I am in the process of preparing to start wiring up some of my rack effects to a patchbay. I won the patchbay and a few hundred feet of Mogami 2534 quad cable on eBay, and I'm going to use 40 feet of the cable to make twenty two-foot TRS-TRS cables for connecting my rack gear to the bay, and for patch cables.
I record to an HD24 and mix and sum through my Allen & Heath board. The audio doesn't touch a computer for effects processing or anything until the mixdown stage (I sum through the board to my Echo Layla card). Consequently, when mixing and when tracking, I often connect compressors, gates, etc, via my board's insert points. The inserts are like most consumer-level boards: unbalanced I/O on a single TRS jack. In fact, it seems as if you have to spend an awful lot on a board before you get to the point where your insert sends and returns are on separate balanced connections (even the Ghost has the unbalanced TRS).
I'd guess that the vast majority of people here who use a board for tracking and/or mixing probably have one with the unbalanced TRS inserts. My question is this: have any of you in this situation found that your unbalanced inserts are a problem? If so, what do you do to remedy the issue? Do you balance the connections, either at the board or at the patch bay? Do you use transformers or ICs? Is this even worthwhile, financially? It seems as if buying a slew of transformers or ICs wouldn't be worth it to balance, for example, my board, which would have 36 points that needed it.
I haven't noticed a problem when I was using insert cables directly to the equipment as needed, but I know that running gear through a patchbay also means longer cable lengths. I still plan on wiring the bay as balanced, just because. I'm simply curious as to whether or not there's anything I should be aware of or look out for.
I record to an HD24 and mix and sum through my Allen & Heath board. The audio doesn't touch a computer for effects processing or anything until the mixdown stage (I sum through the board to my Echo Layla card). Consequently, when mixing and when tracking, I often connect compressors, gates, etc, via my board's insert points. The inserts are like most consumer-level boards: unbalanced I/O on a single TRS jack. In fact, it seems as if you have to spend an awful lot on a board before you get to the point where your insert sends and returns are on separate balanced connections (even the Ghost has the unbalanced TRS).
I'd guess that the vast majority of people here who use a board for tracking and/or mixing probably have one with the unbalanced TRS inserts. My question is this: have any of you in this situation found that your unbalanced inserts are a problem? If so, what do you do to remedy the issue? Do you balance the connections, either at the board or at the patch bay? Do you use transformers or ICs? Is this even worthwhile, financially? It seems as if buying a slew of transformers or ICs wouldn't be worth it to balance, for example, my board, which would have 36 points that needed it.
I haven't noticed a problem when I was using insert cables directly to the equipment as needed, but I know that running gear through a patchbay also means longer cable lengths. I still plan on wiring the bay as balanced, just because. I'm simply curious as to whether or not there's anything I should be aware of or look out for.
