Patch PANELS. . .

[mingus2112]

So I don't have the money to buy really expensive TT patch bays. I also don't want to buy $50 Behringer patch bays and have my gear (which is MOSTLY mid level to high mid level gear with the occasional great piece) sound like crap. I like the result of plugging a mic into a preamp. . .then having that preamp plugged directly into my converter. So here's the scoop. . .what about patch PANELS? If i had just a rack panel with surface mount XLR and Balanced 1/4" jacks on it. . .soldered good wire to the rear. . .then terminanted it with the appropriate end after about 3' or so of cable. . .then plugged in all of my gear. . .how much signal loss are we talking about? I'd plug a mic into an XLR (which would be connected to the back of a preamp), then have a high quality 1/4" to 1/4" balanced patch cable go from the preamp out (on the patch panel) to the input on my converter (also on the panel). Does this make more sense than a patch BAY? Or amy I trying to make something more complicated than it is and reinvent the wheel?

[Randy]

I went this route a while ago and my advice is to buy a patchbay. If you buy switchcraft connectors, for 48 points you will need about 24 Female XLR panel connectors at about $2.50 each and 24 TRS jacks at about $1.50 each. That works to about $96. This doesn't include the panel or the time involved not only putting the thing together, but also trying to remember where things were patched when using it. It took a lot more planning to patch with this sort of non-normalled DIY bay.

I don't think you'll save much money over the Neutrik 48 pt. patchbay (NYS-SPP-L). It is not TT and it *looks* like the cheaply made Rean, ProCo and Behringer patch bays, but I have 2 that are used quite a bit and I have not seen any degradation of signal. The connections are tight. It's about $95.

my $.02

good luck in whatever choice you make. I just ended up patching a lot more than I imagined I would.

[mingus2112]

thanks for the advice! I would still want something to patch mic cables into. . .so maybe an XLR panel for mic preamps and then a patchbay for 1/4"? I'm not worried about the cost of the patch panel. A friend who works for an A/V design and installation company owes me a favor. He can get the Neutrik Jacks for nothing. Same thing with high grade wire.

-James

[snatchman]

This is they way I work! I have 1/4" balanced panels in a rack going directly into my Adat/HD24..! I'm just using the panels as an "interface" more than a patchbay. since I don't have a room full of gear, can reach right over and touch it, I think this works best for me. With a room full of gear and not wanting to crawl behing consoles, racks and such, definately use a patchbay!( if you're not confused using one, Like Me..!.. )

[slochldrnplayin]

You can find 1/4" and tt patchbays going on ebay for less than 30 bucks all the time. If you have a friend who can get you connectors, then I would go that route (free is always the best price). But if you find that you need more patchbays, check out ebay. I personally like Switchcraft then ADC (if I am really in a bind). The only problem with 1/4" patchbays are they take up a huge amount of "rack real estate". For instance I have 384 patch points that take up 16 rack spaces with 1/4" 2U bays. If I did the same 384 points with TT 1U bays, it would only take 4 rack spaces.

[Professor]

I run a bit of both, the custom-built patch panels and a really comprehensive patchbay.
The patchbay is for all the stuff permanently installed in the studio. The 48 mic feeds coming from the live room panels terminate across the top row of the first TT patchbay. They are normalled to the inputs of the consoles. The second bay has ins & outs for preamps and other 'front-end' gear, as well as feeds from other locations around the building. The third bay has 48 insert sends and returns normalled together. The fourth bay has the board outputs, 2-track recorder sends and returns, etc. while the fifth bay handles final outputs, extra outs like the 8 analog outs from PT, and then the inputs to the amps for the monitors. I probably didn't need to list all of those, but it is quite comprehensive, and occasionally I need to plug a mic into the preamps in the control room. That's really quite easy because I simply have a handful of patch cables that are terminated as TT to XLR-M, and TT to XLR-F. I don't have any TT to TRS because I have a bunch of the little neutrik XLR to TRS adapters - so the patch cable hanger isn't quite so cluttered.
You could do something similar by using a 1/4" or TT patchbay and just making or buying a few patch cables with XLRs on one end. Buy 2 or 4 five-foot patch cables, cut them in half and solder on XLRs.

On the other end of things I also build out lots of custom patch panels for mobile gear, mostly to 'student proof' the equipment. For example, I recently split up our wireless mics into three racks with 4 channels each. Each rolling rack case got a power distributor, antenna combiner, 4 receivers, and a 2-space rack drawer. Around the back, the rack was sealed up with blanks and I built one custom panel with two BNC connectors for antennae, a Neutrik PowerCon in & out, and four XLR-M chassis connectors. I also built a 4-channel XLR to TRS snake for each box to plug into the line inputs on a console, and a 25' power cord with PowerCon at the rack end. Oh, the XLR output for line level is so that if I ever want to place the receivers on stage and run the outputs down the snake to the console, I can do that with standard mic cables, and place the 4-chan snake at the fan out end of the snake.
I've done similar custom panels on the little location recording rig that has two XLR mic inputs to the preamp, two TRS in/outs for the preamp out or feed into the CDR from a mixer, and then two XLR outs from the Masterlink. I also put on an AES in/out for the CDR but put rubber covers over the connectors, and there are PowerCon ins & outs as well. Similar panels as well on the processor rack for the live sound rig and the amplifier rack, and a few other things.
The idea for me was to keep hands off the backs of the equipment, to minimize confusion with only the necessary connectors shown, and to make sure that whenever I go to use the gear it is always configured the way I want it.

There's really no insertion loss to speak of with these little 3' jumpers - it's really no different than if you came up a few feet short on your mic cable and patched in another 5ft XLR to get you to the preamp. Internally I use starquad for the mic connections (same as the mic cables outside the boxes), 18/2 JS balanced line for the line-level stuff, 110-Ohm for AES lines, 75-Ohm coax for antennae and power line stuff for power.

It's definitely worth doing, but it's also worth planning it well.

-Jeremy