Couple of questions?

N

Nathan1984

New member
Ok I have two questions, first question. What is a Patch Bay used for exactly? Second question, I am wanting to upgrade to outboard rack gear, comps, eq's, channel strips, pre-amps. How do I route that stuff say if I had a rack mount channel strip, 8 channel mic pre, compressor, and rack mount eq, and maybe some more dynamics and such?
 
The point of patchbay is that you dont have to crawl to the back of your rack/desk/whatever to connect thing in different way.
You just run the inputs and outputs to the rear of patchbay and then use the front side to connect things as you need. It's just question of comfort and speed..

Now I understand that it is damn fun to tweak the buttons in real life, but you are going to need a big wallet. If I were you I would get a great interface, great preamps and Universal audio DSP card with lot's of great emulations. This bundle seems reasonable:
Universal Audio UAD-2 Octo Custom - Thomann UK Cyberstore

You can't even get a 1176 for that price (a new one).
 
I am planning on getting a 500 series module setup, that's why I asked. I am curious as to how that would be all arranged. I wanna have pre's, comps, and an eq or two in my rack. The 500 series modules are pretty affordable, buy one piece at a time, since me and my partner are working on expanding our studio, we have two people working towards a killer studio. I assume that a patch bay may be a good investment if you are going to a rack setup then as well. I already have some outboard gear, I just wanna know how to get it to point a to point b so to speak.
 
I have a patchbay set up in such a way that 8 points go to the 8 line inputs on my interface. This is around the back.

Now, the outputs from everything else in my rack are patched to other points, again, round the back.

That means on the front I have 8 points which go to my interface, and maybe 20 points that come from all my gear.

I also have inputs to any rack gear patched round the back as well, so the patchbay becomes all my ins and outs on one panel.


That's what they're for, and it means I can plug anything into anything, through anything, and most importantly......from my chair. :)
 
One of the first things to note with a patchbay is that everything you are connecting to it is balanced. Believe me, mixing balanced and unbalanced gear is fraught!

Next you need to sit down and work out how many inputs and outputs you have at present and how many to cater for in the future. You will be staggered at the amount of sockets you will need!

Patchbays are usually wired as "half normalled". This means that the top row of outputs normally feed a signal to the chosen input below it and even when a plug is inserted into the output to grab a feed to something else, the signal is preserved thru' to the bottom socket.
However, jacking into the bottom, input socket breaks the feed from the jack above so that only the external feed gets inputted.

This arrangement saves on an awful lot of patch leads and tangle.

Most patchbays give you the choice of how to wire normalling.

Dave.
 
It probably would help to get my hands on a patchbay and play with it alittle. I am gonna be running a Focusrite pro40, with outboard preamps, like GAP pre73's, and such, a Presonus Studio Channel, and a 500 series with probably two pre's, an eq, a compressor, and a reamper, maybe two eq's. I am thinking about getting a motu pci interface with a breakout box or maybe a rme pcie interface. I already have one pci interface, and two other interfaces, and the focusrite pro40, and I will probably end up getting a octopre to go with the focusrite, basically I wanna get everything set up right where I could record 16 mic's simultaniously, with options to run outboard compressors, eq's, and maybe even pre's to and from my interface(s).
 
ecc83 said:
Next you need to sit down and work out how many inputs and outputs you have at present and how many to cater for in the future. You will be staggered at the amount of sockets you will need!
Click to expand...

Tell me about it man! Fortunatley i did sit down and draw up a sketch of my patchbay before buying cabling and racking everything and, boy howdy, did i need a lot of sockets and balanced jack looms! Well worth it though, it's been a godsend.

when you get around to setting it up Nathan, i do strongly suggest sketching it out first :)
 
Justsomeguy said:
Tell me about it man! Fortunatley i did sit down and draw up a sketch of my patchbay before buying cabling and racking everything and, boy howdy, did i need a lot of sockets and balanced jack looms! Well worth it though, it's been a godsend.

when you get around to setting it up Nathan, i do strongly suggest sketching it out first :)
Click to expand...

Hey! Justfort! Surely somebody somewhere has written some patchbay design software?

After all you can get software to design ships, planes and trains. Gardens, almost anything under the sun!
If the "big" guys like Neutrik don't have design software, free of course, they bloody well should!

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
Hey! Justfort! Surely somebody somewhere has written some patchbay design software?

After all you can get software to design ships, planes and trains. Gardens, almost anything under the sun!
If the "big" guys like Neutrik don't have design software, free of course, they bloody well should!

Dave.
Click to expand...

If it came pre installed with a list of gear and their in' and out's (or some drop down boxes to add gear with number of I/O's and what type of gear it was) so you just add you're outboard and it maps it perfectly to your patchbay to best utilise the space and layout and then printed out labels to stick to your patch bay that'd be AMAZING!!!!!!! :thumbs up: it would save countless hours of sketching and resketching and adjusting templates to fit perfectly. My home patchbay took about an hour to work out and then 2 or 3 tweaks to get "right" and that was to use 32 points. the last time we redid the work one, like moresound, we filled 2 patch bays and then planning for that was horrific as we kept having to tweak it to make it as versatile as possible. A simple bit of software to layout and label patchbays would be a godsend.
 
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