldering all of those little tabs in such close proximity.

Get a couple extra connectors and some spare cable to practice on. Nothing like the fun of taking an hour to strip, tin, heatshrink and solder the thing, only to discover that you stripped too much of the main jacket, or that you can't cram all of the loose ends into the hood, or that something is shorting to inside of the hood. Once you get the perfect proportions figured out, make a template.

On a lot of hoods, the hole for the wire coming out is considerably smaller than the jacket of audio snake cable. Someone made hoods with bigger holes, but I don't remember who it was off the top of my head.
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bannerj
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Post by bannerj » Sat Jul 09, 2011 3:19 pm

I've already made a few of these. Yep. Pain in the ass.

But this is a small college studio. We don't have revenue, just capital requests. So, if I've got $250 to spend it is going to be on something other than a cable I can make. I have time in the summer to solder and listen to music.

I'm asking about the quality of the connectors. The $30 on I think my partner bought from gepco? Then there is this $3 one from markertech.

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Post by TapeOpLarry » Sun Jul 10, 2011 5:34 pm

we bought some connectors like this and they worked. Problem is you'll melt the blue plastic if you keep heat on very long. It's no fun. We had Redco make most of our dsub to xlr/trs and most were about $80. it cost us far more in time and parts to try and make our own.
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bannerj
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Post by bannerj » Mon Jul 11, 2011 12:52 pm

Thanks Larry.

I think I'm going to have to do the analog cables myself since we already have the mogami 2932 wired into the patch bay for the 002R we had. I just need to switch from 1/4 ends to the D-25 connector for the I/O.

I'll have Redco do the AES short cable from the Aurora into the LIO.

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Post by Peterson Goodwyn » Mon Jul 11, 2011 1:46 pm

Damn, just ordered some snake cable and D-sub connectors. from Redco. Maybe I should have thought this through further...
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Post by bannerj » Mon Jul 11, 2011 7:17 pm

Peterson Goodwyn wrote:Damn, just ordered some snake cable and D-sub connectors. from Redco. Maybe I should have thought this through further...
ha. after all the speculation in this thread, I've gone ahead and ordered everything from redco myself. I'm going to use the other mogami snakes for outboard gear. We've got an api 10 space rack coming with two 512cS! Small start, but I'm trying to plan for the long term of this little studio.

1 2 ft AES d25 sub to d25 sub to connect the lynx to the aurora was $61.30

2 12 ft d25 to prepped ends for patch bay were $98.90

I'm a cheap ass bastard, that is not sexy spending.

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