patchbay-balance or not

If I understand your question correctly, no you cannot use TRS patch cables in TS jacks and get the same result. The result of doing that would be to unbalance the signal.

I would suggest getting a balanced patchbay because you can use it for wither balanced or unbalanced signals. An unbalanced patchbay will only do unbalanced signals.
 
Unbalanced signal...don't care...use unbalanced/balanced jacks or cables or mix-n-match 'em. Won't matter. If you have a balanced signal, you've got to use a balanced patch bay and balanced cables.

I don't see the value in purchasing unbalanced patch panels myself, for that matter, unbalanced (TS) cables either. The price difference is negligible.

Use balanced cables and patch panels for everything and you'll never need to worry about it.
 
I agree with the previous posts. Go balanced, if you don't need it right now, you most likely will in the future. My brother is in the construction business and drives a 4 wheel drive truck. Once I asked him why he goes to the extra expense when he rarely needs it. He told me that he had only needed a few times, but could not have got the job done without it. Same applies here, sooner or later you will probably have the need and will be telling yourself how foolish it was to waste the money on something that would need to be upgraded.
 
About the only thing I can think of off hand where an unbalanced patch bay would be useful is for a whole row of single channel inserts on mixers. They are unbalanced on almost every mixer.

Also, some mixers use single jacks for stereo aux returns. They are wired like a headphone jack with tip being (maybe) right and ring being left. A balanced bay might present more of a challenge for that if your stereo effect comes out two different jacks.

Just a thought.
 
trs or not for patchbay

Thanks for the infro on using just trs,but i changed my mind, decided i don,t need it yet.
 
RawDepth said:
About the only thing I can think of off hand where an unbalanced patch bay would be useful is for a whole row of single channel inserts on mixers. They are unbalanced on almost every mixer.

Also, some mixers use single jacks for stereo aux returns. They are wired like a headphone jack with tip being (maybe) right and ring being left. A balanced bay might present more of a challenge for that if your stereo effect comes out two different jacks.

Just a thought.

In the case of non-balanced signals, you can still run them throughy a balanced patchbay. And as for the mixer inserts - they are technically still a TRS jack until you split them off. So, you might very well run each to a single balanced jack on the back of the patchbay, and then use a TRS -> Send/Return TS jacks Y-adapter from the patchbay output anyway.

In general, its just best to go with a balanced, since you can use it for both, and if you aren't running balanced signals now, you are going to want to eventually.
 
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