Patchbays

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big timothy

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Here's my predicament. You see, I only have a single in, single out sound card, and no mixer. I thought maybe I should get a mixer, or a bigger audio card, but I don't need the extra things a mixer provides, and I don't have a lot of money to throw around. So, I thought a patch bay would work well.

The problem is, I'm not positive about how to use them, or what a good unit would be. I've done research on them, and obviously I have the jist, but can anybody offer any suggestions?

BTW I'm trying to hook up a turntable/mixer setup, an SP404, an Akai s900, and some guitars/keyboards. So I don't have toooo many inputs to worry about but I'll most likely expand.
 
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I'm a fan of the patchbay - Neutrik in particular.

But a patch bay only moves I/O around - It's not like it adds more or anything... It's just a tool of convenience.
 
Thank you for the reply.

I do know what it does. I've just heard that there's a lot of ways to configure them and that sometimes it's a hassle. I was just wondering if there was any special way or order to hook everything up.

And I'll check out Neutrik, thanks.
 
big timothy said:
Thank you for the reply.

I do know what it does. I've just heard that there's a lot of ways to configure them and that sometimes it's a hassle. I was just wondering if there was any special way or order to hook everything up.

And I'll check out Neutrik, thanks.
Click to expand...

I dont think its a hassle. There is basically nothing to configure on them. They are purly in and outs nothing else. So if you know what goes in and comes out you shouldnt have a nproblem :angel:
 
Looks to me like a mixer or an interface with more than 6 inputs would be what you are looking for.

A patchbay may help, but I'm not sure it will completely solve your issue.

Do you want to track all those at once on seperate channels, or one by one?
 
I'll only go one at a time. And it sounds like they're easier to use than I heard elsewhere. Thanks a lot yall .
 
to avoid posting another thread pertaining to this topic..

i'm in the same situation that entails me having to unhook my quarter inch cables from my amp then into my mixer everytime someone comes over to record, which is time consuming, when they want to moniter through headphones and I am only able to moniter through the headphones, then when they want to listen to the results thru the moniters, i'm having to unplug the cables from the mixer *behringer UB502 which is broken now* and back into the amp.

my soundcard is an emu 1212m which has 2 ins and 2 outs.. for stereo pairs.

thats the first of my issues.

my second issue is sort of the same, when i want to compress vocals/instruments with my joe meek threeq, i have to unplug things from my amp, then into the meek, then from the meek, into the emus Inputs. once again, a pain in the ass and fustrating.. then reconfiguring everything so i can hear the whole mix in stereo since the compressor is a mono device.

is there a configuration remedy that will allow me to leave everything hooked up? I do not want to purchase another soundcard with more outs, i was thinking a mixer maybe with a moniter to headphone switch or something.. and a patchbay for the joe meek routed through my card so i can just send certain outputs thru the meek. But a guy at the guitar center told me I have no choice but to buy a new interface with more ins and outs..

this sucks..

please help anyone.
 
You can hook up a patch bay to go through - As in, it's hooked up until you break the circuit by inserting something else - So you can have a "default" setup and connect everything else to the patch bay to make it easy to go to something different, yet easy to return to the default.

But no matter what, you can never record more tracks simultaneously than you have I/O for.
 
MASSIVE put it simply, and direct.

From what I understand Gil, you need a way of having three monitoring devices at once, two being headphones.

Perhaps a mixer and patchbay would help, or maybe having a headphone amp/distributer would work.

I know people who rave about the Behringer headphone amp, but I'm not a fan.

I don't really have a preference on those really.

I'd say mixer and patchbay, and if you're not satisfied, add a headphone amp/dist.
 
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