Getting and setting up a patchbay, any advice?

[if6was9]

Right my rack in the studio is getting pretty full and it's a pain to wheel it out and hook up what I need so I've decided to get a patchbay and do it all from the front. It's kinda killing my creativity and drive to have to have to do so much to just try something during a mix, often I don't bother using some of the hardware and just use plugins instead.

I've got a big desk here I barely use for the same reason, it's tons of hassle to get in behind it and hook it up to my interface so I'm gonna hook up 8 or so channels of this too so I can use it more easily. I really like the EQ on it and the pre's are nice too so it's a real shame it's not seeing much use.

Any advice and any pitfalls to watch out for? I've never set one up before so I'm just going on what I've read. As with everything, money is a factor so are the cheaper end of things worth investing in or will they harm the signal being passed through it?

 

[JonWormwood]

lots and lots of patch cables. And get a decent patchbay.

 

[Charles J]

I still don't know where to look or what to think when I hear the word 'patchbay'.

What's the EASIEST, BEST, MOST AFFORDABLE option?

And how da fuq does it work? Haha, patchbays just never made sense to me. I'd LOVE to have one because I go through the same thing as the OP.

I've got tons of hardware that not even hooked up, most of it pretty killer/useful stuff but I just keep my GO-TO hardware setup for mixing ITB as virtual plug-ins but that's abouttttttttt it.

 

[Mikaël-ange]

Patchbay and cables + labor aren't cheap.
Good patchbay like Switchcraft bay will last for years when cheap bay will start to fall (noise, intermittent contact) after a couple of month of heavy use.

Don't go with TRS bay, buy TT bay instead.
Rear connection choice: depend of your setup (elco is a must, Dsub are also good if you don't remodel your studio every week).

If you want so good info read this thread:http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/607579-high-end-patchbays.html

@Charles: patchbay are really easy to use.

For example let's talk about a little studio (one CR and one tracking room) that run hybrid without a LFAC.

Let's say you have 16 mics line in your tracking room.
You also have 16 preamp, couple of outboard gear (comp and eq) and 16AD/DA converter I/O.

Everything Normalled on the patchbay (keep it simple).
Patchbay convention is: top row=out, bottom row=in

So you have 4 bays:

-tracking room mic line/preamp in
-preamp out/AD in
-AD out/outboard in
-outboard out

So since everything is normalled withoout patching any patch cord, your mic line directly go to your preamp in (mic line 1 to preamp 1...etc), preamp out go to AD channel in...etc
You want mic line 1 to preamp 10>patch a cord and voila.

Quick note: this was for explanation purpose so please don't ruch on me arguing you don't need 4 bays to do that, I know it already...

 

[DavePiatek]

It should be mentioned that if you get a TRS bay, don't run your mic lines through it, as hot-patching a mic line with phantom power on it can damage equipment.

Use TT or XLR bays for running mic lines.

 

[Mikaël-ange]

It should be mentioned that if you get a TRS bay, don't run your mic lines through it, as hot-patching a mic line with phantom power on it can damage equipment.

Use TT or XLR bays for running mic lines.

You get the same kind of problem with TT also...
I don't remember when it was but we had a thread about that long ago, and Chris pointed out to me that every big studio across the world run mic line through TT bay.
Some old API and Neve LFAC don't have phantom power switching ability and nothing catch in fire.

If you burn something patching, simply improve your skill for patching faster

 

[C_F_H_13]

I don't remember when it was but we had a thread about that long ago, and Chris pointed out to me that every big studio across the world run mic line through TT bay.

Yeah exactly. While it's technically right that you shouldn't have phantom on anything other then XLR, every studio on the god damn planet does it. I've never seen a single one that doesn't actually.

As far as advice I'd do it. your live becomes 1000 times easier once every input and output is available in a second. I'd also recommend putting a few mult points (google) on your bay so you can do all kinds of parellel processing off of one output if you want, or do things like take your DI preamp out and put it to your DAW AND your tuner at the same time. Just a thought.

Only pitfalls with patchbays is the wiring. Be methodical and cautious and everything will be fine.

If you aren't much for soldering and understanding all the normalling stuff, I'd suggest a tt- db25 patchbay and then just buy the cabling.

 

[if6was9]

I'm not great at soldering so was looking at the likes of the Samson s patch, it has the mode switches on the front which would make some of the stuff you guys have talked about easier and I'd just need to buy the cabling instead of having to solder up a bunch of it.

http://www.thomann.de/ie/samson_spatch_plus.htm

It's TRS, is that such a terrible thing? I'm not too worried about phantom power issues as the desk I'm using has a fault so the phantom power is always off and it gets used for pres with dynamic mics only! It's not been an issue really as I barely use it at the minute and when I do use the pres for guitar micing my favourite mics are all dynamics anyway.

I'll be hooking up my pre's line outs to the patchbay but for the pre's with rear inputs in the rack I'll be running a loom out to the front that will hang on the side of the rack so I won't be hooking my pre's inputs up to the patchbay.

It's for my home studio so I won't have to worry about other people using it or having tons of different set-ups. Once it's set up I shouldn't need to move anything until I add new things to the rig.

I'll be hooking up my pre's line outs to the patchbay but for the pre's with rear inputs I'll be running a loom out to the front that will hang on the side of the rack so I won't be hooking my pre's inputs up to the patchbay.

 

[Mikaël-ange]

Yeah exactly. While it's technically right that you shouldn't have phantom on anything other then XLR, every studio on the god damn planet does it. I've never seen a single one that doesn't actually.

As far as advice I'd do it. your live becomes 1000 times easier once every input and output is available in a second. I'd also recommend putting a few mult points (google) on your bay so you can do all kinds of parellel processing off of one output if you want, or do things like take your DI preamp out and put it to your DAW AND your tuner at the same time. Just a thought.

Only pitfalls with patchbays is the wiring. Be methodical and cautious and everything will be fine.

If you aren't much for soldering and understanding all the normalling stuff, I'd suggest a tt- db25 patchbay and then just buy the cabling.

+1 on the mult point

Dsub are good if you don't plan to move rack every week. But if you need to do massive setup change elco is a must imho.
Get every rack terminated with female elco, and link everything with male elco>male elco cable.
Downside: it cost a hell of money

 

[greyskull]

I lIke TRS patch bays... Sue me.

Outputs go on the top inputs go on the bottom

Lay it out sensibly and normal just about everything you can in your day to day use.