John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Well I think I'm ready to start designing my patch bay. So here goes.

For now I am just going to focus on incorporating a patch bay into my tracking routine at this point. It’s the process that is causing the most grief at this point. I’ve got 10 channels of outboard pres. But I also have a Cranesong Hedd that I use for tracking if I’m only doing 2 channels at a time (over dubs etc). And there is an Alesis AI4 format converter that goes between the HEDD and the HD24.

I think I’ll go with the Switchcraft Studio Patch 6425 or the Mini Shorti Quick Switch.
These are DB25 based patch bays. And the normalling can be changed by a switch.

So first of all all my preamps have XLR outs except the Demeter Bass Pre which only has TRS out. So I’ll take an 8 channel DB25 to XLR female snake and I’ll plug 8 of the preamps’ outputs into the snake. Then I’ll plug the DB25 end into the patch bays input (the first lower DB25 jack on the back of the patch bay.

Then I’ll get 3 x 8 channel DB25 to TRS snakes and I’ll plug that into the first3 DB25 inputs on the patch bay (upper row of DB25 connectors). Then I’ll plug the the TRS connectors into the 24 tracks of the HD24.

Now I have 8 outboard pres on the bottom row of the bay and 24 HD24 tracks on the upper. I am not going to normal these because I put different pres on different tracks at different times.

But if I’m on the right track I should be able to patch these pres to the HD24 tracks as I see fit – from the front of the patch bay.

What do you think?

Hi Woods,

It's getting late, but I promise I'll get in here and help some to start with until I can get through all the info and get some additional pix posted. But for starters, I've taken some pictures of the patchbay I have here in the studio, and this may perhaps give you some good ideas in designing your system.

Here we go...

Starting at the top and working down...(close ups)

close up #2 (sorry for the large pix. I'll try and resize later...)

And yes I realize the labeling is out of date on these pix...

This system is hard wired, but here's the pix anyway...

Another View...(once again, sorry for the large pix. I'm trying to figure out the right setting for this photoshop resizing.)