When Chair Wheels See Cords Funny
Headphone cable getting stuck in chair casters
This has got to be something lots of you guys had to deal with at one point 
What's the solution?
I can think of a few DIY ways of dealing with this but looking for something simple, clean, and professional.
Lives for gear
In the booth I use cable holders that you can clip on the mic stand. In the control room the HP out is directly in front of me, thus never had a problem there.
Gear Guru
If you have a long HP cord and you wheel around a lot, it's going to be there. I'm guessing you're in a home studio, recording instruments yourself and you need to get around some distance?
I don't know much about wireless phones quality, but this might be something to think about. Or get one of those balls that people sit on. Good for the back!
Gear Guru
That's been on my list of things to get around to solving for maybe 20 years. In my mind's eye, I envision a skinny headphone cable wound into a tiny coil and bound by a tiewrap, and plugged into a massive, indestructible TRS extension cable. Ahhhh… maybe someday.
Gear Guru
from my other side of life .. TV camera operator … when I run a pedestal camera i use a foam sleeve that has a slit up the side so you can slide the Camera cable into so it does not Slide Underneath the Pedestal Skirt and pinch the very expensive cable … so maybe just get a piece of that from Home Depot but a bit smaller in diameter … the ones we use are about 1" - 1 1/2" in diameter … not even sure what they are suppose to be used for … haha
just a thought ..
Quote:
Originally Posted by jwh1192 ➡️
from my other side of life .. TV camera operator … when I run a pedestal camera i use a foam sleeve that has a slit up the side so you can slide the Camera cable into so it does not Slide Underneath the Pedestal Skirt and pinch the very expensive cable … so maybe just get a piece of that from Home Depot but a bit smaller in diameter … the ones we use are about 1" - 1 1/2" in diameter … not even sure what they are suppose to be used for … haha
just a thought ..
Sounds like a foam insulation sleeve for water pipes; helps keep your hot water hot especially if your HWH is in your garage or basement, and it can help keep outdoor pipes from splitting open. They make similar stuff with a lighter foam to provide some padding on the tubing of BMX bikes.
I have much the same problem. I find it's worse on carpeting; when I first started using my studio gear, I was rolling around on bare laminate flooring, and when the caster hit the cable I just stopped rolling, and could free the cable with a flick and move on. I now have an area rug in that room that I have to roll around on to get between the DAW on one side of the room and my amp/pedalboard on the other, and I find myself rolling right over my cable with the casters of the chair all the time.
The obvious solution is a coiled headphone cable, but that's not always an option, especially if you don't have phones with a serviceable/replaceable cable. The next obvious solution is to take up as much slack as you can on the headphone cable with a twist-tie, leaving sufficient length to allow you to turn around to the equipment on the other side of the room. My ATH-M45 phones have a ridiculously long cable for where I need to get to while wearing them (I'm currently confined to a small den-like area for my recording; at least it's very rectangular, and my back-and-forth is across the shorter dimension) and I just coil up about 3 feet of extra length, and don't miss it at all while sitting (I need it mainly when tracking with a LDC, as far from my workstation and its cooling fans as I can manage).
The foam sleeve is a cool idea. You could probably Macguyver it by just running the headphone cable through a few feet of any sort of relatively large-diameter hose or pipe (if the plug is straight and not 90-degree).
If you're on carpet, a carpet protector is a good idea to have, and in that situation you might be able to run the headphone cable *under* the protector (watch the spikes), out to one of its edges with enough slack to remain able to roll wherever you need to protected from the casters. You'd need to plan out the route under the protector carefully to get everywhere you need while avoiding too much slack still on the floor, or in the other extreme, a long triangular suspension of the cable from the edge of the protector back up to the mixer when you lay the phones down.
Gear Guru
I have things set up in my rather small 'cockpit' area in such a way that I can loop headphone cable loosely thorough an opening under a table to my side so that the loose cable tends to fall into a safe spot by the table and then the cable from the table thing to my cans on my head is up off the floor. Of course, it has to be loose so it does tend to get pulled through and droop toward the floor so I keep an eye on it. But it mostly stays off the floor and out from under.
