Patchbay Advice?

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Dr. Varney

Dr. Varney

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Not sure where to put this thread, but anyway...

I think I understand the basic principle of the 'patchbay', in that it makes it easier to route a lot of complicated cables from one place to another, without having to desk-dive to change out connections between gear.

Because I like to move things around in the signal chain and because I'm still learning by experimentation, plus I am looking at expanding my rig with some analogue gear, I figured now might be the time to be looking at a patchbay.

Firstly, Id like some opinions on this 48 way jobbie:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/48-Way-Jack-Patchbay-/260632303162?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_Mixers&hash=item3caee5563a

Secondly, how do these things normally work in practice? I mean, if I bought one tomorrow and one arrived, I'm not sure I'd know what to do with it and I doubt any instructions would come supplied.

Does everything plug into the back ready to be chosen with short wires at the front or is it that the top row of sockets are ins and the bottom row are the outs or vice versa/whatever?

I haven't explained that very well, have I... If anyone could supply me with a typical example of how it would be rigged up in some given situation, I would be most grateful.

Thanks in advance

Dr. V
 
Well, that's a good article and thanks for posting but I've sat down and given it some thought on the issue of whether or not I really need a patchbay.

The point is, I do have a mixer for various inputs but I also desire to swap between and add computers which access the mixer; and I don't want to disturb the way the outs are rigged. Now I could build something myself very simply, which addresses this particular problem but then, I am starting to look towards purchasing more hardware in future so I'm thinking getting one now would make my studio more future ready.

So, yeah, right now, 48 ways to solve one simple problem...maybe... but in the long term, it could end up solving many more problems, if I get it now.

If it was any more money than this, I probably wouldn't bother but it strikes me - £20 for a 48-way bay - as an opportunity I don't want to miss.

Dr. V
 
If you can easily get at the back of your gear where the I/Os are usually found...and you only have a handful (or two) of different pieces...it's not necessary to go with a patchbay.

With a lot of gear and all of it being inside of racks...getting to the backs is not easy...so patchbays rule. Also, if you want to use (connect/disconnect) some pieces to a bunch of other/different pieces...over and over...it does get to be a drag even if you CAN get to the backs of the gear....plus, you kinda' start to wear out the connectors on the gear instead of the patchbays.

I have no choice, I need the patchbays for the flexibility and easy connections. Also, with balanced lines, a few extra feet of wire is not that significant. Most commercial studios have lots of patchbays...without fear of signal degradation.
 
I disagree with Miroslav because the more you change mechanical connections between plugs and jacks, the sooner they wear out. I'd rathe destory (over time) a $100 patch bay instead of my console, my outboards, and so on.

Generally, replacing all those jacks on that gear is about the same cost as installing a patch bay and soldering up all the wiring to begin with, but the savings is in downtime. Resoldering a patchbay is less time consuming than dismantling semi-fragile equipment to replace 4-10 jacks in each.

Just my opinon.

The auction you posted is expired so I wasn't able to see what kind of bay it is, but there are two basic kinds.

The first kind has jacks on the front and the back, and they typically are one to one going through the unit. Some have interesting "normalling" capabilities meaning that two jacks next to each other can also act as a "Y" cord in a sense, unless you plug into the two jacks on the front, and the back.

The other kind of patch bay has jacks on the front, but wire-wrap or solder lugs on the back, and those get hard-wired to your equipment. Typically you solder on a balanced audio cable to the back of the jack, then solder on a balanced plug on the other end and stick it into your equipment, semi-permanently.

I have 13, 52-jack 1/4" patch bays in my equipment rack at the back of my control room, and wire between that and another set of patch bays in the front of the room behind my console table, and that is what interconnects the equipment in the front and the equipment in the back, without crap being all over the floor. It was a lot of soldering - I worked on it each night for several months... but it was well worth it.

I bought used ADC patch bays off someone on ebay to reduce costs because new, they're very expensive. I didn't want to use those $50 cheapo patch bays because I wanted to wire it once, and die before it needs to be rewired.
 
