Uses of Patchbays

[studiomaster]

Can you guys clear up my head with the confusion of patchbays?
What exactly is their significance in a studio? Examples would really help

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

You have a full rack or three full of equipment that are rarely put together in the same signal chain or the same tracks or busses from one session to the next. You have a choice:

- constantly be crawling beind the racks with a flashlight in your mouth, wrestling with a spaghetti bowl of hanging cables and cords of differing lengths and path directions connecting and re-connecting gear as needed.

or

- you can neatly and (semi)permanently wire all your I/O from all your boxes to the rear of a patch bay, neatly and logically label the jacks on the front of the patch bay, and literally within seconds grab a couple of patch cords of equal length (no need to search for the right one) from your cable rack or drawer and connect together anything to anywhere in any order you desire without getting out of your chair. Additionally you can at a moment's glance see just what is indeed connected to what, and change it on the fly, something you can't do without the patch bay without crawling behind your racks again. Finally, you can internally design the patch paths to have certain default signal chains that can be changed via the patch cords and can be returned to at any time simply by removing those same patches.

G.

 

[ssscientist]

In a perfect studio in which money is no object, every input and every output from every device would be available on a patchbay to allow anything to be patched into anything else.

In practice this almost never happens.

The purpose of a patch bay is much the same as an insert point in a channel path, and the ins and outs of those are frequently the first thing brought to a modest (home studio) compliment of patch bays. Having the input and the output on a patchbay allows you to plug in, for example, a compressor without crawling around behind the rack. It's also possible to make chains of processors and effects while sitting like a gentleman in your chair--- again without getting all dirty crawling around behind the rack.

In order to have a patch bay not interrupt the flow of signals, it's important to 'normal' the bay so that unless a jack is inserted in one of the ins or outs of the mixer the signal will be uninterrupted and will flow 'normally'.

I Googled 'patch bay tutorials' and didn't find too much - this was the only thing I found --- no diagrams or anything. Use the 'search' function here or try Amazon for some basic studio wiring books

 

[studiomaster]

I have the Behringer 1204fx pro mixer...how would i connect the stereo outs(alt 3-4) to a patchbay?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

In practice this almost never happens
...
In order to have a patch bay not interrupt the flow of signals, it's important to 'normal' the bay so that unless a jack is inserted in one of the ins or outs of the mixer the signal will be uninterrupted and will flow 'normally'.

While these points are often true in big studios, it's often different in smaller 8-16 track I/O project studios such as are common to most of us on this board.

As an example, I have a portable rack (14U on wheels) that contains my most used outboard gear. I use it as my protable/location recording rig. It contains one 8-track recorder, one 2-track recorder, two channels of compression, two channels of limiting, two channels of 1/3rd octave graphic EQ, two channels of verb, a converter/interface for the PC, and a small patch bay. The mixer sits neatly on top of the rack.

I am not normalling a signal chain through the patch bay. Instead, I am simply using the bay (a simple 1U 24x2 bay) as an access panel for the analog I/O for all the gear in the rack (with a few pairs of patch points unused). A couple of 6 ft snakes to connect the mixer to the patch bay (it's not hard wired because the mixer travels in a seperate travel case) and a handfull of 2ft patch cords and I have my entire rack of gear I/O'd how I need it at will. The good news is that when I upgrade the 8-track recorder to a 24-track recorder (same size unit) I still have 1U of unused rack space to add another 24x2 patch unit and still have plenty of I/O for everything with room for more expansion (for when I replace the 2-track with more compression and some preamps.)

G.

 

[rayc]

NO patch bay is best.
But there aren't too many opportunities to have the best option.
If you only have a couple of things in you signal chain don't bother with it.
IF you have lots of stuff & therefore options galore for sequencing the signal chain a patch bay is a BOON.
I avoided one for years but became so fed up with labelling & relabelling cables, crawling behind the desk etc that I gave in & am pretty happy with the result.

 

[killmachine]

god I'd love to have one, but with my current set up nothing is hard wired, or permantaly fixed so to speak. If your stuff is set up and not moving at all, get a patchbay....It makes life easier...


Brought to by the National coalition of Patchbays in Studio's

 

[MadAudio]

This thread needs pics, so here ya go!

Pic 1 - Wide shot of my studio. Practically all the gear (including everything but the mic inputs on the Mackie) you see is hooked up to the patchbays behind the turntable.

 

[MadAudio]

Pic 2 - Closer up. I even made a chart showing all the patch points (under the NS-10).

 

[tarnationsauce2]

I have a love-hate relationship with patch bays.
While the convenience factor is nice... I only use patch bays for less critical uses, such as monitoring, & effects.
But for more critical things like tracking, and mastering, I wire point-to-point using the shortest, and highest quality cables possible.
Your audio is only as good as your weakest link. Not that all patch bays and patch cables are bad, but the less cabling and metal-metal connections possible, the better.

