How's my patchbay layout?

[googacky]

Hey all, I'm (finally) rewiring my studio and I wanted to run my patchbay layout by all of you who have done this before. Thanks Chris Garges for the ideas. The link requires Excel because my dumb ass can't figure out how to make the "save as webpage" function work.

http://www.firebrandrecording.com/Patch ... mplate.xls

I'm looking for any glaring errors or great ideas that I haven't thought of. Thanks!

[sonicmook56]

Maybe add more guest lines, or time code if you use it.

Looks good.

[DryCounty]

THANKS! Ah, can't believe I didn't think of this sooner. Looks great.

[Professor]

That looks like a pretty damn fine patchbay layout.
I'm not sure if the console inserts sends & returns on panel D, 1-24 are intended for use on mic inputs or tape returns (that is, patching to comps or EQs on tracking or mixdown) but if you generally patch during tracking then I would probably move them to panel B and move the current B&C patches down a panel. That would then give you a more logical signal flow from top to bottom for that scenario... but like I said, I don't know how you use those connections.
Let's see, for me, I like having the monitor out & amp/speaker inputs at the extreme bottom right just so it flows in a kind of logical pattern from mic at the top-left to amp at the bottom-right, but that is purely personal, and there ain't nothing wrong with your setup.
I do love that you've put on a phase-reversal patch - very cool idea.
And you have mults, although it seems that Mult-C has one in and one out, which doesn't seem to add up to a mult... does it? I might suggest either picking up those extra two spots further to the left and bumping one mult out to 4-connections, or dropping Mult-C and taking bother A & B out to four taps. Also, if you wire mults with resistors instead of straight wire you protect the circuit impedence a little better, and you can sum signals there too quite safely.
I guess you might also consider swapping the Mults with the reverb outputs next to them so your two Lexicons come back in on stereo returns - assuming of course that's where you like to patch them into the system.
Oh, and I really like the idea of leaving the extra space above and below the console 2-track sends & returns for future 2-track decks. That's very wise.
Indeed, you also have a pretty fair amount of extra space in there to handle growth in the near future. You'll thank yourself for that in 6-months when you pick up some hot new outboard device.

All-in-all that's a really nice layout that I'd be happy to find in a studio.

-Jeremy

[googacky]

Thanks for the feedback, especially you, Professor. If it's good enough for the Professor, then I guess I got an A! Pretty much everything you addressed is stuff I thought about, although you do raise some good points. (Was that a patchbay joke?)

The mult issue was immediately pointed out by my studio partner as we had just had a conversation about that very thing the day before I put them in the plan. Oooops. I'll blame that one on doing my tinkering late night. I'll probably switch to two four point mults. The resistor idea is something I didn't know anything about, but there were a few resistors punched down to one of the bays we bought on the ole Ebay. That makes sense now. I think I tossed them, so what value resistor would I use in this situation?

I like the idea of keeping the patchbay organized by signal flow, so I thought about putting the Inserts as bay B; but I figured they'd mostly be patched to compressors, so I put them in close proximity to the outboard. I do, however, think I'll be using the Inserts mostly on the way in. The majority of the stuff I'll be doing will be mixed in Pro Tools with the Control|24 and not on the analog board. (At least until I get a 2" machine.) In that case, it makes sense from a signal flow standpoint to make it bay B, but then I have cable runs jumping across a couple bays. I thought avoiding that situation was higher priority than sticking to signal flow. I also like having my Console Line Inputs close to my Pres in case I need to do some EQ on the way in. I'll think about the arrangement some more, though.

I originally had the monitor outs on the bottom right, but I thought that since the Guest Patch stuff was unrelated to signal flow that it seemed reasonable to put it after the flow. Also, I put the Control|24 Source Ins all the way left for a specific reason and thought that somehow suggested that the monitor section be located near it. I'm not sure why I thought that.

The Control|24 Source Ins are all the way left because I'd normally be monitoring 888 A Outputs 1-2. That raises a question. Since I'd normally be monitoring these outputs, why not normal them? Pretty obvious, eh? I don't want to ruin the symetry of all the Console to 888 ins and outs, though. We had the thought that we could essentially double normal the Control|24 source ins to the 888 A Outs 1-2. Is it possible to have two normals and not have an issue? I'd be normalling 888 A Outs 1-2 to Console Ins 1-2 at the punchblock, but also run a third set of wires down to bay F and normal to the Source Ins. This surely isn't standard practice and I wonder if it would even work. Throw me your two cents.

Swapping the Lexicon outs to normal to the Console Stereo Returns is a good idea. I'm always wanting to have Outs and Ins of gear together when possible, but if I can enhance the normalling funtionality of the bays for a simple symmetry compromise it makes sense to do that.

