Farview
Well-known member
In my first studio, I did have everything going to the patchbay. For the same reason, I wanted to be able to patch anything to anything else.
However, after a few years, I realized that there was never any reason to send snake channel 7 to channel 23 on the mixer...ever. so I just plugged the snake into the mixer channels and if I wanted a Mic plugged into channel 23 on the mixer, I plugged it into channel 23 on the snake.
I used the extra channels on the snake to feed my outboard preamps. Again, I would select the preamp by plugging the Mic into the appropriate channel of the snake.
I had all the line inputs of the mixer going to a patchbay, as well as the outputs of the outboard preamps. That way, i could assign any preamp to any channel.
The rest of the patchbay was the inserts, compression, outboard effects returns (the inputs of the effects were hard wired to the aux sends, since I had more sends than effects units)
The tape machine returns were hard wired to the tape returns on the mixer because, again, there was no compelling reason to bring tape track 5 into mixer channel 8.
Yes, you can use normalling to kelp from having to patch every single thing, every single time, but it's a waste of time, money and cables to set up for a scenario that never happens.
However, after a few years, I realized that there was never any reason to send snake channel 7 to channel 23 on the mixer...ever. so I just plugged the snake into the mixer channels and if I wanted a Mic plugged into channel 23 on the mixer, I plugged it into channel 23 on the snake.
I used the extra channels on the snake to feed my outboard preamps. Again, I would select the preamp by plugging the Mic into the appropriate channel of the snake.
I had all the line inputs of the mixer going to a patchbay, as well as the outputs of the outboard preamps. That way, i could assign any preamp to any channel.
The rest of the patchbay was the inserts, compression, outboard effects returns (the inputs of the effects were hard wired to the aux sends, since I had more sends than effects units)
The tape machine returns were hard wired to the tape returns on the mixer because, again, there was no compelling reason to bring tape track 5 into mixer channel 8.
Yes, you can use normalling to kelp from having to patch every single thing, every single time, but it's a waste of time, money and cables to set up for a scenario that never happens.