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Any genius ideas for cable management?

ThomasNL said:
The cleaner your cable management, the harder it will be to access a single cable. so yes, things like bundling cables will really help make it less messy, but it also makes it less accessable.

Haven't found a solution myself either.
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To a point. Tangled messes of cables aren't especially accessible either. Not that I have any experience trying to extract a cable from a tangled mess...
 
This helps as well.

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To do the cable management correctly you need quite some planning. And more cables due to that ;) But once done properly you have nice and tidy setup for quite some months/years, depending on how much you change or add equipment.
 
Guy Bacos said:
A few years ago I bought a couple of these, did the trick for me.

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My IKEA desk came with something similar and it does help. What I learned ultimately is to still keep cables somewhat loose, because the few times I did this Velcro-tie neat-and tidy-arrangement, WHEN I had to pull it apart to change out something, its a bloody hassle, lol. That cage holder is great because I use it to keep everything suspended in the center of the desk then left it all waterfall behind the sub where people can’t see it. 😁
 
ZeroZero said:
Had a studio for many years and have quite a bit of gear. I have never been happy with teh amount of cables that trail around. I have just built a new studio and have a fourteen feet desk. I put a "trough" under the desk to allow cables to be tucked intio it. It does not work well as teh cables spill out. You know the sort if thing, you sort out one cable and during the night the cable mosrter seeks revenge by tangling six more cables.

Any good ideas folks? Large hooks? Rtrianed octopuses?
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I have slept on it. Here is the curioius contraption up for criticism.

I am particularly thinking of the space under the desk in a studio where the keyboard is located and the pedals, often the PC is also near, for sanity of cable reasons, but this solution coiuld be deskwide too.


Solution (or near) is a net. A custom net. I tried a trough ( large piece of plumber's conduit ran along the wall to catch the leads from plug sockets etc. Leads can be stiff and the fall out. I confess to, after owning a studio for years, you can end up using a five metre cable wher you really need .5 metres. 3ms and 5m... meh..

Here is the image again, more detail

A stout flexible elastic net with the right size holes and the right tortion to push leads through, would have these advantage. I have seen such nets used on luggage racks.

Advantages:

You don't need to saw anything to get a cable run.

You can poke a cable through a hole in the net at any point.

Leads are kept off the floor.

The elastic net could be suspended on simple hooks. strategically placed as you need and according to ease of access.

Torsion: Important to get right.

No more leads on floor (almost).

So, I am looking for net supplies....

Z
 
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danstein said:
Bundle your cable. You can use Velcro ties if you want to be able to move/change cables, more permanent cable ties if you don’t. Bundles will lay flatter in your trough. Does it have any holes you can cable-tie the bundles to?
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Velcro is good
 
Here is a quote from my Studio bible.

Use as many colours as you possible can, never all black. Use Electrical tape of various colors and a sharpie to create a big tag on each end (label both sides).

Here are from my studio bible.

Use Chinese strip lights from ebay to have switch on bar lighting in dark areas uinder desk. Attach the wire switch off/on mechanism near to the edge of the desk underneath the top.

Simple methods of groupiing random wires:

Several alternatives:

The short plastic coated holding wires that come in boxes of new gadgets, can be hoarded. The function of holding a razor shaver's lead into a cardboard box is essntially the same function as what we aspire to, only we are writ larger.

Velcro (the rings they use on mike stands to attach a lead are better). You can usually get things in and out of the loop quickly as there is a rip motion instead of a wire untwist task. Use these at critical points (main branches).

Garden Pegs or stationary clips may be useful and come off quickly.

Anyway, as Edward De Bono would say

"Po"
 
I use Velcro ties of various sizes most of the time. Works very well for me. Occasionally cable sleeves, but prefer the soft ones to those made of plastic. Finally, plastic cable ties for more permanent cable management. Also, I use dual and multi-core cables where needed as much as possible.

In any case, I don't like messy cables, both in the studio and on stage.
 
ZeroZero said:
Here is a quote from my Studio bible.

Use as many colours as you possible can, never all black. Use Electrical tape of various colors and a sharpie to create a big tag on each end (label both sides).
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On my light birch IKEA desk I put one of those 3 foot wide fake leather “mouse pads“ on the deck, and all of my devices sit on that. I used all black USB cables, and they mostly disappear nicely from view. That means I fool myself into thinking I have cable management, lol. ;)

Electrical tape on wires… If you ever have to remove the tape, the gummy residue will definitely impact your day. 😄 Several have replied talking about the Velcro wraps, and I think that’s the way to go.
 
ZeroZero said:
Had a studio for many years and have quite a bit of gear. I have never been happy with teh amount of cables that trail around. I have just built a new studio and have a fourteen feet desk. I put a "trough" under the desk to allow cables to be tucked intio it. It does not work well as teh cables spill out. You know the sort if thing, you sort out one cable and during the night the cable mosrter seeks revenge by tangling six more cables.

Any good ideas folks? Large hooks? Trained octopuses?
Click to expand...
If you're on a budget (and no, I'm not kidding) toilet paper and paper towel rolls are efficient.
 
I’ve given up on any real notion of cable management that involves tidiness as the goal.

However, after a recent emergency that required a near complete disassembly of my set up, I now have everything single cable of all types set up with a printed label on both ends to indicate what it connects to.
 
Astronaut FX said:
I’ve given up on any real notion of cable management that involves tidiness as the goal.

However, after a recent emergency that required a near complete disassembly of my set up, I now have everything single cable of all types set up with a printed label on both ends to indicate what it connects to.
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Yes, I find that labeling (both ends) is far more important than organization.
 
The cosmetic problem can be solved by any combination of troughs, cable ties, etc. The defect of all of these devices is that they complicate (a) maintenance and (b) repatching when you want to change how things are connected to each other. My "solution" (if you can call it that) is to connect almost every piece of gear to a patch bay rather than directly to another piece of gear. Repatching is very easy and, with some careful planning, pretty logical. The downside is that cables runs are mostly even longer -- and harder to hide from view -- than they would be otherwise.
 
PaulieDC said:
On my light birch IKEA desk I put one of those 3 foot wide fake leather “mouse pads“ on the deck, and all of my devices sit on that. I used all black USB cables, and they mostly disappear nicely from view. That means I fool myself into thinking I have cable management, lol. ;)

Electrical tape on wires… If you ever have to remove the tape, the gummy residue will definitely impact your day. 😄 Several have replied talking about the Velcro wraps, and I think that’s the way to go.
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Electrical tape is used only for labels and anyones comes off easy enough. Colors help with identification when your on your back.
 
Good sugestions people, thanks. One thing to bear in mind is that ften two devices are connected by the wrong length of cable - too long, this is because we can't cut modern cables and replug them. Thus you can either a] keep buying more and more cables or b] settle for bundling an upto 5m cable where 1 metre cable would be better. This leads to "pools" of cables, resembling nests of vipers. Touch one and theey all attack you and wind around each other. Viper nests dont take kindly to many of the clip, suggestions from ebay. I can use velcro and tie them into large-ish loops, but gthen I have a lot of largish loops to deal with.

Z
 
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