I was considering not leaving space for future mixdown decks because some more real estate would be nice, but I'm still on the fence there. I'd certainly like to get a tape machine to mix to, and I might get a CD burner and run roughs to it at some point, but the third pair seems like it may never get used. I don't want to have any unused space anywhere. I guess I could wire in a tapedeck for all the analog purists!

I definitely had expansion in mind when I put this thing together. I can see needing more space for compressors and effects someday, but I feel like I'm covered on pres. The plan is to start cannibalizing Control|24 Mic ins and outs as we go over the expansion allotment. I'll probably rarely use the things anyway.

As to the issue of more guest patch, I feel like being able to accomodate twelve pieces of outboard is pretty... well, accomodating. If someone has more stuff, I've got a bunch of TT to XLR cables.

I'll probably get a revision together in the next day or so and I'll post it when I do.

Thanks again.

[trodden]

Hey all, I'm (finally) rewiring my studio and I wanted to run my patchbay layout by all of you who have done this before. Thanks Chris Garges for the ideas. The link requires Excel because my dumb ass can't figure out how to make the "save as webpage" function work.

http://www.firebrandrecording.com/Patch ... mplate.xls

I'm looking for any glaring errors or great ideas that I haven't thought of. Thanks!

WOW! thats really awesome and a BIG BIG help for me as well since i've been trying to put this together for a year now. I can definitely use your set up in help with mine, thanks! My problem being that I can't afford it all at once so i need to slowly put things together by need. i'm about to put together my out of pre/into converter and out of converter/into console tape ins and my comps and effects bays first. since i find myself squeezing back behind the racks mostly for this stuff. till i have more money that i'll have the tie lines normalled to the pre ins. Now if i want to switch pre's i just go and put the mic cable on a different channel.

thanks again for posting this, a big help.

[googacky]

I'm glad that this is a help to you, trodden. It sucks to put together a patch bay in any way but all at once. I don't envy you!

Here's a revision of my design, taking into account a few points made by Professor and adding a couple things.

http://www.firebrandrecording.com/Patch ... ate_v3.xls

I'm still wondering about this double normalling thing I mentioned in my above post, so if anyone wants to chime in I'm all ears.

We're started the wiring and I've discovered that the two bays I bought on ebay last week have all their shields lifted at all points between the bays and punchblocks. Yay for thirty hours of work we didn't think we'd have to do!

[Professor]

Yeah man, it's a really great design overall, and what is most important is that it suits the way you work.
When I put together the patchbay for the school studio, I had something like 700 points to assemble at the bay end plus the device end for about half of those. My target was to set it up acording to signal flow, and to normal enough connections that if I were able to yank all of the patch cables out I would be able to do a complete tracking & mixing session. Yeah, that might mean no optional outboard, but that was the target, and that's where I landed.
Some things get confusing, especially in my case with a couple digital mixing consoles. A good example is that the Yamaha DM & O series consoles have "Omni" outputs which are software assignable to be anything from bus outputs, extra L/R outs, aux sends, channel inserts, anything you might want. But on the DM-2000 there are only 8 Omni outputs, so it can't even cover all 12 aux busses. I ended up patching all 16 connections (8 per console wih two consoles) to the patchbay, normalling 4 of them to the headphone amps, and I'm not sure I've ever used the other 12, but there they are.
I also used one patchbay to run AES/EBU digital connections. That one always gets a raised eyebrow, but it's really no different than running directly to the gear with a couple lengths of cable interconnected. The patchbay is a circuit board design internally with no wiring, so as long as I run 110-Ohm wiring from device to bay and back, and use 110-Ohm patch cables, then I'm set... and that's what I do. 2-track Digital #1 is routed to the first patch point and normalled to the Masterlink AES input, and then Masterlink out shows up in patch point #2 and is normalled back to the console digital return #1. Just like they are wired directly with a break point available in the middle.
Of course, I have a hug number on AES digital connections between the console and ProTools (56 channels) and I ran 48 directly from the console to ProTools and back, but still brought 8 channels (4 AES lines) through the patchbay.

But I'm rambling a it - darn late night typing.
My point is that you shouldn't be afraid to implement the patchbay however it feels best to you. And you should try to setup so that pulling all the patch cables out give you a properly routed system based on how you usually or perhaps "normally" like to work.
Like I said, moving the reverb outputs to the stereo returns makes sense, but it might make sense to also run a couple aux sends to the reverb inputs. Of course, that's only if the reverb is a "normal" part of your mixes (maybe you mostly use plug-ins.) For that matter, do you mix more often on the console or on the Control-24? Maybe the return shouldn't feed the console but the C-24?
But following the logic of moving the reverb returns where you hav them, I don't think you should hang a mult over the other two stereo returns. That mult can be anywhere (or nowhere since you're tracking to ProTools and multing is as easy as copying a track) and shouldn't block you from returning some other common item or effects processor into the stereo return.

