XLR Patch Bay/Cables

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lunatic

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Okay, I'm sure that this has been covered but it seems the search engine for this site does not recognize searches 3 letters or less. So, when searching for XLR I get nothing and I know that cannot be right ;-)

My studio is a small one with everything located in one room. The good news? It's a nice size. Not huge but big enough that I could locate my mics about 15' from the computer.

I say "could" because I am using a 1/4" patch bay and, so far, it is very hard to find XLR female to 1/4" TRS male cables longer than about 3 or 4 meters. However, there seem to be very long XLR-M to XLR-F cables available.

My delima? Does anyone know where I can order longer cables or should I use a XLR patchbay to interface into the 1/4 patch bay?

Hope that made sense!

Thanks to all -Brad
 
one solution

You don't have to plug your mics into the patchbay do you? Why not go mic>cable>pre>(?)
I'm sure it's convenient to have everything going into the patchbay. I don't have a patchbay, but if I did I probably wouldn't plug my mics into it. I like my pre's where I can get at them.

Or another solution would be a snake. But with this your just adding more cable, more connectors...

Just keep it simple and your worries will dissapear.

-jhe
 
No I don't have to plug them into the patch bay. However, on the Behringer MIC2200 the connections are on the back. So, anytime I want to connect a mic. cable I'd have to go behind the rack and deal with that.

Very frightening indeed ;-)
 
Another option (which I use quite often) is using a "1/4 female to 1/4 female" connector, then connect that to a regular guitar cable and into the patchbay.
 
Ohhhh... so create a type of extension then? Good idea Trekker. If supplying phantom power over the 1/4" I need to make sure and use TRS, right?

Thank you!
 
I'd like to interject a dissenting voice here: in my opinion, you really don't want to put phantom power through a TRS patchbay. My claim is that you really don't even want to put mic level signals through a TRS patchbay at all, if you can avoid it.

We've had a long thread on this topic going over in the "Studio Building and Display" forum, and I've posted some photos of my rig over there. The pointer is https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?threadid=25365&pagenumber=1

The bottom line for me is "they don't go there": my TRS patchbay is all line-level-signals only. All the mic patching I handle separately on an XLR bay.

TRS jacks momentarily short tip, ring, and sleeve as they are disconnected. That makes for an easy way to blow up both mics (NEVER hotpatch a ribbon mic...) and phantom supplies, not to mention the damage to the monitors if the gain is up when you hotpatch: the resulting 48v-fullscale-pop can and will put your cones in orbit. Hotpatching mics is a crime against nature, but in the heat of the moment, it's going to happen. With XLR hotpatching, at least ground is the first signal to be connected and the last to be disconnected, which means you don't run a 48v square wave into your mic preamp.

One other issue: It also ain't much fun to mistakenly patch a mic input with +48v phantom onto another line input with raw opamp inputs powered by say, +-15v. The input protection diodes go, and you just killed that input... Not good. So I eliminate that hazard by not *allowing* it to happen, except in very limited extreme situations.

This doesn't mean that you absolutely should never run mic lines through TRS bays: I do it when I have to, and so do most professional rooms. However, you should probably work really hard to avoid doing it as part of a normal day's recording.

I built a separate strip with XLRs to do the small amount of mic patching I need to do: most mic positions are hardpatched directly to mic ins on the board. There's a picture of my little mic/access strip late in that thread. Anyway, I ran cables from the loose mic inputs to the XLR strip, so that I can then just plug an XLR mic cable directly into the front of the rack on an as-needed basis.

Please at least consider the hazards involved in running phantom through a TRS bay, anyway. I speak about blowing up ribbon mics through hard, and expensive, experience...

Your mileage may vary, of course. Hope that helps!
 
I realize that putting phantom through TRS is dangerous. In fact, because I am using a 1/4" patch bay I do not hotpatch. My premap (or at least phantom power) is always off before I patch.

To be honest I do not feel comfortable putting phantom power through the patch bay. It was the only solution I had at the time and I'm still learning all this ;-) I guess my next question would be where do I get an XLR Patch Bay? Is it hard to build one?

Thank you for your input!

-Brad
 
Sometimes running mic level signals through the TRS bay is the only answer to a setup problem, so never say never! However, you're on the right track: in the heat of trying to print The Perfect Track, stuff tends to happen...

Several companies sell rack panels that are prepunched with holes that match the Switchcraft and Neutrik panel-mount XLRs. Markertek and Full Compass come to mind right away. Here's a link to some prepunched panels at Markertech, just for ideas:

http://www.markertek.com/MTStore/product.CFM?BaseItem=SFXLP-1

I like doing my own, though, because I always seem to need something wierd (like mixing TRS and XLR jacks on a single panel, or higher densities/more connectors per panel). It's not hard to do with a blank rack panel, a drill press, and some bad intentions. Check out the one I built for mic and access patching in that other thread I mentioned above (it's right at the end of the third page). That one took about two hours.

With a prepunched panel, it's trivial to build one: it takes no longer than building the equivalent number of mic cables. If you're going to roll your own, add a few hours for fabrication time. Tear into it!
 
I can'y say that I'd need anything weird -yet ;-)

My concern is that I have never built my own audio cables. I have done some electrical and network wiring but would love to learn how to wire my own cables and do them well. I'm into stuff like that.

Any suggestions on learning to build audio cable? Is there a "Audio Cabling Guide" I can check out.

In the meantime, I wonder how these would fair: http://www.markertek.com/MTStore/product.CFM?BaseItem=PBXLR-1

The price doesn't seem to bad to buy it pre-wired.

By the way, nice lookin' studio! Great cabling job. Very neat. Very clean.

Thanks again!
 
The first one has XLRs front and back, so the cost is much higher- both for the connectors and for the labor to preconnect them. The latter is an interesting piece, using those TRS/XLR combo connectors. I've never used those, so I can't really comment on them, but I may have to try them sometime soon.

For a good intro to audio wiring, check out the following link:

http://www.rane.com/pdf/note110.pdf

Once you've digested that one, look at this collection of links:

http://members.nbci.com/studio_tech/links.html

under "Wiring and Grounding".

Between those two guys, you should be able to answer just about any question that comes up with respect to plugging this thingus into that thingus (with or without a patchbay in the middle).

Thanks for the kind words, too. A clean rig is a maintainable rig, that's what I always say... (;-)
 
I also thought that second one was interesting. Those XLR/TRS connections are also on my alesis M1 Actives. Kinda neat idea.

Thanks for the links! I have my first project on June 9th so hopefully I can get this stuff digested, inspected, installed and fully tested by then.

AS for a clean rig, I couldn't agree with you more. It's the same philosophy I take with my network and server cabling. Keep it CLEAN!

Thanks again!
 
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