tie lines

Hey guys, I have been thinking about tie lines for my control room and studio room and have a question regarding the sex of the lines on either side of the wall. This question is in relation to XLR microphone tie lines. Obviously in the studio/live room, the sex of the mic sockets on the wall panel will need to be FEMALE, then on the control room wall panel the corresponding sockets would need to be MALE so I can use a standard mic lead to patch the mic signal into my preamps (which have female xlr sockets as their inputs). My question is, is it worth having a few tie line channels that are configured the opposite way? So, Male XLR on the studio/live room side and female XLR on the control room side. At the end of the day its all balanced signal and im aware that simply having an assortment of differently configured XLR to XLR leads will solve any problems but I just wanted to know what the norm is. Ive never had to do these types of tie lines before. thanks guys!

I think you mean "gender", not "sex"! :) But yes, I would have some lines going the other way, both balanced and unbalanced. Have some of the balanced lines on XLR connectors, and some on 1/4" TRS connectors. The unbalanced should only be on 1/4" jacks. You'll need the TRS for headphones, but you also might need the XLRs to feed a mini mixer, or active monitors, or other equipment, and you might need the unbalanced 1/4" lines to connect guitars, pedals, passive speakers, or whatever. When I'm installing post facilities, I always add in a few extra lines of all types, going in all directions, since I never know what the customer might need in the future, but I'm damn sure he'll need something that he didn't think about when we designed the place! So I also put in CAT-6 lines, VGA lines, USB lines (if you are close enough), phone lines, intercom lines, serial control lines, and anything else I can think of. For example, one day you might want to run your DAW from the booth, so you need a way to get a video screen, mouse and keyboard in there... Hence, you need VGA plus USB or CAT-6 plus extenders. Etc. All those cables are cheap, compared to the cost of having to chop holes in your walls a few months down the line! :) - Stuart -

hehe, Here in Australia its quite common to use the word sex as a replacement for "gender", in the past many forms you would have to fill out like government forms and stuff would have "sex" and a "m" and "f" box you would have to tick, the classic was people would tick their corresponding box but then write "yes please" near the word "sex" on the form. Im sure they've changed it to gender now! hehe The idea for the computer monitor is great, didnt think of that, hooking up a monitor on the other side of the glass can come in handy, however, I do use a wireless keyboard and mouse but im not sure if they'll transmit well enough through two leafs, if they do, I could then just spin the monitor around 180 degrees in the control room and view it through the window. i'll have to think well and long about this stuff for sure, thanks as usual!

VGA boards and chipsets will no longer be produced by Intel as of December 2013. In my line of work I already encounter desktop PC's and laptops equipped with ONLY HDMI or Display Port, this will become the norm. To future-proof your studio I recommend you run HDMI and Cat6a between rooms. Cat6a can be used to transmit just about anything. Regarding 1/4" TRS tie lines, be sure to run some with shielded coax for carrying signals and some with heavy-gauge speaker wire for carrying amplifier outputs between the control room and live room. You don't want to run a cranked 100w Marshall amplifier through coax cable! - those things can pump out 70v running flat-out. One of the quickest ways to blow up a guitar amp is to connect the speaker via ordinary signal cable.

VGA boards and chipsets will no longer be produced by Intel as of December 2013. In my line of work I already encounter desktop PC's and laptops equipped with ONLY HDMI or Display Port, this will become the norm. To future-proof your studio I recommend you run HDMI and Cat6a between rooms. Cat6a can be used to transmit just about anything. Regarding 1/4" TRS tie lines, be sure to run some with shielded coax for carrying signals and some with heavy-gauge speaker wire for carrying amplifier outputs between the control room and live room. You don't want to run a cranked 100w Marshall amplifier through coax cable! - those things can pump out 70v running flat-out. One of the quickest ways to blow up a guitar amp is to connect the speaker via ordinary signal cable.

Hey guys, thanks for the advice, would never have thought of running a hdmi! My OP was aimed more at the XLR and phono socket stuff but i'll include at this stage what I have already decided on. FOR guitars: Amp Heads in ctrl room: 2 speaker cables (heavy guage) Combo amps in studio room: will use radial SGI TX/RX units to convert high impeadance guitar signal to balanced XLR then use the normal XLR tie lines on wall mount. The TX unit takes the standard guitar from the ctrl room and covnerts it to balanced XLR feeding it to the XLR socket on the wall panel, the RX unit receives the balanced XLR signal from the corresponding wall socket in the studio room and converts it back to standard gtr signal for the combo amps input to like! More gear I know, but they sound great too. Headphones and other misc: 3 cat cables. MIDI: 4 midi cables (2 in 2 out) Microphones: 20 XLR sockets Other: 4 TRS phono sockets Digital: 1 ADAT cable ( for keys with adat outs or hooking up another set of converters in the studio room) Heres my issue now, I started to look up some neutrik connectors and realized that they have a stack that have metal faces and some with just plastic faces, I picked up by reading the specs that these connectors are all for different setups as far as grounding relationships between each connector and the faceplate itself. Im not really educated on this but the only wall mounts/panels I can get to house the connectors will be metal so im not sure which connectors to get, I definitely wanna make sure that everything is right when it comes to grounding, want it to be as safe and quiet as possible. Can anyone point me to a resource I can check out that explains this, i did a google but couldnt find anything that tackled this specific issue. thanks again guys,