 

[LeeRosario]

Well dispite how someone may feel about a patchbay, they are a nessessity in any major and well equipped studio. The main two reasons being flexbility and ease of operation. It just gives you more options, makes things faster and reduces the wear on the physical connections to your outboard gear.

All of the patchbays I have worked with will go off of TT cables rather than quater inch.

Patch bays in a recording studio are typically permanent installs, with two types of connections: "Normalled" and "half normalled".

Normalled connections are like one way "fixed" connections. The signal from your inline console goes and comes from your patch bay "normally". But if your really well equipped, you don't want all full normalled connections, you're gonna want some half normalled connections. In fact, if everything on the patch bay was fully normalled, you can even end up with no signal on some tracks.

Half normalled connections offer splits in the signal, which come in handy when you have to patch copies of a signal to specific places in your studio. One example is for the use of auxes. You're not always gonna want to have an instrument go directly to a reverb, you just want a copy to get to that reverb. And in a studio with 5 different reverb units, that's gonna be kina tedious to do without a patch bay. Cause then you have to go baaaaaaaaaack and foooooooorth, baccccccccck and forth pluging and unplugging shit until you got the reverb you like.

It's not really something you can grasp without really doing it and opening one up to understand the connections that are taking place.


The easiest example I can give you is this:


Normalled-


You have two rows of 24 1/4 inch inputs on a patch bay. They are labeled accordingly 1-24 on the patch bay. You have one snare playing on channel 5 of the console. The top row is your channel line input from the board and the bottom row is your return.

If you look up channel 5 of your channel line input on the patch pay, take a patch cable, and patch that signal into channel 1 if your returns, you have now moved that signal completely over to channel 1 in the signal flow of that patch bay. All you did was re-route your signal. So from that point on, your snare is on channel 1.


Half Normalled-

In the half normalled example, the only difference is that instead of the snare being sent to just channel 1, it still continues on channel 5. So from that point on, you have a snare on channel 1 and on channel 5. All you did was make a copy. Sorta like when you create a duplicate of a track in Nuendo, Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Cakewalk, whatever your preference.


It's been a while since I've messed with patch bays, but I think that's a fairly accurate example.



On a side note, a good patch bay install for a studio costs you about 1grand a patch bay. The only reason I know that is cause I'm currently working with the guy who's wired up steven tylers home studio and alot of the studios in florida (and around the nation) for that matter. Pretty cool stuff. He used to work at Audio One, so that gives you the scope of how pyschotic the pay can get when you become a patch bay technician.

 

[slidey]

This thread needs pics, so here ya go!

Pic 1 - Wide shot of my studio. Practically all the gear (including everything but the mic inputs on the Mackie) you see is hooked up to the patchbays behind the turntable.

Whats the cup plugged into??

I now have four patchbays & with a small room they are invalueable........all of my rack gear can now go to any other bit of rack gear as is the case for my analog T/machines. I'm looking at another 2 to do all my synth gear & little bits of misc. patching that needs done JUST REMEMBER TO LABEL!!!!!!!!!!

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

On a side note, a good patch bay install for a studio costs you about 1grand a patch bay.

Just for clarity's sake - correct me if I'm wrong on this one, Lee - that cost is including the cost of labor for someone to actually run all the cabling and do all the soldering*, right? We're not talking a grand as the street price for a purchasing a 24x2 piece of hardware, at least not for the grade of panel needed for anybody with anything less than a studio who's rest of the gear cost a hundred times that. Just for the record for readers of this thread, 24x2 patch bays typically run about $100-$150 for the entry-level stuff and can go up from there.

*While many entry-level patch bays have TRS jacks on the back, the better patch bays typically do not use mechanical jacks, but instead use something like DB25 (25-pin) or D50 (50-pin) jacks or something similar for their connections. As such, with these kinds of patch bays custom cabling is typically run from the equipment to the bay (to keep the signal path only as long as necessary) and then the leads soldered to their respective pins on the multi-pin plug or jack. This is a tedious, time consuming manual job which drives labor costs up when contracted out. If one is good with a soldering iron (as any audio engineer or electric musician should be ), one can save a LOT of money by doing their own wiring.

Those rookies or hobbyists out there like Studiomaster who have only a basic compliment of relatively entry-level gear can get by fine with standard TRS cabling and rear patch bay connections. A hundred dollar Chinese condensor running through an Alesis or Behringer 6x2 mixer isn't going to suffer greatly going through a $100 TRS patch bay. But as one's signal path gets more pristine (better mics, better preamps, better converters, etc.), better-quality patch bays with better connections are definitely in order.

G.

P.S. Mad, what I want to know is what's on the turntable? . It looks like it might be something from Mercury Records. Am I even close?

