Re: Tips and Tricks of Gear Organization

[Rainer Straschill <moinsound@googlemail.com>]

Kevin Cheli-Colando schrieb:
> what kinds of tricks people have come up with to A) keep their studio
> space as clutter free and productive as possible B) make set-up and
> tear down of gear manageable and C) whatever else works for you and
> makes your musical life better (materially speaking)
What everyone else said, generally, only:
Cable tiers are invaluable for all applications! Get them and use them. 
Discriminate between those which will remain in place forever (or for a 
long time), and those which you need to open again regularily.
for a):
Patchbays are important. I tend to plan my setups around the patchbays, 
and then optimize the wiring around those.
Coloured cables also help, especially in cramped racks.
A logic where you put your wires is also helpful (e.g. audio on the 
left, power and MIDI on the right).

for b):
that rule from software engineering also applies - the setup isn't 
finished when there's nothing left to be added, it's finished when 
there's nothing left to be removed.
specialized and high-quality cases/bags are your friend.
(laptop) computers are not optimized to be built into a music setup. 
This requires specific solutions (e.g. I'm using a "Studio2Go" case by 
Gator, which holds the laptop, the audio interface and the wireless 
stuff in one case. A pair of XLRs to the mains and connectors to the 
faderbox and floor pedal (marked) come out at the back).
Or work around that by using an industry PC (which you can then 
remote-control with a tablet or smartphone).
Use multicores if applicable.
Practice your setup/teardown. Take a video of you doing it, and take 
time. Find out where you lose time and optimize your setup at these 
points. E.g. if you find that you always lose 10 seconds to find out 
which of the two XLRs is left and which is right channel because you 
have to turn them around until you see the label, either put labels on 
both sides, or use coloured cables, or make them come out at different 
sides from your rack.
Document, and keep the documentation with your gear. Normally, you will 
not need it, but if at a gig you find that the signal from the wireless 
receiver doesn't arrive at the audio interface, it helps to just look 
into a chart which says "wireless out through yellow patch cable into 
input 2 of audio interface".

   Rainer

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