Maybe you might consider dropping out some or even all of the "guest lines" you have there. Are those just tying an XLR in another patch panel to the TT connections in your bay? Why not just buy a couple more XLR to TT cables and save yourself from the extra cable length and cable break points? If you drop those to maybe 4 or 6 guest XLR I/O pairs, the it saves some space and gives room for the mults.

But as for the Y-splitter you're talkling about adding... that shouldn't be a problem at all. Though there are all sorts of ways to actually solder those connections.

And as for the multing through resistors. Maybe you can PM Brian Roth about that but you could go with standard (old standard) 600-ohm impedence or maybe 1.5-k-ohm, or maybe 10 k-ohms and should be fine.

Hope that helps.

-Jeremy

[Electricide]

Hey all, I'm (finally) rewiring my studio and I wanted to run my patchbay layout by all of you who have done this before. Thanks Chris Garges for the ideas. The link requires Excel because my dumb ass can't figure out how to make the "save as webpage" function work.

http://www.firebrandrecording.com/Patch ... mplate.xls

I'm looking for any glaring errors or great ideas that I haven't thought of. Thanks!

WOW! thats really awesome and a BIG BIG help for me as well since i've been trying to put this together for a year now. I can definitely use your set up in help with mine, thanks! My problem being that I can't afford it all at once so i need to slowly put things together by need. i'm about to put together my out of pre/into converter and out of converter/into console tape ins and my comps and effects bays first. since i find myself squeezing back behind the racks mostly for this stuff. till i have more money that i'll have the tie lines normalled to the pre ins. Now if i want to switch pre's i just go and put the mic cable on a different channel.

thanks again for posting this, a big help.

so, you're admitting to finding something of value on tomb?

[trodden]

Hey all, I'm (finally) rewiring my studio and I wanted to run my patchbay layout by all of you who have done this before. Thanks Chris Garges for the ideas. The link requires Excel because my dumb ass can't figure out how to make the "save as webpage" function work.

http://www.firebrandrecording.com/Patch ... mplate.xls

I'm looking for any glaring errors or great ideas that I haven't thought of. Thanks!

WOW! thats really awesome and a BIG BIG help for me as well since i've been trying to put this together for a year now. I can definitely use your set up in help with mine, thanks! My problem being that I can't afford it all at once so i need to slowly put things together by need. i'm about to put together my out of pre/into converter and out of converter/into console tape ins and my comps and effects bays first. since i find myself squeezing back behind the racks mostly for this stuff. till i have more money that i'll have the tie lines normalled to the pre ins. Now if i want to switch pre's i just go and put the mic cable on a different channel.

thanks again for posting this, a big help.

so, you're admitting to finding something of value on tomb?

admitting? fuck you.

i've not disregarded anything but you.

[googacky]

My thought about the location of the mults is that if I add any more effects units, I'd simply cannibalize the mults and add in the outputs above the returns. The inputs could be added above the other inputs where mult A is now. I forsee mixing on the Control|24 probably about ninety percent of the time, but if I get in to normalling a lot of stuff to 888 ins and outs, it gets a bit confusing. I'd rather have to make a patch now and then instead of splitting up where 888 ins and outs go. It is a bit weird not to normal the input of effects to aux sends since I'm normalling the outs to returns, but it'll be one less patch I'll have to make in the event that I'm doing an analog mix.

I'll consider dropping some of the guest lines. I do have some tt to xlr cables that I got along with the last patchbays I bought. I didn't expect to have them when I was considering the guest patch points. We do have a relationship with a guy who'll bring in all his own pres and comps, so he'd definitely use a lot of points. I thought having dedicated guest patches might be a bit more user friendly than having to run cables into cables.

[Electricide]

Hey all, I'm (finally) rewiring my studio and I wanted to run my patchbay layout by all of you who have done this before. Thanks Chris Garges for the ideas. The link requires Excel because my dumb ass can't figure out how to make the "save as webpage" function work.

http://www.firebrandrecording.com/Patch ... mplate.xls

I'm looking for any glaring errors or great ideas that I haven't thought of. Thanks!

WOW! thats really awesome and a BIG BIG help for me as well since i've been trying to put this together for a year now. I can definitely use your set up in help with mine, thanks! My problem being that I can't afford it all at once so i need to slowly put things together by need. i'm about to put together my out of pre/into converter and out of converter/into console tape ins and my comps and effects bays first. since i find myself squeezing back behind the racks mostly for this stuff. till i have more money that i'll have the tie lines normalled to the pre ins. Now if i want to switch pre's i just go and put the mic cable on a different channel.

thanks again for posting this, a big help.

so, you're admitting to finding something of value on tomb?

admitting? fuck you.

i've not disregarded anything but you.

[trodden]

I'm trying to figure out how to link to my excel worksheet as well. I used googacky's as a template. THANKS!!

[junomat]

Thank you so much for these templates. So wonderfully organized.

[RefD]

this is exactly the thing i've been looking for!

thanks!