half-normal balanced patchbays?

D

darwin

New member
I want to be able to "mult" the balanced outputs of my preamps in a patchbay so that I can get two outputs from each preamp output. I want one output to feed the tape deck, and I want one output to feed the monitoring system. Is it possible for a patchbay to do this? If so, can anybody give a solid recommendation for one?

Thanks in advance
 
Any balanced patchbay that can be set up for half-normal connections will allow you to do that. I personally only use the telephone-type bays, but they are more expensive and arguably overkill for the home studio, compared to the jacks-front-and-back TRS bays. There are a number of manufacturers of those with usable products: all have their supporters and detractors. Do a quick search here on "patchbay" and "reliable", and you'll find lots of discussion of them.

If I were going to buy one myself, I'd go with either the Neutrik or Furman units- but that's based on gut feel and respect for the companies, not on direct usage. Maybe somebody else will weigh in here...
 
Most "off the shelf" 1/4" patchbays are pretty flimsy, and tend to develop dead patch points after repeated use. On the other hand, they're pretty cheap, and you don't have to do any soldering.

If you want to get something that is of significantly higher quality than the typical Neutrik, Rean, ProCo, etc, I highly recommend:

Audio Accessories, Inc.
www.patchbays.com
 
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Any balanced patchbay that can be set up for half-normal connections will allow you to do that.
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I hate to admit it, but I have two Hosa patch bays. I am ashamed of it, and I should probably be flogged, but I got them before I really knew too much about them. The model that I have is a PHB-265, and in the owner's manual, it states that the patch bay is not a balanced patch bay if it is set in half-normal mode.

I guess this patch bay is an exception to the rule which really wouldn't surprise me.

At any rate, thanks for your responses.
 
OK, after taking your input and running with it, I now have another question. Is there a patch bay out there that is 100% XLR female input on the back, XLR female input on the front, and is half-normal?
 
For Darwin: no, there's no such thing as a half-normal XLR patchbay. I'm not aware of any female XLR jacks that have the switching means necessart to do normalling. The Neutrik combo connectors do, but the contacts only switch when you insert a 1/4" TRS plug into them. Nobody has ever developed that capability in a straight XLR, and it's not clear that you'd really want to- XLRs are used primarily for mic level signals, and you really won't want normalling contacts in that path if you can avoid it.

Normalling really implies TRS- whether 1/4" or bantam-sized. Sorry about that...

And yes, solder lugs in back is the hot setup. You really don't want any more plug/jack pairs in your signal paths than you can help. Normalling contacts on real (telephone-type) patchbays are usually a palladium alloy, and they are designed to mate with a sliding action and wipe themselves clean with every mate-demate cycle: similarly, the contact fingers that contact those funny-shaped plugs are set up so that they wipe a clean contact patch every time. Regular 1/4" TRS jacks may or may not wipe well on the plug (to get oxides, skin oils, and spooge out of the way), but their normalling contacts are just vertical-moving switch contacts, and they really don't wipe well enough to be reliable in the long term.

The longframe telephone-style bays were designed for reliable operation over million-cycle lifespans, and the regular TRS jacks just aren't as robust. You can certainly make a case that none of us will live long enough to put a million cycles on our patchbays, and buying the extra reliability is a waste of money... but I hate those intermittent crunchies with a passion. Give me solder joints and telco-spec connectors whereever possible, just so I don't have to worry about them!
 
Skippy, I have to say that you are the man on patch bays (You may be the man on other things, and I suspect that you are). I have read your other posts regarding them, and you are an excellent reference. Thanks for your input. One thing that you said made me think.



Nobody has ever developed that capability in a straight XLR, and it's not clear that you'd really want to- XLRs are used primarily for mic level signals, and you really won't want normalling contacts in that path if you can avoid it.
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Hmm, since I am trying to "mult" the outputs of my preamps so that I can split the signal to tape and to monitoring system, am I doing something that I shouldn't be. I want to degrade the signal hitting the tape as little as possible.
 
Thanks for the kind words! I try to help a little bit...

Multing the outputs of the preamps should be a nonissue: any good preamp will have drive capability enough to handle being multed 2, 3 or even 4 ways (assuming the loads are modern bridging inputs, like 99% of the gear is nowadays). What you *don't* want to mult, and what you don't want to have any more contacts in series with than you can possibly help, is the mic-level signal on the _input_ of the pre. That's why I made that comment.

Keep the mic wiring as simple as possible, directly into the input of the pre- and then from the output of the pre on you can take all sorts of liberties with the signal, and mung it to your heart's content, without much in the way of worries.

If you absolutely have to split the mic signal *before* the preamp (which is a crime against nature, but sometimes it happens), you really need to use a dual-secondary transformer splitter box to control the loading. You can't just hang two inputs off a mic, like multing a line-levell output...
 
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