The Patchbay is the Heart of the Studio
That title says so much; and for those of you that already have a patchbay in your studio, you know exactly what I mean. It’s exhausting climbing behind racks of gear and consoles/interfaces only to reconfigure a studio for every new project. The wear-and-tear that accompanies constant reconfiguring can also wreak havoc on cables and the ins and outs of your equipment. A properly configured patchbay will quicken your workflow and alleviate the degradation of your valuable gear.
I taught audio production in large-format analog console studios from 2005-2009, and the use and configuration of patchbays played a major role in that curriculum. Students had to understand the ins and outs of the entire studio and were constantly drilled on how to interface the console, outboard gear, mic/line inputs, and more while utilizing the patchbay. If configured correctly, patching can also become minimal in that the inputs and outputs of the studio line up and are normalled in a logical way.
My home studio is pretty compact and is comprised of a couple of interfaces, a sidecar, a few outboard pieces, and other bits and bobs. All of the inputs and outputs of the sidecar, outboard gear and interfaces terminate to a Switchcraft TT (tiny-telephone or bantam) patcbbay,
If you look closely at the image above, you will notice that the entire top row of patchpoints is comprised of outputs while most of the bottom row are inputs (output feeds the input, or normalled to the input). The first 8 outputs are from my Apogee Symphony and feed the bottom row inputs to my Neve sidecar. The outputs are fully normalled to the inputs, meaning that the patch is already made internally (no cable required). The next 8 outputs are from the Neve and they feed the inputs to the Symphony; these are also fully normalled. I did this for the sole reason of activating hardware inserts to incorporate the Neve’s 8 channels for mixing situations (use your imagination). Immediately following the Symphony and Neve ins and outs are patchpoints for outboard compressors, which are not normalled to anything. In other words, the compressors will always require patching.
Traditional tracking at my home studio is rare, but when I do track, you will notice there is also logic to the patching scheme. The next 8 outputs are from Focusrite ISA 828 preamps, which feed absolutely nothing in the bottom row - this will make sense in a moment. The next 8 outputs are from the mic lines (output of microphones/DIs), and these feed the mic inputs to the Focusrite 828. Again, these are fully normalled, so the patching is internal and no additional cables are required. Moving along to the next 8 outputs introduces a pretty big change. The final 8 outputs are tie-lines from a 1/4” patchbay that I utilize for rack synths. These outputs are being fed from the back of the DBX 1/4” patchbay via the DB25 connectors that exist on the back for the Switchcraft patchbay. The final 8 inputs are feeding the line inputs of the Focusrite 828. Why did I approach this situation like this you ask? This allows me to feed the outputs of the rack synths in the picture above directly to the line inputs of the Focusrite 828 without any further patching. Remember the line outputs of the Focusrite 828? Well they have to be patched via patch cables to the inputs of the Symphony for recording - this applies to the use of the mic or line inputs.
Wiring patchbays can be incredibly tedious endeavors, but in the case of the Swtichcraft patchbay, all connections on the back terminate to DB25 multipin connectors. While more expensive, this can ultimately save one a wealth of time and burnt fingers. Another added bonus is the inclusion of normalling switches on the front of the patchbay. Wiring normalled settings manually is incredibly difficult and time consuming, and if one wants to reconfigure later, normalled connections might need to be readdressed.
As you can see, the title says it all. When a patchbay is configured to meet your studio’s needs, it becomes the heart of your studio, the point at which all signal is routed from source to destination.