Another patchbay question

[broland]

Hello all,
I'm interested in hooking up some sort of patching system for snake/ to preamp selection. I'm running a DIGI 002r w/ 1 Focusrite Octopre running straight into the XLR inputs on the 002, I've got another Octopre running through a Apogee 800 and into the toslink of the 002r, then I have a ART Digital MPA 2 channel preamp running it's digital out into the spdif of the 002r.

I use a 8 channel snake in my project studio setup and I would like some sort of patching system to be able to choose which preamp the output of each of the snake's channel is going to. One might ask why not buy a bigger snake, but I plan on getting more preamp's as time goes on.

I have no experience with patchbay's and was interested in price/quality models (I’ve had bad experience with behringer), as well as quality connectors for the XLR > 1/4.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated

Brandon

 

[Hollowdan]

Hey Brandon, I have 4 ADC TT patch bays in my home studio and 3 ADC TT patch bays in a studio that I built and work at full time. Both studios record in 24bit 96khz (which is clear enough to make any little noise/hum/hiss stick out like a sore thumb) and with the ADC TT's I must say they are pristine in sound quality. For instance I run 2 mics on the kick one of which (senn. E602) goes through a snake from the main room to the control room (50' horizon, hand wired to gold plated neutrik connectors) straight to a Mackie 32x8 out the direct out to the patch bay, patched to a DBX 120a which is patched into a DBX 160a (with the sub out of the 120a patched into a presonus ACP88) and then patched into the patch bay which runs to a MOTU 24i/o into the computer. In other words I run a single signal from my kick mic through the patch bay many times before it gets to the computer and still not even a tiny little bit of noise. IF you want a quality patch bay setup, the only thing I can recommend is an ADC TT (TT stands for tiny telephone, which means you will have to get special "long throw TT cables" to use in the patch bay) ADC TT patch bays are what you see in almost every big recording studio. You can get them in punch block style or hand wired style. I have punch block's at my home studio and handwired at the big studio, I can't tell the difference in sound between them. Both are amazingly clean patchbays. I also own several other patchbays like Furman, Re'an, DBX and others and none of them are half as good as the ADC's. All the other patch bays I own are a tiny bit noisy. With today's digital clarity it is impossible to use an inexpensive patch bay without adding noise to your recordings. If you can afford ADC TT patch bays go for it, otherwise you will have to keep plugging and unplugging cables to reconnect things. The ADC's usually go for around $400 and up each (48 channels per unit) but you can sometimes find some on ebay cheaper. However the cables are also about $20-25 each for 6"-1' and will probably not be as easy to find on ebay. Whirlwind is the U.S. distributor for ADC so anyone who stocks whirlwind can get you these patchbays and whirlwind also has the long throw TT cables as well. *don't worry even though it says whirlwind on the patchbays and cables they ARE made bye ADC and will not be the usual whirlwind garbage".
Hope this helps.