Rack, cabling, and connector items for the Acoustic Cafe audio system upgrade
Full upgrade plan: View on Patchify ↗
Right now, a typical Acoustic Cafe setup consists of many pieces of small gear. There's nothing wrong with this type of setup, but in my opinion it creates a situation where you end up with a pile of gear and not much organization. Because of this, I'd propose a single, unified rack that houses everything — all the amps, inputs, and outputs. Unfortunately, due to size constraints, my original goal of moving all storage onto the rack isn't practical. However, we should still be able to house most of the mess that's typically scattered around the stage. When setting up, we'd just roll the rack onto stage, and all the complex wiring stays permanently in place.
I won't lie — going into this project, I had very different expectations for it than what actually came out. Originally, I was looking for something that would house literally everything, so you'd never need to run a single wire. That would have required several pieces of new gear. But as I stepped back and looked at the scope of this project, I realized that changing everything also has downsides, and it would be better to focus not on doing new things, but on finding better ways to organize what we already do. That's why, as you've probably noticed, a large part of the budget isn't going toward new gear, but toward cabling.
The rack will have all power cables run internally. Cables can't get messed up or lost if they can't be touched. This way, powering up everything on stage requires only a single power cable that plugs directly into the rack, along with an extension cord (which can also come from the rack) to reach the keyboard. This power cord works with the rack, and there isn't a single other exposed power cable on it besides that one.
For the amps, this is where some custom cabling comes into play. Right now, to connect the speakers, we run one wire out of the amp to the left, one to the right, one to the sub, one to the monitors, and one jumping between the subs. While this system works, in my opinion it gets complicated quickly for people who don't necessarily understand how everything is supposed to work. To fix this, I propose a slightly different solution: the cables that go to the speakers can be wired (using the rack) so that one cable goes to the left set of speakers, one goes to the right, and one goes to the monitors. While this only cuts the total number of cables by two, I think this way of wiring makes it easier for everyone.
One of, in my opinion, the best things about this setup is simply the removal of extra plugs. The only plugs left visible to people setting up will be one power plug, three labeled speaker plugs, one labeled Ethernet plug, and four audio plugs for the sound board outputs. My hope with this project is that setup and teardown get easier, cables are kept to a minimum, and time spent wiring is kept to a minimum as well.
This finally leads me to where I'd like this project to go for a future upgrade path. What I'd love is to put everything on wireless, so that no wires need to be run for microphones — and possibly even for most instruments.
The two Swiff Audio wireless guitar systems on this list are the first step down that path. Right now every guitar needs its own cable run back to the rack — one more cable to route, tape down, and potentially trip over during setup and teardown, and one more point where a bad cable can cause dropouts mid-song. Going wireless for guitar removes that cable entirely, gives players room to move on stage, and lets us start testing wireless reliability on a low-cost, low-risk piece of gear before considering it for mics or other instruments.
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Prices are per-unit estimates; totals reflect quantity × unit price. Links go to the specific listing priced.