Would a 50' XLR snake mess with the sound that much?

[soundguy]

short answer is no.

cable can be measured in capacitence per foot, the goal is generallay to find cable that has the lowest pF/ft rating. Depending on the capacitence of the cable, one variety at 50 feet might shave off the high end that another variety at 100 feet does. It ultimately will come down to the integrity of the cable that you use, so its best to try to use the best stuff that you can. On movies I run through 150 feet of fairly high pF/ft cable and its definitely not the end of the world by any means. Ive never ever ever had anyone complain about lack of high end on a track.

dave

[Professor]

Seeing as how 50' is about the shortest snake you can usually buy as a standard item, I think you'll do fine. It's not uncommon to run snakes that are 100', 150' or even more, and not just for live sound but in recording as well. Of course, the build quality is more important as the runs get longer, but 50' is just not that big a deal.
The longest run I pulled in the school studio is 115' from the panel in the live room to the patchbay in the control room. But then there is another 30' from the patchbay to the console, and usually a 25' cable from the mic to the panel in the live room, so I typically run 170' total. You should be safe with 50.

-J

[psychicoctopus]

There's a 1600 foot run of ultra-low capacitance cable between a performance hall and the control room at the UT Fine Arts facility. At one time, they ran phantom powered mics with this setup. I haven't heard the results, but apparently it was useable. Now they have a remote controlled preamp that sends line level signal, and it sounds awesome even through over 1/4 mile of cable! Cable quality is clearly a factor.