Studio Cabling

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frederic

frederic

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Greetings,

Upon the signing of the paperwork for my new house, I've decided to wire the studio "the right way", with wiring in between the floor joists rather than wrapped and tied across various surfaces that I wish to not have cabling (like the floor, ceiling, etc).

Anyway, I was wondering two things:

1. Has anyone on this forum done this, and utilized multi-pair audio cable such as Belden, Canare, CMH, GigCables.com, etc?

2. Has anyone on this forum snaked/made digital cables in multi-pair configurations?

Ideally, I'd like to avoid running individual cables the 30' from the console table to the synth racks or recorder racks, to make it easier to snake.

Did anyone use punchdown blocks, or hard wire it? Or use something like ADC patch bays both sides?

Advice would be most appreciated :)

Frederic@xephic.dynip.com

PS. Also, as I construct, I will set aside space on my web server for construction / wiring / setup pictures and details.
 
I don't really have an answer to your question... but why use your own server to post youc pictures of your studio? Join the community and let John and I serve your studio :)

Have you check out our website yet? If you'd like to check it out just as and I'll give you the link. We'd really love to have your pictures at our site. The site is a GREAT place for people to go to check out multiple home recording studios.

Later,
-Brian
 
1) Yes, of cause. Much better to use snakes for any runs, easier to breach walls etc as well.

2) Also yes. Usd to have to run lengths of AES cable, now there are plenty of digital snakes available. Be careful of the spec, I have foung the Beldon to be particularly good.

Punchdown blocks. A lot of people shout about them, I don't. It simply is not as good a connection (and why should you pay a lot for cabling but have a mediocre connection?) Hardwiring is more work, but you'll always be pleased you spend the time.
 
I used Beldon and lots of it. Mogami is good too.
 
Track Rat said:
I used Beldon and lots of it. Mogami is good too.
Click to expand...

So what exactly is that patchbay? What do you use that for?

If I run my mic cables through conduit into the control room, where do I terminate them first? Do I first bring them into a box so I can just plug them into the mixer as I need them? Where does a patchbay come into play? Please explain what that picture is all about.

Later,
-Brian
 
Track Rat said:
I used Beldon and lots of it. Mogami is good too.
Click to expand...

Thank you, very nice pick. I am impressed at how neat your wiring looks there :)
 
Brian Grey said:
I don't really have an answer to your question... but why use your own server to post youc pictures of your studio? Join the community and let John and I serve your studio :)

Have you check out our website yet? If you'd like to check it out just as and I'll give you the link. We'd really love to have your pictures at our site. The site is a GREAT place for people to go to check out multiple home recording studios.

Later,
-Brian
Click to expand...

I've poked around between box packing, but yes, I've seen the nice job you guys have been doing. Thanks for the offer, but I do have a small server farm in the basement thats moving iwth me. WOuld you guys accept a link instead of a slew of pictures? Of course that would save you space :)

I do plan to document the entire construction effort, actually, for future reference.
 
We'd gladly accept a link. The big picture is the very idea of making a "community." I think by making all these pictures available to people in one central location is the idea.

Later,
-Brian
 
Brian Grey said:
We'd gladly accept a link. The big picture is the very idea of making a "community." I think by making all these pictures available to people in one central location is the idea.

Later,
-Brian
Click to expand...

If you (and others) are interested in the console room floorplan, here is the current design I have:

http://xephic.dynip.com/xsp/studio/studio.html

This is not its permanent home, as once I move and get reconnected, I'm going to register a domain specifically for my studio. But until April 20th, you can see what the floorplan looks like :)

In the center will be the console table. Where it says "slanted roof area" to the left of the console table will be the patch bays. Its slanted enough that I can't put stacks of monitors and such, but there is more than enough space for ADC patch bays, even though I didn't draw them in.

To the right is a tiny vocal booth and two 42U (7') equipment racks, which will be bolted to the floor and to the ceiling joists for stability. This is where all the audio gear, including outboards and midi synths, will be housed. The two Emagic AMT8's and the Unitor 8 MKII midi interfaces will be there as well.

