Mackie TT System 32 Owner's Manual - 4.0

Mackie TT24 Digital Live Console Owner’s Manual Addendum v1.7

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4.0 

Appendix 

Ramblings:        

Front of House and Monitor Mixer Utilizing a Snake

In larger venues, a separate front of house and monitor console are used. In an all-analog 

world, the inputs from stage are sent to both the front of house and monitor console by using 

a splitter snake. Each console then receives the signal and each engineer has an independent 

mic pre for the same input signal. This is easy to use but the engineers must deal with 

extremely long and heavy cable runs making set up/tear down and audio quality an issue.

In a digital world, a digital snake is often used to convert the signal to digital and send it to 

each console over a light weight digital connection. This also improves audio quality since 

there is no signal loss over the long distance. 

Shared I/O from a Single Analog Snake

A splitter snake can be rendered unnecessary if the two digital consoles used at FOH and 

Monitor can pass signal between them digitally. If this is the case, only one of the two consoles 

needs to be connected to the analog snake and it can pass these signals (or any other for 

that matter) on to the other remote console. Effectively, the console and digital connection 

are acting as a splitter snake. The remote console can also use the digital connection to send 

outputs back to the console connected to the snake, which can then route the analog outputs 

back to the snake. Thus either console can receive inputs from and send outputs to the analog 

snake.

Shared Mic Pres from a Single Digital Snake

The digital snake solution is not always perfect, especially in a scenario where FOH and 

Monitor desks are connected to the same snake. Only a single mic pre is used and it is instead 

positioned in the fl ow before the signal is sent to both consoles. Thus the engineers don’t 

have independent control of the mic pre, as changing the gain from one console will affect the 

other. This can create havoc. For instance, if the monitor engineer were to reduce the gain 

of the lead vocalists mic pre because they are getting feedback with the monitors, this would 

lower the level of the vocalist at FOH making it hard for the audience to hear them.

To remove the symptoms of this problem, adjusting the gain from one console should not 

affect the other consoles gain structure, and vice versa. Engineers have come to expect this 

“gain compensation” when working with digital desks sharing a digital snake. This often done 

by designating one console a master and the other a slave. 

Shared Outputs from a Single Digital Snake

On the opposite side of things, the two consoles must be able to both feed signals to the single 

digital snake with a fi xed number of outputs. Each engineer must be able to send signals to 

the snake for patching to amps/active speakers.