Comments

Chienworks wrote on 8/19/2007, 7:27 AM
We did a few jobs with a pair of 16' cables joined with an adapter in the middle. It works perfectly. A solid 33' cable with no joint in the middle should be better than that.

Try it first before you get to the gig though.
riredale wrote on 8/19/2007, 4:12 PM
If it doesn't work, you can buy 15' cables with repeaters on the ends and then daisy-chain them together.
Spot|DSE wrote on 8/19/2007, 4:41 PM
Without repeaters, it's catch-as-can. Some systems will permit this, others won't. I have a 36' long cable that works well with any desktop, and one laptop. It will not function/pass data with my MacBookPro, nor with my newer VAIO.
I've been given any number of reasons from gremlins to voltage, but the upshot is, sometimes she works, sometimes she doesn't.
Laurence wrote on 8/19/2007, 8:06 PM
I have a long stretch of USB cable running from my PC to my printers and scanners in my studio. I had to try a number of different cables before I found ones that worked. There is a pretty big quality difference in cables, and long runs really make this apparent.

On a side note, I did sound effects for a show several years ago where I ran midi through an audio XLR breakout box and snake. The maximum official longest length of a midi cable is pretty short, but we ran it over 150 feet by using a couple of hand-wired MIDI to XLR adapters and tapping into a high quality audio snake. It's not the lenth of the cable, it;s the resistance of it. You'd be surprised at what you can get away with.

Now with the Firewire power connections, you probably will lose too much, but with high quality cable and the data lines, you should be able to go quite a bit further than the spec says.
ECB wrote on 8/20/2007, 5:53 AM
I have found I can drive a much longer cable if I use cards & boards with the TI chipset.

EB