Normal, or not to Normal

[frederic]

No, I'm not normal

Regaring patch bays, I just finished removing all the wire wrapping from the prior installation - what a pain.

That said, looking closely at the ADC jacks, there are three. Right now the top two jacks are mechanically connected together, and the bottom jack has little wrapped wires in parallel wtih the topmost jack.

I could easily remove the little wrapped wires, making the top two jacks together, and the bottom jack isolated (except for chassis ground). I probably will do this.

However, I was originally thinking making the top bay in the rack (all 144 jacks) the I/O of the mixers, but I'm thinking maybe I should decide what gear I'll use normally, and leave this normalled configuration as-is and just spread everything out.

The question then becomes, which instruments (Synths) do I want to normal into this.

Ugh. It never gets easy, does it. What do you all think? Normal, not normal, a combination?

Thanks for any ideas. I think I'm asking because after removing 672 little wire wrap wire my eyes/brain has become less functional.

Thanks!

Frederic

 

[skippy]

Spread out! Don't try and pack it all in. You'll need room for the inevitable reconfigs that you'll be doing later.

*Definitely* spend some time with a big pad of paper, and do up a normalling map. You'll certainly want a mix of half-normals, full-normals, parallels, and opens. Only you can know what your gear is, and how you want to run it.

Board direct outs (or sub outs) to tape ins: half normal (so you can mult off the send).
Tape outs to tape monitor ins: half normal.
Tie lines from the studio to line ins on the board- full normal (since you'll often want to temporarily reconfig them, and maybe back-drive a signal back into the studio on tghe same pair).
Aux busses to headphone buffer amps, your favorite reboing, other outboard gear that you _know_ you'll be using 80% of the time: half normal.
Channel inserts: half normal the send to the return, so you can mult off the send without breaking the normal...
Tie lines to the equipment racks: open, unless there are series combos you use all the time (like that vintage parametric into the LA2A for mastering, right?), in which case you hand half-normal the outs of one to the ins of the next.
Sidechain I/O from the compressors: half-normal. Put the parametric EQ I/Os nearby, too. If you're gutsy and you de-ess a lot, full-normal the parametrics into the sidechains! Think about it...
Mults: build at least 6 4-way mults in hard parallel- 10 would be better. And then build at least 6 more fork-tailed-monster patch cords (one plug that mults to 2: who said that patch cables could only have 2 plugs?). You can almost never have enough mults.

Map it out first. That'll save your bacon, sir...

Remember: full normals disconnect the default path whether you put a plug into either the send jack or the return jack. Half-normals only disconnect the default when you plug into the return jack. Hard parallels never disconnect no matter what, and opens have no default route no matter what. Enjoy!

 

[frederic]

Spread out! Don't try and pack it all in. You'll need room for the inevitable reconfigs that you'll be doing later.

Thanks for replying Skippy! Actually, I'm trying to pack it in. I am unsure why I am worried about packing it all in so densely, as I have 8U worth of 144pt. TT ADC wire wrap bays I'm cleaning up, one 96pt. TT ADC wire wrap bay, and three 48pt. 1/4" soldered bays (which I finished cleaning up the easy way - MP torch).

You forced me to think about this again, so thank you. I'll delay the delivery of "transportation" to Mr. Roel LOL (see other thread).

*Definitely* spend some time with a big pad of paper, and do up a normalling map. You'll certainly want a mix of half-normals, full-normals, parallels, and opens. Only you can know what your gear is, and how you want to run it.

Yeah, I'm going to have to re-do my spreadsheet and put some thought into the normalling. Originally, everything was going to require patch cords, which isn't a problem as I have a box of 250 TT cords sitting here unopened.

Mults: build at least 6 4-way mults in hard parallel- 10 would be better. And then build at least 6 more fork-tailed-monster patch cords (one plug that mults to 2: who said that patch cables could only have 2 plugs?). You can almost never have enough mults.