 

[CoolCat]

Those rookies or hobbiests out there like Sutdiomaster who have only a basic compliment of relatively entry-level gear can get by fine with standard TRS cabling and rear patch bay connections. A hundred dollar Chinese condensor running through an Alesis or Behringer 6x2 mixer isn't going to suffer greatly going through a $100 TRS patch bay. But as one's signal path gets more pristine (better mics, better preamps, better converters, etc.), better-quality patch bays with better connections are definitely in order.

and patch bays are good for reducing wear on the "common budget" plastic connectors. easier to replace a cheap patch bay plug than a replacing a connector soldered into the pcb inside your units, most often.

i went with cables to reduce plugging/unplugging directly into my plastic inputs, but a patch I think would have been better and cheaper now, cheaper in the long run...and cosmetically better organized.

 

[LeeRosario]

Just for clarity's sake - correct me if I'm wrong on this one, Lee - that cost is including the cost of labor for someone to actually run all the cabling and do all the soldering*, right? We're not talking a grand as the street price for a purchasing a 24x2 piece of hardware, at least not for the grade of panel needed for anybody with anything less than a studio who's rest of the gear cost a hundred times that. Just for the record for readers of this thread, 24x2 patch bays typically run about $100-$150 for the entry-level stuff and can go up from there.

*While many entry-level patch bays have TRS jacks on the back, the better patch bays typically do not use mechanical jacks, but instead use something like DB25 (25-pin) or D50 (50-pin) jacks or something similar for their connections. As such, with these kinds of patch bays custom cabling is typically run from the equipment to the bay (to keep the signal path only as long as necessary) and then the leads soldered to their respective pins on the multi-pin plug or jack. This is a tedious, time consuming manual job which drives labor costs up when contracted out. If one is good with a soldering iron (as any audio engineer or electric musician should be ), one can save a LOT of money by doing their own wiring.

Those rookies or hobbyists out there like Studiomaster who have only a basic compliment of relatively entry-level gear can get by fine with standard TRS cabling and rear patch bay connections. A hundred dollar Chinese condensor running through an Alesis or Behringer 6x2 mixer isn't going to suffer greatly going through a $100 TRS patch bay. But as one's signal path gets more pristine (better mics, better preamps, better converters, etc.), better-quality patch bays with better connections are definitely in order.

G.

P.S. Mad, what I want to know is what's on the turntable? . It looks like it might be something from Mercury Records. Am I even close?

Oh most definitly.


In terms of the patch bay install, I beleive that cost is seperate from the actual patchbay and permanent connections running throughout the studio. Also that depends on what type of patch bay we are talking about. Cause there are digital patchbays, solderless patch bays, patch bays with solder only connections, etc. He works mostly on soldering for permanent installation.


The basic cabling will be in that cost, but things like running permanent install under a floating floor and through the walls is apart from his job. He dosn't do the actual electrical design of the studio. Well actually, he does, but that's a seperate charge. The guy is flawless and recommended all the time, which is why he can charge that much. In fact, I hear they still go with him over his 700 dollar competitors.



Only reason I know that is cause I've actually been in the beggining stages of birthing the first high end recording facility the brevard area has ever seen. So I've been calling up every industry person I know to get an idea of finding the best of the best for this project. Huge investments, (can't disclose how much though) very exciting and demanding stuff!

 

[MadAudio]

P.S. Mad, what I want to know is what's on the turntable? . It looks like it might be something from Mercury Records. Am I even close?

I'll give you a hint - look at Pic 1 on the lower right hand side.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I'll give you a hint - look at Pic 1 on the lower right hand side.

D'OH! Nothing like having the answer staring me straight in the face and still missing it .

OT: The bizarre coincidence is that while I was typing that post I was listening to a cool instrumental cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". I swear that's true. I've been getting into a guy named Jake Shimabukuro just over the past few days, and he performs a great version of that song. If you think playing blues and jazz style guitar on a ukulele sounds silly, don't knock it until you've heard it. This guy could hold his own on a stage with both Eric and George together.

G.

 

[MadAudio]

D'OH! Nothing like having the answer staring me straight in the face and still missing it .

OT: The bizarre coincidence is that while I was typing that post I was listening to a cool instrumental cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". I swear that's true. I've been getting into a guy named Jake Shimabukuro just over the past few days, and he performs a great version of that song. If you think playing blues and jazz style guitar on a ukulele sounds silly, don't knock it until you've heard it. This guy could hold his own on a stage with both Eric and George together.

G.

Thanks for the tip, I'll check him out. I just read about a guy who does rap with just his voice and a baritone uke!

BTW, that copy of Dark Horse is a British import, at least if the sticker on the front is to be believed! And I digitized it, too. Gonna make a CD copy once I draw out a few pops.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Thanks for the tip, I'll check him out. I just read about a guy who does rap with just his voice and a baritone uke!

BTW, that copy of Dark Horse is a British import, at least if the sticker on the front is to be believed! And I digitized it, too. Gonna make a CD copy once I draw out a few pops.

Coolness on both counts, the uke rap and the Brit import rip and clean . I'm not a whole lot of a rap guy myself, though I appreciate the talent needed to be good at it. But I'm always intrigued by weird combos like that. You got a name for that guy lying around?

G.