KVR Audio

PinothyJ · Post by **PinothyJ** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:51 pm

I've noticed that my list of equipment to aquire is getting longer so a patchbay is in order. Now I know the difference between balanced and unblanced but is one patchbay off the shelf different to another?

thanks…

birrbits · Post by **birrbits** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:55 pm

the last behringer patchbay I had worked fine, but for only about a year then it was very 'jiggly' with its connections.
the neurik i've had for the last 2 years is still solid

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:58 pm

Sometimes.

As well as quality of the mechanical components (ie the sockets) you get different ways the sockets wired up so they behave differently according to how they pass signals through in the presence or absence of a plug... (referred to as 'normalled' in the document below)
Some patchbays have switches which allow you to change the way a given socket behaves.

http://homerecording.com/patchbay.html

PinothyJ · Post by **PinothyJ** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 1:09 pm

oh I know what normally is, I was referring to the quality and what not…

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 1:12 pm

PinothyJ wrote:oh I know what normally is, I was referring to the quality and what not…

Just in case. And as I say, some patchbays are switchable between normalling behaviour, some arent. So thats another mechanical component in the signal path.

kritikon · Post by **kritikon** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 1:56 pm

Quality can make a difference. Something as simple as jack sockets, you'd imagine a socket is a socket, but poor design can lead to things like loose connection and interference etc. Even little things like el-cheapo sockets might rust sooner than good ones. Personally I'd be more concerned about the connections though. Cheap ones do have a tendency to loosen more quickly, and once they're loose, you may as well give up and buy a new one. I used to regularly buy from a specialist studio supplier, and they always advised me that having a decent patchbay was worthwhile as some weren't well insulated for sound. I never tested this out, but they usually gave good advice (i.e. in some areas they advised buying cheaper rather than more expensive) so I guess you can get what you'd call cross-channel bleeding in a poorly insulated patchbay. Makes some sense to me. No point introducing even minimal extra noise if you can help it.

I bought decent quality ones, and they're as snug now as the day I bought them. I also bought a cheap Tandy one which I now use only for storing cables (actually cheap patchbays are superb for this...you can dangle them without coiling or bending and they're easily at hand). Some of the sockets are so loose as probably to be unusable (within a short space of time, too).

Normalising might influence your purchase decision too. Mine for example will swap from non-normalled to normalled by taking out individual sockets and turning them around the other way. Which I don't particularly like - too fiddly and then you forget which ones you have which way around...

And there are other things. I have a midi patchbay, and it's quite a good one, again. Nice snug fits etc, but I do admit it bothers me that they're so snug that you have to use a fair bit of force to patch in midi cables at the front and that maybe I'm forcing them too much. Whereas Behringer released a programmable midi patchbay years back that sounded wonderful (got good write-ups, and good testimonies from people I know who bought them). Basically, you put in all your midi cables at the back, and one from your sequencer to the patchbay, and you can use midi to actually patch the cables together, so you never need pull out a midi cable again. Neat idea, saves on manual wear'n'tear and apparently last forever.

PinothyJ · Post by **PinothyJ** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:20 pm

I noticed a behringer patchbar for cheaper than I expected the price of a patchbay to be that is why I asked the question.

thanks for all your indepth insight…

PinothyJ · Post by **PinothyJ** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:28 pm

A studio I've bene in had a fantastic patchbay where the size of the jacks wasn't 1/4" but much smaller. It made life a lot easier witht he smaller cabled needed and the smaller amount of space which mean more could be fitted on the rack.

Does anyone know of an example of this is…

where02190 · Post by **where02190** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 3:05 pm

Stay away from Behringer and AP Audio bays, they suck. The Furman ones are very well built, highly recommended.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 3:23 pm

PinothyJ wrote:A studio I've bene in had a fantastic patchbay where the size of the jacks wasn't 1/4" but much smaller. It made life a lot easier witht he smaller cabled needed and the smaller amount of space which mean more could be fitted on the rack.

I can't really imagine that using a non-standard jack type would make life easier. You'd require to buy or make (a lot!) of the special-type cables, or put new connectors on your existing ones. It's hard enough now to deal with XLR and 1/4", balanced and unbalanced already...

Maybe they've made that patchbay themselves. After all, it isn't rocket science... All you need is a 19" plate of steel, a steel drill for the holes, a bunch of connectors, some good audio wire and a soldering iron.

Maybe they used 1/8" connectors.

Polite Company · Post by **Polite Company** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 4:02 pm

BertKoor wrote: I can't really imagine that using a non-standard jack type would make life easier...

Well actually the smaller cables (called TT cables) are more standard in most professional studios than 1/4" patchbays. The biggest advantage offered by TT cables is the size issue as a TT patchbay takes a lot less space than a 1/4" which is very important when you need to have patch points for big racks of gear and multiple recording machines. TT setups are more permanent however as the device side if usually hardwired rather than patched.

The big advantage that 1/4" patchbays have is that it is easier to switch around the patch destinations on both the back and front so if you need to switch out gear often 1/4" is better. However since both patch points in a 1/4" bay are softwired there are more durability and sometimes interference issues.

Hope this helped.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 5:00 pm

Ah, I see... TT (Tiny Telephone) aka Bantam plugs, diameter of 4.4 mm. Seems to save some space indeed, since the plastic outside also is considerably slimmer.

where02190 · Post by **where02190** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 5:11 pm

TT and Bantam are two different plugs. Bantam, AKA longframe, are the same diameter as a 1/4" connector, but slightly longer. They originated from telephone patchbays and were adapted for audio use.

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 5:25 pm

where02190 wrote:TT and Bantam are two different plugs. Bantam, AKA longframe, are the same diameter as a 1/4" connector, but slightly longer. They originated from telephone patchbays and were adapted for audio use.

No, when referring to Bantams we are definitely talking about the tiny jacks - the jacks you're referring to are called GPO jacks as the were used by the General Post Office (when they did communications). Bantams look like mini-GPOs.

SOS Article

where02190 · Post by **where02190** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:26 pm

You got it exactly backwards.

Is a patchbay, a patchbay?