At the bottom of the picture you will see four 18U racks. THis amount of space isn't as necessary as it was before because I sold all my adats, the guy just has to come pick them up, so I'll be using Akai DR8's only going forward. But I'm going to build the racks anyway for future expansion. Figure build once, put in blank panels or something.

The two computers will also be mounted in those racks, and since all the DR8s and the computers have fans and hard drives, the mounting of the 18U rails will be isolated via rubber insulation, and the rack fully enclosed with proper cooling not connected to the room air supply. They are only 18U because the ceiling is slanted there, not leaving enough vertical space for one or two taller racks, which is okay. I can't use the space anyway for other things so I figured short racks with cabinetry on top would make the most sense. Put spare cables and IF-TADs and such in the cabinets. The cabinets will be covered with sound proofing materials of course, as would all walls and ceilings, mostly from Auralex.

In the vocal booth you will notice a smaller door. Thats the access door to the racks. Its going to be tight getting in there to wire it up, but I've done worse so its not going to be as bad as it looks.

The "center" speaker is on the console table but under the two 19" monitors, and the sub is below the console table also in the center. They don't show on the picture, but they will be there :)

The top stairs lead outside, the bottom right door leads to a bathroom and the rest of the second floor in the house (which will be deadbolted) and the very bottom door leads to a crawl space to store boxes and other such unsightly junk.

There are some other keyboards I haven't drawn, but will be part of the Rhodes & Yamaha stack on the left hand diagram.

After I move and get my server farm back online with a new domain name, I'll post the link of course and keep adding pictures as I construct. I plan to document every step and the reasons why each step was done that particular way, with pictures if I can find my digital camera when I unpack :)
 
Brian
Those are SwitchCraft 2600 series patchbays. All the connections on the rear are soldered. Almost all the equipment in the room is wired to this point. Things like the compressors, reverbs, preamps, inputs and outputs of the ADATs and the MOTU and such. Channels inserts come up there and are normaled thru. Direct outs and the 8 buss outs from my StudioMaster and Mackie consoles. I can patch damn near anything to anything. I keep the runs as short as possible and haven't picked up any noise thru it. Once you have everything in patchbays, it's hard to work without them.
 
So would a patchbay kind of be the equivalant of the end of a snake, where all the cables are soldered into the female end for easy plugging?

I think I get what it's all about now. I'm an electronics technician, and if I relate this stuff to PLC wiring it makes a lot more sense. If I've got two racks of modules, I may not actually be using all of them right now, but I wire them all to a terminal strip right now, so that if I want to use them at a later date I can.

Tell me if I'm way off base here... I think I've got it though.

Later,
-Brian
 
There are a few more wrinkles, but that's it in a nutshell.
 
The best thing of all with a proper patchbay setup is that you design it so that the setup (with no patch cables in place at all) is normalled for whatever mode you intend to use the most. For me, that's always been tracking: board channel direct outs normalled to the multitrack ins, multitrack outs normalled to the board channel tape returns, line ins normalled to the various play positions around the room, channel inserts normalled through, aux outs to reverb ins, master outs to the 2-track ins, yadda yadda.

So to track in my room, the first thing I do is walk up to the patchbay and *pull out all the cables* on the front: they are only used for _exceptions_, not to establish the basic functionality. Rip them out and you're ready to go. The guitarist/bassist/whatever plugs their direct box into the wall, and it comes up on the appropriate line in with no repatching- and that channel's direct out is already normalled onto a track at the recorder. Ditto the mic inputs (although they don't run through the patchbay). Hang a mic, tune, punch record.

Patchbays certainly also excel at quick setup changes for the inevitable exceptions: for when you want to use some outboard gear on an insert, or you bring in other equipment temporarily. But by far the biggest bang for the buck is in setting up a bulletproof normalling arrangement, so that you can walk up, get to a known ready state, and pull the trigger in the absolute minimum time.