They look like the standard plastic shell, spring on the motherboard type jacks, front and back - no soldering.
 
frederic said:
I disagree with Miroslav because the more you change mechanical connections between plugs and jacks, the sooner they wear out. I'd rathe destory (over time) a $100 patch bay instead of my console, my outboards, and so on.
Click to expand...

I don't think you read my post correctly....you're saying the same thing I said. :)

miroslav said:
.......plus, you kinda' start to wear out the connectors on the gear instead of the patchbays.
Click to expand...

I agree....it's better to save your gear and wear out the patchbays.
I use the TT/Bantam patchbays by ADC. True, they are more expensive...but worth it, since they are heavy duty PBs with thick metal contact springs that are good for thousands of insertions, and you also have more I/O points for a single rack space patchbay than you get with the 1/4" ones.
It's easy to remove a single I/O point on them and drop in a new one should one ever go band...but they don't go bad as quickly as the less expensive 1/4", nylon sleeve patchbays....I think I've replaced one I/O point in the last 10 years when I accidentally bent one of its contact springs when soldering some new cables.
 
I'm glad I've bought this. I think it's a positive step towards expanding my rig with hardware. I'm not going all hardware, all of a sudden - but I think you know what I mean.

I've given this some thought and it would definitely suit my way of thinking better to use my DAW computer for recording tasks and do my actual mixing and applying of effects through hardware, to get to a kind of 'hybrid' method which uses the advantages of both.

Part of the reason I started routing out to my mixer and back in is due to me discovering the reverb on my mixer is just so much more sophisticated sounding and clean, compared with the VSTs I was using. I also prefer to track volume changes with the mixer in real time to automation. I can use automation for other things but crossfading and volume sliding feels so much more positive and puts me more in touch with the mix, if that makes sense...?

Dr. V
 
Dr. Varney said:
I've given this some thought and it would definitely suit my way of thinking better to use my DAW computer for recording tasks and do my actual mixing and applying of effects through hardware, to get to a kind of 'hybrid' method which uses the advantages of both.
Click to expand...
This is one of the things I love about our new studio setup, where we're using a Presonus digital mixer that has full 16x18 simultaneous I/O via Firewire between the mixer and the DAW computer.

By snaking the channel inserts to the batch bay (24-pair Neutrik) half-normaled and our outboard iron un-normaled, we have immediate front-panel access to the inserts on all channels during tracking or up to 16 DAW mixing channels and two mix bus channels, which we can patch at will through our outboard compressor (Pro VLA) or EQ/limiter (dbx2215), with some room for a little more outboard expansion.

Being able to seamlessly run our recorded tracks through the outboad analog stuff without having to go out and buy an bunch of extra D/A//A/D conversion is great.

G.
 
It makes perfect sense to me.

I had a patchbay when I ran a simple four-track setup in the '80's, but it was a neccesity back then without any sends and no inserts on the channels.

I'm going to be rigging up a patchbay for my current setup pretty soon, but at this time I have enough in's and out's to be able to use all the hardware without repatching. But the time is coming soon.
 
I think for most of the "homerecording" members, it is not going to be logical to use a patchbay.

1) most dont have 20 pre's to choose from to send to the interface
2) most dont mix OTB and use 10 different pieces of outboard gear
3) most dont want to speed a bunch of money making/buying two times the more cables.
 
So as not to hyjack this thread......I have a Question regarding patch bays in the rack forum under RNC question if people following this thread can take a look and help me out. Thanks.





:cool:
 
gcapel said:
I think for most of the "homerecording" members, it is not going to be logical to use a patchbay.

1) most dont have 20 pre's to choose from to send to the interface
2) most dont mix OTB and use 10 different pieces of outboard gear
3) most dont want to speed a bunch of money making/buying two times the more cables.
Click to expand...