Another option I had someplace along the way was one of those spring metal 'cord holders' you used to be able to buy for ironing boards (kind of a tall 'whip antenna' kind of thing you would loop the cord of your electric iron through, wedging it into a springy holder coil thing... the metal being springy, it would give increasing resistance as you got to the end of your 'rope.'
My solution to this all-to-real problem was to simply screw a J-hook into the ceiling about half way between my recording position and the jack where the headphone cable plugs in. Then when I want to record, I just reach up and put the headphone cable over the hook, and voila, there is a path from the jack to my head that does not include the floor.
Gear Addict
I bought some coily extension cords. They are harder to get caught in the casters.
Plus, they look 60s retro cool.
Lots of great ideas 
thank you. Gonna stop by Home Depot tonight and see what they have. A foam sleeve under my desk might be the way to go. A a twist-tie is my backup plan. My rack is standing right next to me and the headphone cable is married to my cans so can't replace it with a coiled cord. I'm mixing in a home studio with hardwood floors by the way and sometimes use cans instead of my monitors.
Lives for gear
I use binder clips to attach hp cables to whatever to keep them out of the way. I also use a binder clip on a belt loop to keep the hp cable running straight down my back when I'm playing guitar or drums. I don't pinch the cable, I use the channel between the clips to guide/trap the cable.
Lives for gear
Couldn't you just use a TRS cable of higher gauge/thicker diameter?
Quote:
Originally Posted by gravyface ➡️
Couldn't you just use a TRS cable of higher gauge/thicker diameter?
By the time it's thick enough that a chair caster won't roll over it on carpet, you're probably talking about 12-gauge or better, the stuff normally used for speaker wire, and that gauge wont fit into an ordinary TRS plug (not to mention a 10' length will weigh several pounds). The cord on my headphones is pretty beefy, but my chair casters roll right over it now that my area rug is back in that room (it had seen service in another area of the house until we got something that matched the decor a little better).
I just have to say this is all great stuff! A problem we all have, don't talk much about, and multiple solutions from helpful posters... NICE!
Best-
Jonathan
Gear Maniac
Secure the cable (with slack from both ends) to the back of the chair. Works for me but I don't move around that far in my space.
If you are performing in the Live Room, you are usually standing up or sitting on a stool or chair. So there is rarely a problem with headphone wires going into the wall panels or snake box.
as soon as you say "casters" it sounds to me like someone
engineering himselfin the control room. My solution is to go "up"
I have my CR fitted out with 'swing away' lamps. They have double-arms that can come out from the wall. I hang my headphones on these 'half' coat-hangers for storage, and loop the wires through them when in use.
One lamp is almost above my chair just to the right of the console. I loop the
wirethrough the coat hanger when using the headphones so the wire goes "up" instead of on the floor. I have extension outputs for my headphone distribution amp located in various places, and they are mounted usually about waist high. And one of these lamps on each wall. So I can do this not just at the board, but also at the keyboards or over by the analog deck etc.
Well, if anyone's curious this is what I ended up doing last night.
Lots of great ideas, thanks again. The headphones hang on the clamp.
Gear Guru
has anyone ever used InFaRed Headphone rigs ???? i remember seeing them used as translator systems in pretty large convention halls … so in a small studio it could work fine … just need to adapt your headphones to them … not sure if there would be any latency with the system though …
Quote:
Originally Posted by mustardeer ➡️
This has got to be something lots of you guys had to deal with at one point
What's the solution?
I can think of a few DIY ways of dealing with this but looking for something simple, clean, and professional.
what I did was took a few straws cut them long ways to get the cables in there. then I took the straws and basically fed the cords up the chair so that they would never be hitting the ground letting them never tangle in the wheels. the only down side to this is, you lose a lot of freedom when rotating but it still rotates enough to easily get in and out of the chair comfortably.
mcknightconcestly.blogspot.com
Source: https://gearspace.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/926988-headphone-cable-getting-stuck-chair-casters.html
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