In my room, that's 15 seconds: less, if I don't take time to hang up the patch cords (;-). IMNSHO, there's nothing worse than having to repatch for two hours just to get signals in and out when the inspiration strikes, and you want to track *now*...

I ought to post come pictures of my patching rig. Done right, a patchbay can increase your productivity by an order of magnitude.
 
Can someone please put that in English? What is "normaling"? Explain why someone would want a patchbay. What do you do without one? Once you have one what does it actually do for you? What can you do with one that you never dreamed of doing without one?
 
Just going thru the dramas of working out patch requirements.
Skippy, you only referred to "normalled".......do you use any "half-normalled" patch points and if so on which "ins & outs".
Track Rat, I have a pic of your patch set up here for inspiration ( and frustration), do you have any further advice................maybe someone might like to draw a diagram of their wiring............Nah, maybe not.

Regards.......
 
I'd just like to know exactly what a patchbay does... in terms a 5 year old would understand. Don't use the terms you've been using for years to explain it to someone who doesn't understand the theory.

If I were to explain what studio foam is to someone who thinks it's for sound proofing, and I really wanted that person to understand what it's used for, I wouldn't start talking about room modes right off the bat. I'd use an example... "Go in your bathroom, or a small room in your house, and talk. Do you notice that your voice has a lot more bass to it?" And I'd go on to explaining what it is that causes his voice to sound low, and then I'd explain what you'd use to make it sound more nuetral. Do you understand what I'm trying to understand? It's like you've shown me a picture of an elaborate circuit board, given me the techie terms one would use with his techie friends, and expected me to understand how it works... and then shrug your shoulders when I don't understand.

:) Can you sense my frustration? I've only got a few more months before I know my construction will be done, and I really need to understand how all of this stuff works.

What I've got now is conduit running to each room of my studio, and it runs into the control room. So I've got four conduits ready to be sealed in the wall... I just need to know if I'd be making a big mistake by doing it one way when I should be doing it another way.

Later,
-Brian
 
Brian: keep the faith, I'll post in more detail tomorrow about normalling and why it matters to you. Sorry about that, dude- I thought that you were in on the joke...

For now: the "normal connection" is what happens when there is no patch cord in the front, or user, side of the patchbay. If no exception is made, the normal connection is used. So the tape channel out that appears on the top jack of a pair is "normalled" to the tape return (or maybe line input) on the bottom jack of a pair, which is connected to the tape in on a on the board: e.g., if there is no patch cord in place, channel 11 out on the multitrack (the top jack) is connected *automatically* to "tape monitor 11" in on the board (the bottom jack). Period.

Plug in a patch cord to the top and bottom jacks, and you "break the normal": tape 11 out goes to whereever you route that top patch cord to, say a compressor input. And the signal only gets *back* to the board if you route it back to the bottom jack. Patching makes an *exception* to the normal setup: you steal a signal, mung it, and put it back, and that takes two patch cords: one to route the output from the top jack to whereever, and one to bring it back to the bottom jack.
And sometimes it never comes back, like insert stealing, but that's the advanced course...

But more tomorrow: I have a 7am conference call with a client, and it's 11:45 local time. Gotta sleep first. This stuff really does make sense, and I'll help as much as I can...

And Ausrock: almost all of my patch point pairs are half-normalled. If you have no better plan in mind when you build a patchfield, make every pair of jacks be half-nomalled: that gives you a free 2-way mult on every output point.

I'll post more tomorrow about normals and mults. Really, I will- trust me. Nobody was born knowing this stuff...
 
Ok Brian, I'll try.

Say you have a set-up, just as an example, of a mackie console, three ADATS, a DAT player, a CD player, a cassette player, as well as a couple of pre-amps and some effect gear.
You have a tracking room, and microphone cables, or a snake, running from there to your control room.
We'll stop there, assume there is nothing else for now.

