Patchbays

[john]

Hey

Real world patchbays don't often get used in home studios, but they are still valuable additions to your recording set up...

thought I'd take a straw poll

cheers

John

[Nightwolf]

I voted no, although I have been considering it of late. Makes it real easy to know what's goin where

[john]

Hey John

Not only that, but it protects the sockets on your expensive gear. Regular plugging and unplugging can completely trash connectors. Better that it is one socket on a patchbay! Also saves you crawling all over the place!

Cheers

John

[Gove]

I would consider getting a patchbay, but at home i have my 003 rack which has enough in/outs for all my gear. I would like to have one because everything would be really organized buti dont think its really needed at the moment. Maybe thats a reason for me to get more GEAR!!!lol

[Prometheus]

I use two of them... I wouldn't like to live without them now... You can never have enough routing possibilities... That would be like saying you could have too much money or that the weekend lasts long enough...

[Retrosaurus Rex]

I use two of them... I wouldn't like to live without them now... You can never have enough routing possibilities... That would be like saying you could have too much money or that the weekend lasts long enough...

I've never thought a week-end lasted long enough... not even when I was unemployed!

[memphisindie]

I have four in use.

[Gove]

Wow!!! FOUR. You must got every patch possible!!! lol. Is that at your home studio?

[GanGrenE]

Well I´m buying a 40+40 patch next week, really tired of being a cableguy lol! Last year I worked in a decent studio and learned all about the ease of using a patch. Plug it in once and forget it=)

[Gove]

true!!! Its really easy to use and really opens up the amount of things that you can do

[Streetervillemusic]

true!!! Its really easy to use and really opens up the amount of things that you can do

Folks John is right....a patch bay will make life much easier for you, and yes it will save your connection points on your gear. Opens up many worlds of opportunities and out board options. Much easier than digging around for a connection point. Lets say you record a quitar track....your going through a comp/limiter and you find later that maybe you squeezed it a bit to much or you eq on the way down and now you don't like what you have...if you had a patchbay, now you can set up mult's. With the mult you can lay down the same track twice at one time, one track with your effects and one clean...you can always patch the clean back through an amp again later or you can use different compression or heavy or lighter limiting or various eq onto new tracks, and you still always have your original untouched raw track. Don't think I am nuts, but I once re-routed a guitar track back through a small 10" tube amp with an SM57 pointed into a metal bucket just in front of the amp. I needed an old sounding tone, and that gave me what I was looking for. Patchbays allow you to be creative and never screw up. There are many other options they give you. I have 5 different patchbays each are 96 connection points. Some of the bays are normaled to each other some are not. Each piece of outboard gear goes to the patchbay so it can be routed anywhere I need. When I cut vocals, I like to cut 2 tracks...one that is compressed pretty heavy and eq'd and one that is raw. During mix down sometimes I will blend the 2 together to get a certain vocal tone then I eq and compress both together yet again. I do not do this on all vocals but there are times it works really well. But at least I always have more choices.

Learn to use them. You won't be sorry.

SMG