A snake is a great thick multi-conductor cable that takes the place of several microphone, speaker, or line cables (or, in many cases, some combination of those). So instead of having sixteen very long microphone cables reaching from the stage to the sound booth, one very expensive but much more manageable[*] snake is run that distance. I'm pretty sure the name "snake" is simply reference to its appearance.
At the stage end is (usually) a box bearing lots of female connectors -- typically lots of XLR microphone "sends" and a couple of quarter-inch (phone) "returns"[**], though, of course, nothing prevents one from using one of the quarter-inch sockets to send an unbalanced signal like a synth or guitar input to the mixer instead of using it to return, say, a monitor channel to the stage (as long as it's short enough that you don't mind throwing an unbalanced line that far). At the mixer end, at least on all the snakes I've seen, it splits up into a slew of smaller cables with male connectors corresponding to the connectors at the stage end. I'm not certain which is the "head" and which is the "tail", but if I had to guess I'd call the box onstage the head and the connectors at the mixer end tails.
So when I said "snake channel" I meant one of the connector/set-of-conductors/connector chains that make up the snake.
And I'm sleepy enough not to be certain whether I'm being clear, or supplying yet more "understandable only if [already] known" (phrasing courtesy of realinterrobang) 'explanation'. Did I even answer the right question?
[*] Though it must never ever be allowed to kink when deploying it or when coiling it for storage/transport -- in some ways it's much tougher than any individual cable; in other ways far more fragile.
[**] Or sometimes male XLR connectors for balanced returns. Return signals would be line-level monitor mixes, or even the main mix, being sent to on-stage amplifiers. If the power levels aren't huge, and the snake is designed for it, you can put speaker-level signals on the return channels, and some folks running very small setups do that, but I figure the reasons for using line-livel returns and onstage amplification will be as obvious to you as the terminology was opaque.
This was entirely clear and very illuminating. Thank you. Not only did you answer the right question, but you also supplied enough of the context to make it instructive to read.
(no subject)
At the stage end is (usually) a box bearing lots of female connectors -- typically lots of XLR microphone "sends" and a couple of quarter-inch (phone) "returns"[**], though, of course, nothing prevents one from using one of the quarter-inch sockets to send an unbalanced signal like a synth or guitar input to the mixer instead of using it to return, say, a monitor channel to the stage (as long as it's short enough that you don't mind throwing an unbalanced line that far). At the mixer end, at least on all the snakes I've seen, it splits up into a slew of smaller cables with male connectors corresponding to the connectors at the stage end. I'm not certain which is the "head" and which is the "tail", but if I had to guess I'd call the box onstage the head and the connectors at the mixer end tails.
So when I said "snake channel" I meant one of the connector/set-of-conductors/connector chains that make up the snake.
And I'm sleepy enough not to be certain whether I'm being clear, or supplying yet more "understandable only if [already] known" (phrasing courtesy of
[*] Though it must never ever be allowed to kink when deploying it or when coiling it for storage/transport -- in some ways it's much tougher than any individual cable; in other ways far more fragile.
[**] Or sometimes male XLR connectors for balanced returns. Return signals would be line-level monitor mixes, or even the main mix, being sent to on-stage amplifiers. If the power levels aren't huge, and the snake is designed for it, you can put speaker-level signals on the return channels, and some folks running very small setups do that, but I figure the reasons for using line-livel returns and onstage amplification will be as obvious to you as the terminology was opaque.
(no subject)