Snake

The life-line of any sound system is always given importance during setup. Personnel have to take into consideration, factors like safety, laying of the cable, etc. to prevent people from tripping over or if there will be any movement of vehicles on site (loading and unloading of other gear).

The snake laid from behind the truck to the FOH (next picture)

One way to minimize the snake from being trampled on by vehicles is to either lay the cable in a trunk or channel and sometimes lay it underground. The other economical way (this, if your events involve multiple setups of stages, booths, etc.) is to lay thin wooden planks and secure the snake on both sides, this way any vehicle passing over will not actually go over the snake but over the wooden planks. You can then have the planks taped to the snake or secured to the ground. This method was commonly applied by the ICOM sound crew for most of the events.

The snake has two ends, a fan out that consists of cables coming off the multi-core and split into different XLR cables that are patched into the FOH console. Snakes come in two types; sends and returns. Return snake carries the signals like stereo out, aux outs to the power amps placed backstage while the sends cables carries the signals from the stage like mics, instruments, etc.

Snake laid between wooden strips

Snake being trunked 'our way'

Stage Setup

This involves placing the instruments and stage amplifiers at their respective positions. Normally, a stage layout would be drawn by a stage manager for stage crew reference and then accordingly, instruments, equipment and microphone stands would be placed. The other aspect would be the laying of microphone and instrument cables neatly along the edge of the platform or stage and making sure they terminate in a clear line of path at the stage box. With a stage plan or layout, setup is much more efficient and saves a lot of time. Below is a picture of a stage layout for the Gegar U events held on the truck.

Stage Layout

Consideration should be given to aspects like cable slack (if any performer has to walk around with wired microphones, the cable will not pull if there is any slack). After the mic and instrument cables are laid, taping is done after a complete check of the stage ensuring right cables are patched into the right input to avoid any confusion during linecheck and soundcheck.

FOH

Yamaha's O1V96 V2 was the board that was used all throughout the peninsula for the competitions. Digital boards as it goes without saying, benefits the engineer in ways that are facilitating and comforting when compared to an analog board.