Hi, I've lurked on this forum for years, owning a DL1608 for about 4 years now. Learned alot, so thanks for the help! There were some good posts on cases/setups which i took some ideas from, and i finally got around to sharing what I have done, as it's worked out for me very well and has been versatile.
I started with a Gator slant top case. (
http://www.gatorcases.com/p/39147-1218/grc-10x6 ) It has 6 spaces on the front, 10 on top and 10 on the back. I used the DL1608 rack mount kit and mounted the DL1608 on the top, towards the front with the free space in the back for routing cables. Also, i had space to velcro an apple router to the upper right side of the top.
On the front, i have a 1 space power conditioner (with 8 or 10 outlets on the back of it), a dbx PA+ driverack, a two space drawer with the belt packs for the IEMs and then 4 IEM wireless transmitters.
On the back, there is room for narrow depth rack components (due to the DL1608 down into the case a bit). At the top, i purchased a blank 1 space panel online, and some other components.
First, i put in 4 antenna bnc M/M connectors. This let me relocate the IEM antennas, and i just used 4 short BNC cables to connect the back of these to the IEM transmitters.
Second, i have 4 XLR connection for the speakers (i have two mains and two subs). These are connected with a short 4 cable XLR snake to the outputs of the driverack. This way i don't have to dive deep into the case to hook up the xlrs for the speakers each time.
Lastly, we use two wired IEMs (for the drummer and keyboard player), so i have two XLRs to connect to their wired headphone amps (i used the little behringer ones). The back of these connectors are connected to TRS cables plugged into two of the DL1608 aux outputs. the inputs of the 4 IEM transmitters are connected to the other 4 DL1608 aux outputs.
I realized that we would be playing at both places with a house PA (and soundman) and those without, but we wanted to retain our IEM in either case. I was thinking about just Y-ing all my inputs, but through reading and learning, that can cause some issues. What i found were these ART S8 splitters. They have 8 sets of one XLR input and two XLR outputs which are isolated. I used a very short 16 chan (actually 2 8chan) XLR snake to connect the 16 DL1608 inputs to the first output of the S8s. This provides a few cool things. First, i have the 16 inputs on the back of the rig, and eliminate wear and tear on the DL1608 itself, as i never unplug from the mixer. Second, i have another short 16 channel XLR snake on the second isolated set of outputs from the S8s. If we play at a place with a house PA, i just pull the one end of that snake out and plug the 16 channels into the house stage snake, and they then have the 16 raw inputs.
So basically we roll in, pull the single power cable out of the case, that powers up everything. Then plug in all the mics and other instruments right into the back of the case (i use two 25ft 8 chan stage box snakes, one to the front, one to the rear), and either the powered speakers into the back, or the 16 channel snake into the house, and we're live. (we also use roland drums and amp emulators so everything is direct and we don't have to adjust trims or anything, it's always the same).
Hopefully some of the ideas can help someone else out. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know.
-jim
