Patchbay setup - feel like such a n00b.

[badgrrmmr]

Hi guys and girls,

My friend and I are (re)setting up a studio space and need help with what the best way to set things up would be. We have 2x 48 point patchbays (be!@#$%^&) in the control room, there is an 8 point junction box in the live room and a smaller one in the iso booth (4point). This space was setup as a studio before and when the previous owners left, they simply cut all the snakes to get their hardware etc. out of the racks. So now our job is to try and backwards engineer it all.

After we sort through the kilometres of cable and figure out where it all leads to my question is this; how should I setup the patchbay? Should all lines from the live/iso rooms go straight to the pb then into the console? Is there a problem running mic signal running through a pb?

Anyway, my other half is willing me off here so I'd best get off for now,

Any help is greatly appreiciated!! Thanks in advance,

Ryan.

[Ben M]

Hi Ryan..... Would be good to get a bit more info on the equipment your using and the way your used to working.
eg. Do you want to use the console for it's pre's? Do you run racked pre's/500 stuff?
What's the console? Is it for line return? and so on...
You can run mic lines from your tracking rooms to patchbays but you must remember that phantom power is going to be applied to some of these lines.

Bit more info on the setup would be good.....

[mylesgm]

And another question is how much outboard gear do you have? If you can get away with not having a patchbay (especially a be!@#$%^& or any other budget PB as the sockets will not last the rigors of regular usage) then your best option is to hardwire your mic lines straight to your mic pres/console. If you have various compressors/EQs etc as outboard perhaps having your line level gear available at the patchbay along with preamp/computer/tape outputs so that you can use the outboard post mic pre or on mix down would be best. Consider that every connection adds the possibility of failure and/or minute clicks/pops in audio and/or further signal degradation.

I feel your pain though, I had to rewire a 6x 96 point patchbays in a facility that was wired for orchestral recording (48 mic lines, 48 line returns), 2x Live small ensemble recordings (24 i/0), 3 room recording studio (24 i/o, 2x 16 i/o) 4x stereo headphone sends for every room, 4x video sends for every room feeding a 24 i/o console with 16 monitor returns and 24 ch PT setup. All this across a 4 level building after the original patchbays were removed and all the labelling went with them to the skip. All hardwired/soldered no edacs, dsubs etc. That was a job I can tell you.

Best thing you can do is give us a rundown of the studio, equipment and how you wish to work, then I think we'll be able to give better advice. Where is your studio?

M

[badgrrmmr]

That sounds a little worse than what I'm up against...

Ok, at this stage we don't have a lot of gear at all, we've got a very small (student) budget. We feel the best way for us to learn and get to a point where we can feel confident in a professional studio is to use this space we have available as much as possible. So no spare time anymore... But we're trying not to step on any toes aswell!!

So the gear is as follows:

16 channel a&h mixer
4 compressors
4 mic pres
2 effects units
A small mic cupboard (mostly rode and shure 11 in total)
2x 8 channel ad converters.
Obviously the more we work the more gear we get so I'd like to set things up in a way that would be can just add to as we go.

As far as a way of working, As you suggested i think running mics etc into the console then using everything else as inserts is probably the way to go. It was how I wanted to do it but just wanted some clarification.

Thank you guys for the replies ( <-- lol, rhymes) I'll let you all know how it goes.

Ryan Burrows.