So...... you are going to record a vocal track. In the tracking room you plug in a microphone, the cable comes out in the control room. You grab the end of the cable and plug it into your pre amp. You get another cable and go from your pre amp into your mixer. Another cable goes from the channel output of your mixer to the input of the ADAT, and another bunch of cables go from each channel of your ADAT to the monitoring inputs of your mixer.
You are ready to record. Oh wait, you want that reverb unit on the vocal channel, so you plug the in and outputs of the reverb unit to the inserts of the mixer's chanel strip. Right? Ready to record.

You have finished you recording, mixed it a bit, and want to burn a CD of the results, so you can listen to it in the car. You connect the CD burner's in-and out's to the console's in-and outs. Now the bassplayer doesn't have a CD player in his car, he wants a cassette. So you unplug the CD burner and connect the cassette player, which uses different plugs, so you have to go and find a set of those cords first.

Now you can imagine......... thats a hell of a lot of wires and plugs!! To keep plugging in and unplugging is a lot of work, takes a lot of time, and causes a lot of wear on the equipment.

There is another way of doing it, and that is through a patchbay. Imagine this; You have all your equipment together in a rack. Your effects units, your pre amp, your cassette player, your CD burner, your ADATs, everything. All the inputs and outputs of this equipment are PERMANENTLY CONNECTED into the back of a patchbay, also a rackmount unit, in the top of your equipment rack. At the front of this patchbay each input and output is clearly market as to what it is connected to.
Your console? The same thing. All your inputs and channel inserts go to the back of the patchbay, clearly numbered at the front. All your microphone channels coming from the tracking room, the same thing. Now you have permanently wired-up your entire studio. (also called "hard-wired").

The front of your patchbay consists of rows of inputs, lets say 1/4" jacks, each market as to what is connected to their rear-end.

Lets go back to the original example. You are now going to set-up for tracking vocals, you go into the tracking room and plug your microphone into channel 1.
Go back into the control room. But instead of having to figure out a whole bunch of wiring, you go to the front of the patchbay. Next to your patchbay you have a small rack, in which hang a whole bunch of short (2 to 3 feet) jack to jack cables, which are called patch-cords. You grab one patchcord and plug it into the row of inputs in the patchbay where your microphone cables come in from the tracking room, the one marked Ch1. You plug the other end into the row of connectors market inputs (your console inputs) Ch1.
Instead of haveing to mess around with a bunch of cables, you have made the connection in one spot, with one short little cable. Want to put an effects processor in the chain? Same thing. 2 short cables from the in and outputs to the insets - done. Same with your CD burner, your cassette player, everything.
Nobody is pulling wires in-and out, your wiring is out of the way behind your equipment, it works and it will keep on working, you can change, switch channels, do everything from one spot, all your equipment will appreciate it, and so will you.


http://home.flash.net/~motodata/patchbays/ This is the site of "Mr. Patchbay" A great guy who sells new and used patchbays. He is always prepared to help, you can email him with questions, he will put you right, and he can help you out with a cheap solution.

For a good description of "normalled" etc. and patchbays in general, go to http://www.patchbays.com/

Sweetwater sells the ACE brand of patchbays for 99 bucks, a good patchbay with some good features:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/res...2286318&--eqskudatarq=APB48S&Criteria=Results

I hope this helps, ask if you have any more questions
 
Ok,

I think I'm finally getting an idea of what a patchbay actually does, and it was what I thought it was originally. In my field I do very similar things, using a terminal strip. If I've got a cabinet full of electrical equipment, I wire each device into a terminal strip. A terminal strip consists of terminal blocks, which is nothing more than... on one side of it a wire comes in, you tighten a screw down on it, and on the other end of the block you put another wire and tighten that screw down. So that way I can have each device hard wired to the terminal strip, but not actually going anywhere yet. Then I can use the device as I need without having to deal with the wires that go to that device, I Just wire into the terminal strip, which is labled clearly.

Now I have to think about how I'm going to do this in my studio...
 
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