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Dear Pulsarians.

Along the years I've been adding stuff to my studio and now the time has come when I'm about to loose my mind trying to deal with a bunch of cables and connections from my mixers to the racks and viceversa. (BTW that's why I love SFP's virtual cables, did someone say VIRTUAL ?), anyway, I was trying to get some help here if you guys can give me some advice on a good Patch Bay for my rack. I've seen prices going from $50 to $150, and of course different brand names. What is the one you think is the best? Berhinger, DBX, Furman, etc, etc. ?

Thanks in advanced for all your help

Snoopy.

aside from differences between normalling methods and balaced/unbalanced,most ofm the bay comes down to a jackfeild.just a bunch of jacks.if you really have a lot of stuff,you need to get real professional hard wired bays(wire soldered to the bays w/custom termination) as the cheaper non hardwired bays eventually have bad connections from oxidation.(then you got to clean them by rejacking everything.this makes the extra effort and cost of hardwired bays worth it in time and trouble saved in the long run if there are many connections)

b4 deciding,make a good map of what you want connected(normalled/unnormalled and balanced/unbalanced).brand names mean shit.half of them are made by re'an anyway.

unless the jacks are VERY cheap,jacks are jacks.don't worry.

Garyb is right!

I have always used "Tascams" in the past but had to exchange them every couple of years because of phasing problems that seemed to occur then (although they were really expensive), so I can´t necessarily recommend them... But for me the DBX looks quite interesting, when this new surface really minimizes oxidation! Some patch bays have "silver" contacts and some have "palladium", which is used for the non-corrosive tendencies. "Silver" may require a cleaning every couple of years. As for actual conductivity, I don´t know what surface the DBX uses and don´t have its specs. Silver is 107% as conductive as copper, where gold is only 70.9% and so on.

It might be preferable to choose a patchbay that is of the same consistence as your connectors (silver-metal-gold). Having two identical metals (connector <-> patchbay) won´t quicken oxidation that fast.

Regards,
Bernhard

Just to add another opinion........I'd definately go for hard wired bays, the extra effort is well worth it in the long run. Besides, if you put a lot of thought into the layout, and are able to normalise your typical working setup, you should be able to get by without having to use patch leads in a lot of cases.
Secondly, I would suggest you go with 1/4 inch jacks & sockets, and make your own patchleads (assuming you're handy with a soldering iron . This is far cheaper than using bantom type bays....Switchcraft, Rean etc etc 96 way bays are very expensive, as are good quality tt patchleads.
If you like I can Email you some photos of my recently finished patchbay, plus I've got an M$ Excel template that I used to do the actual patchbay layout, and labels.

Regards......Dave

Everyone Ive spoken to has said Neutrik are the best.
I have one myself and it seems well built. You can change the normalisation by removing the units and turning them around 180degrees.
As for the quality of the sound and phasing issues I cant comment since Im not experienced in such things. The 1unit 48 port balanced jack model I have cost about £90.

Thanks Round1...
and Thanks to you all guys for all your replys.

and yes Round1 I'd like to see a pic of your patch bay.

But I have another question.. a newbie one..
What is normalization on this patch bay stuff???..

Best Regards

Snoopy

On 2002-08-01 03:08, Round1 wrote:
Just to add another opinion........I'd definately go for hard wired bays, the extra effort is well worth it in the long run. Besides, if you put a lot of thought into the layout, and are able to normalise your typical working setup, you should be able to get by without having to use patch leads in a lot of cases.
Secondly, I would suggest you go with 1/4 inch jacks & sockets, and make your own patchleads (assuming you're handy with a soldering iron . This is far cheaper than using bantom type bays....Switchcraft, Rean etc etc 96 way bays are very expensive, as are good quality tt patchleads.
If you like I can Email you some photos of my recently finished patchbay, plus I've got an M$ Excel template that I used to do the actual patchbay layout, and labels.

Regards......Dave

normalled connections allow you to have things that are normally connected together(such as the insert points on a mixer)connected and then when you connect to the bay the normal signal path is broken and the new path is thru the connection you just made.


or to say it better,the jacks on the back are connected together until you insert cables in the jacks on the front.then the back jacks are connected to the front jacks and the top to bottom connection on the back jacks is broken.

this is a clumsy explanation,but the point is to not have to use patch cables for every connection.that way if you want something usually connected,it can stay that way until you need to do something else.then,using the bay will automatically switch routing.(saving the trouble of redoing cable)

sorry i couldn't explain better.do some research.a well set up patch bay makes life easier.(after the pain of setting it up and paying for all that cable/soldering)a poorly set up bay is worse than no bay at all.

For a good article on patchabys go here http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/mar98/arti ... hbays.html

Or here http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/1994_artic ... iring.html

......here.......http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/1995_artic ... udio5.html

Actually......this is probably the most comprehensive article on patchbays...
http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/dec99/arti ... tchbay.htm

Thanks Round1..!!