Yes but when a patchbay becomes affordable, as this one is, of the six or eight ways I'm going to use, I think I can put up with the other 40 not doing anything. Maybe I'll stick some fairy lights in the spare sockets so it looks like something deliciously complicated for when my friends come round... :laughings: :drunk:

Dr. V
 
I have all my outboard gear patch bayed and it makes it very easy to insert preamps, eq, reverbs or one of my stomp boxes for precessing sounds. I also use it to route signals from my keys and synths.
 
Dr. Varney said:
Maybe I'll stick some fairy lights in the spare sockets so it looks like something deliciously complicated for when my friends come round... :laughings: :drunk:
Click to expand...
Or, if you don't want to mess with the lights, an empty patchbay is great for practicing one's old Lilly Tomlin telephone operator impression: "Is this party to whom I am speaking? Snort snort." ;)

----

While it may be true that many home reckers don't have much beyond an mAudio FasTrack and wouldn't need a patch bay, there are still many thousands of home reckers who are running more prosumer installations. One look at the "show us your studio" thread on this BBS (I forget which forum it's in) will show the large number of home setups these days that could benefit greatly from the addition of a simple $100 patch bay.

And it doesn't require having a large inventory of hardware to make it worthwhile. All we have so far is a 16x4x2 mixer, a compressor, and a limiter/EQ, which is not at all uncommon for an amateur or home setup, and the patch bay is invaluable for that.

G.
 
10-20 years ago I was the patch bay king. I had everything hard wired. As time went on I found I kept on doing the same things and gradually did away with all of them.

I would avoid any of the cheap patch bays like Tascam and such - they're garbage. I liked the high end ones from ADC and such - the ones with the long jacks. I don't like the types that have stuff like RCA's on the back. Long jacks are the best connector on the planet. I use long jacks on homemade boxes and for gig setup stuff. I've never had a long jack fail, even if it was 50 years old it worked like new.

If you have a patch bay you should get a 1/4" burnisher from Markertek and a can of Deoxit D5. I used to have a sticker on my patch bay and cleaned and dated it every few months.

One thing I liked on my patch bay was that I took some unused points and connected them together so that I always had a splitter handy and took a few more and connected them together with 10k resistors so I always had a sum'er handy too.
 
Some of you people just damn know everything. Hell, I have two neutrik patchbay's collecting dust in my closet right now. I just don't want to pay for the materials to make 13 thousand patch cables.

I know some of you can't get around tight places. So in that reguard, yes a patchbay would be very useful.:laughings:
 
gcapel said:
I know some of you can't get around tight places. So in that reguard, yes a patchbay would be very useful.:laughings:
Click to expand...
Hey, you like food as much as I do and you try crawling around behind the rack all the time ;) :D

Sure, if all one is doing is recording themselves as a hobby, the convenience factor isn't very important, I'll agree. But many of us do record others regularly as well - there are all sorts of "home recorders" besides just the hobbyists - and A) it sure isn't a good business presentation to the client to be crawling around on all fours wrangling cables, and 2) the gear gets used more often, and as mentioned earlier, plugging/unplugging stuff on the back of the mixer and the outboard gear all the time - especially in dark, tight quarters - is not a great idea. Id' rather put the wear on the patch bay than on the more expensive gear.

The cables aren't all that bad to buy; we have 2 6ft 8-TRS snakes, 4 2-ft TRS cables and a handful of 12" patch cords for the front. Total negotiated package price of about $100. Add the $100 that the patchbay itself cost, and for the price of an el-cheapo entry level condenser you're cooking with gas, no soldering required.

Patch bays are not for everybody to be sure. But to write them off just because somebody is working out of their house or garage is ignoring a large segment of the amateur recording market. I've been using one for some 11 years now, both at home *and* on a mobile rack for live and location recording, and I wouldn't do without one now.

To each their own. :)

G.
 
The message that came through this morning:

Hi
These all have jacks at the rear ie another 48

All the best
Ryan
Click to expand...

Excellent, thanks all who answered! Just a case of waiting for the postman now. :)

Dr. V
 
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