Yep, completely agree. I also have to take one row off the 144pt. TT bay (which is 48pts) and solder it up to one of the 1/4" bays just in case I need to borrow gear and patch it in like a slob. Saves the hassle of looking for 1/4" to TT patch cords, which I have somewhere, but on the day I need them, won't be able to find them LOL.

Remember: full normals disconnect the default path whether you put a plug into either the send jack or the return jack. Half-normals only disconnect the default when you plug into the return jack. Hard parallels never disconnect no matter what, and opens have no default route no matter what. Enjoy!

Thank you sir!!!

 

[skippy]

Frederic wrote: "Originally, everything was going to require patch cords, which isn't a problem as I have a box of 250 TT cords sitting here unopened. "

Aaack! Ouch! Hopefully, I've successfully encouraged you to reconsider that. Having to patch everything, everytime, is an absolute back breaker. It may seem that a lot of patch cables will go in and stay in (to establish the basic setup)- but the only problem is, when you're repatching for a new setup, 25% of the time you'll grab and move the wrong cable, and break something in the basic setup- especially when you're using fully-packed TT bays. The bad news is that usually you break something that will be very time-consuming to find.

In my not-at-all-humble opinion, you want a well thought out default patch for tracking, set up with normalling and *not* with patch cables: so that even if you and the talent and the producer are all blind drunk and half way through the second fifth of Sudden Discomfort, you can grab all the patch cables, pull them all _out_, and successfully go tracking.

That's a contrived example, of course. It's worse when they're being paid scale, and the cost for the downtime is coming out of your billing. But believe me when I say that *nothing* kills creativity worse than being ready to track and having everything nearly ready to go, except that the guitarist can't hear himself and there's only the left channel of the keyboard rack, not the right. Everybody then gets to sit on their hands while the engineer debugs the patch. It's maybe worst of all when you are both the talent and the engineer: the thread of creativity gets away very quickly when you can't get the frim-frammin' signal from HERE to THERE, deadgummit, and it ought to go...

Not fun. Been there, done that, got the tee shirt, use it to change my oil in these days. The more elaborate the rig (and it sounds like yours is going to be _world-class_ elaborate!), the more critical having a completely functional baseline becomes. It is an absolute *lifesaver* being able to just strip the bays and then do real work, even if you don't _like_ Sudden Discomfort, and don't plan on having pissant producers and talent that works for scale to deal with... (;-)

 

[frederic]

Aaack! Ouch! Hopefully, I've successfully encouraged you to reconsider that. Having to patch everything, everytime, is an absolute back breaker. It may seem that a lot of patch cables will go in and stay in (to establish the basic setup)- but the only problem is, when you're repatching for a new setup, 25% of the time you'll grab and move the wrong cable, and break something in the basic setup- especially when you're using fully-packed TT bays. The bad news is that usually you break something that will be very time-consuming to find.

I'm easy to convince... you used logic, and logic I get quickly. Normalled it will be.

But of course, now I have the painstaking event of figuring out ahead of time what I want to patch to what. I read your message earlier today, then started up Excel and began to map it out. I thought (at first) "Hmmm, should be fairly straight forward". Um, not

You can grab all the patch cables, pull them all _out_, and successfully go tracking.

Heh-heh. YOu have never seen how I run a studio. No one near the console but the engineer. At the old place we used to have a $5 "knob fee", and rudely enforced it. Maybe I need a "patch cord fee". LOL. Kidding aside, I got your point loud and clear.

Not fun. Been there, done that, got the tee shirt, use it to change my oil in these days. The more elaborate the rig (and it sounds like yours is going to be _world-class_ elaborate!), the more critical having a completely functional baseline becomes. It is an absolute *lifesaver* being able to just strip the bays and then do real work, even if you don't _like_ Sudden Discomfort, and don't plan on having pissant producers and talent that works for scale to deal with... (;-)

world class elaborate? I'll take that as a compliment. Though, my choice of words would have been "World Class Wire Dump"