new to patchbay...

B

Bugz

New member
Hi gang! first time poster. I hope someone can help me out regarding wiring my interface, patchbay & gear.

This is what i am working with.

Apogee Ensemble firewire
Samson S-Patch
Ensoniq EPS 16plus (rack)
MPC 2000xl
technics 1200 + dj mixer (2 channels)
Juno 106
Korg MS2000
Nord 2
Yamaha TX81z
2-DBX 160x compressors
midi keyboard
iMac using Logic 9

my question is how do i connect all the gear to apogee then to patchbay. Is there one way that is more effective/efficient than the other?

hope this isn't a silly question.

thanks for any help

b
 
It's simpler than most people make it or think it. :)

A PB is about Inputs and Outputs.
You take all you gear Inputs and connect them to one row on the PB from the back, and your Outputs to the other row.
The standard approach is to connect your gear Outputs to the top row, and your Inputs to the bottom.
Looking at it from the front then, the signals come out of the top and go into the bottom points.

So...your Apogee I/Os would also be connected to the PB as described above. To send a signal to the Apogee from some other gear...you take the output signals from any of the other gear (top row) and with patch cables, patch them to the input points of the Apogee (bottom row).

That's it....that's as simple as it gets.

We can talk about normal and half-normal setups after you get the above clear...but in a nutshell, normal and half-normal allow you to use the PB more efficiently by keeping some equipment always patched internally at the PB to other equipment...so you don't have always use patch cables...and you can break that "normal" connection or split (half-normal) connections when you need to send those signals to different equipment.

I've got an extensive PB setup...like several PBs with several hundred connection points, and I don't bother with normalled or half normalled. I prefer to patch all my I/Os as needed at the front. It's a more deliberate, conscious action, and it also requires more PBs/points, and time to patch, but I like it like that...so whatever works for you.


Read this: Getting Reconnected | Emusician
 
Miro described it perfectly. With your setup I can't see the need to normal anything. When I had the big studio, I had tons of patch points. I'm pretty sure the only ones that were normalled were the channel inserts on the mixer. If they weren't normalled, I would have to have them patched all the time, otherwise the board wouldn't work...
 
Rather neatly, that Samson patch bay has front panel switches for Normal, 1/2 Normal etc so you can decide what is best for you for each section without fannying about inside with jumper plugs or worse, solder links. Consider if you might need two feeds from certain sources?

I don;t know if you are going to make up you own cables but if so remember you don't need anything at all special, even "ruggerd" for the rear "static" lines and 4mm foil screened balanced cable is MUCH faster to strip and prepare than braided stuff (better RF screen as well) and the drain wire make for much easier soldering. Jack plugs too need be nothing expensive.

If you ARE going to roll your own, buy a cable tester that show ring-tip polarity, an OOP cable can give very weird results that are hard to track down once everything is done and dusted.

Dave.
 
See, I always prefer to normal everything I possibly can. Call me lazy or whatever, but if it gets me up and running quicker with less "engineer thinking" required then I can get to "performer thinking" more quickly and easily, and that can be important.

If I'm counting correctly, you've got more outs than ins, so you will obviously have to patch things in and out, but I bet you've got an idea of which of them you're going to use most often. I'd guess the MPC and/or the DJ setup really form the foundation of most of what you're doing. Why not (half-)normal them in so you're ready to rock right away. Prioritize a little, normal in the ones you're most likely to use and then patch in the others for "special occasions".
 
If you can leave your normal connections untouched most of the time...then yeah, might as well do that.
Though if you end up never touching them, you might ask why you even bothered with the PB, 'cuz it just added an extra set of cables and I/Os to your signal path.

There's nothing in my setup that would benefit from normalling. My console regularly goes go from having the DAW hooked up to it, to having my tape deck hooked up to it....the outboard gear is selectively used...and even my keyboards might sometimes go direct to tape deck or toDAW or to mixer...etc.
I would end up patching all the time anyway just to break the normals! :D

Not to mention...the patching/re-patching helps keep the points clean...and I'm not that lazy. ;)
Really though...I like patching as needed because it gives me that moment to rethink what I want and how I want it...IOW, it resets the signal path picture in my head. :)
 
Well, different strokes I suppose. TBH, I'm currently mostly using my patchbays as ways to get to the holes in the back of the rack, but I like to have access to the things I "never" change, too. I almost never need to re-patch the connection from the main out to the monitor controller, but it's really nice to be able to on the odd occasion I want to listen to the laptop itself in the studio, or to be able to split that main signal out to the laptop for live streaming. I keep my 8 pres normalled to the first 8 ins on my "interface", but I only ever really use two of them. Everything else just gets patched into the bottom holes on the PB as needed. For the live rig, I need access to the inputs on the back of the US1641, and I'm not going to dig around back there in the dark in a club when all I want to do is rock.

But then, I've gotten away from hardware altogether. When I had the big rack, I was sharing the space with other people and it was as much a jam space as a studio. It was important that my "partners" not have to re-patch everything every time they wanted to play for a while. It was also important that I not have to unfuck whatever they did every time I wanted to accomplish something. We had individual instrument stations with default signal paths and everybody came up on the same channel and the same track every time unless we decided to change something.
 
Oddly, I'm the reverse and have my patchbays working with as few cables in them as I can. So in my setup, I have my sources pretty well permanently connected to the mixer channels - with 12 channels pretty well left alone. The racks, however, are full of gear I have bought over the years and from time to time, when I want just that synth, or ancient drum sound, I'll over patch them, coming up somewhere sensible, and not on another mixer layer. So I just drew out my mixer channels, and all my sources, and figured out my usual starting point in terms of sound sources - These I normalled (well. half-normalled to be exact). Most of my less used gear comes in on a different patchy, so I'll only insert cables for the more unusual sessions.

I've been lucky with cleaning - having one of those hollow jacks you can plug in and rotate, squirting cleaner down the centre, and noise has never been an issue.

I guess you do what you will find most convenient.
 
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