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By Ken Lanyon (Slider)

Ok, let's be honest here. How many of us have such a mess of cables behind our gear that we hate to go back there and repatch something? Say you have this awesome guitar sound and you are about to record a song to your multitrack. This means that you have to get up, possibly pull some furniture away from the wall, risk exposure to dustballs...mammoth spiders...cobwebs, and then search through a spaghetti of wire to find the correct cable to patch in. How about trying to patch in a compressor over your entire mix? It's such a pain to get back there, kink your back out, and scrape your knee on the cabinet just to get some even levels over your mix. Does this all sound familiar? This is something that I know about first hand, and I suffered through it for quite a while, as I am sure many of you are doing. Fortunately there is a simple answer...in the form of a device called a patchbay.

A patchbay is this wonderful, rack-mountable unit consisting of cable jacks on the front and back. These jacks are aligned in dual rows on top of each other stretching across the length of the patchbay, with each row generally having 24 jacks. It will be helpful if you think of the jacks exhisting as vertical pairs, since there is most often an intimate relationship between the two. The purpose of these connections is to permanently plug in all the gear and inputs / outputs into the back that you often repatch while recording or mixing. You can then use short patch cables in front to route the signals to and from all your equipment where you want them to go. You have now accomplished all of your necessary patching without even getting up from your comfortable seat in front of the monitors. Of course, there is a little more detail involved with understanding a patchbay, so I am going to go into those specifics next.

First of all, there is no standard on how you set up your patchbay. You own the gear, and only you know how you prefer to work. I will mention that commercial studios normally designate the top row of jacks as the outputs of your gear and mixer, with the bottom row then becoming the inputs. This is a helpful tip for organizing your unit, and is also important when dealing with normaled and half- normaled jacks. Ok, I know I probably just lost you on that one so I will go over those terms.

Normaled, Half-Normaled, and Denormaled Jacks When we talk about normaled, half-normaled, and denormaled jacks, we are really talking about how the signal flows through the jack itself. This has everything to do with the way the connections are soldered or connected on the PC board inside the patchbay, but for the purposes of this article, I will just explain how a jack treats an incoming signal rather than explain how to solder the connections.

Normaled

Normaled jacks are those where the top jack in back is automatically routed to the bottom jack in back when the front jacks are not used. For example, let's say that you have the outputs from your delay unit plugged in the back of the patchbay into jacks 1 and 2 on the top row (remember outputs on top, inputs on bottom). Lets also assume that you have the aux returns to your mixer plugged into the back of the patchbay into jacks 1 and 2 on the bottom row. With no patch cables used in front, the delay unit is always connected directly to your mixer via the aux returns, because the top row is internally feeding signal to the bottom row. There is no need to patch anything in the front because it is already hooked up. A normaled patch also allows you to connect the outputs from another unit that is not a member of those pairs into the bottom jacks 1 and 2 in front. Doing this breaks the normal internal connection between the top and bottom jacks, and now routes the new signal through to the aux returns of your mixer. Pretty cool!

Half-Normaled

Now, a half-normaled connection is similar to a normaled one, and that is where a lot of confusion arises. Let me first set up the scenario. Imagine that you have one output track of your multitrack plugged into the top jack of 3 in the back of the patchbay. You also have the input to your mixer channel 3 plugged into the bottom of jack 3 in the back of the patchbay. As with normaled patches, the top jack of each pair is internally connected to the bottom jack so that in this case, the output of track 3 is automatically routed to the mixer for playback. The difference here is that with a half-normaled pair, you can insert a patchcord into the top jack #3 in the front and the connection to the bottom jack in back will NOT be broken. This allows you to have two copies of the output track and bring the 2nd copy into another mixer channel to process differently while the original goes to its original corresponding mixer channel. Of course, if you are doing this so that you can route the outputs of track 3 to another mixer channel other than channel 3, then you have to plug a cord into the bottom jack in the front and leave the other end unconnected. This is called dead-patching and the purpose is to break the connection between the back top and bottom jacks by routing the back bottom jack to the front bottom jack (This is assuming you only want one copy of track 3 to show up on your mixer).

One situation you would use half-normaling jacks for is when you want to have two completely different EQ settings on your single vocal track during different parts of your song. It would be too tough and slow to change the EQ back and forth during the mix so you can have two separate channels with lead vocals, EQ them differently, and just mute the one not being used during different sections of the mixdown. This also allows you to have different effects on your instruments during different sections.

Denormaled

Denormaled jacks have no real tricks. They are designed to send input from the top and bottom back jacks directly to the front jacks. That is to say...the back top jack directly feeds the front top jack and vice versa with the bottom jacks. The top and bottom jacks do not connect at all internally. Period. Denormalled pairs are often used to give you a pair of patch points for, example, a signal processor such as a reverb unit that is not normally inline with your mixer aux jacks. Your reverb unit is simply plugged into the back of the patchbay to provide you with convenient patch-in points in the front. This way you can use short patch cords from these points to process a signal from another point in your patch bay.

Patchbay Models

Thankfully, there are many different models of patchbays to fit your needs and wallet. They range from having 32-48 jacks (16-24 jacks per row), and the ability to switch these connections between normaled, half-normaled, and denormaled varies on the brand of patchbay you buy. Some require soldering to set it up initially, while most come pre-soldered for you. Some bays come completely normaled or half-normaled without the option of changing any single connection. On many models, each pair of jacks (front and back) are connected to a removable PC card (circuitboard) which allows you to change the orientation of the jacks for different configurations. In this case, a single colored jack signifies the orientation of the PC card in its slot to make it normaled, half-normaled, or denormaled. This usually requires taking the bay out of your rack and unscrewing the metal cover to move the PC boards. Neutrik offers a 48 jack patchbay for about $100 that has a removable front panel so you can change the PC cards around without removing the patchbay from your rack. Pretty nice! Another company called Re'an makes a 44 point patchbay that also has a cable tester on it. Other companies include Carvin, AP, Fostex, DBX, Furman, Tascam and Switchcraft. Just make sure that you study their specs to make sure you're getting what you need. You may also need to buy multiple patchbays to give you all the patchpoints you need to hook up your gear.

Patchbay cables, which are usually about a foot in length, are also easy to buy, and are sold by companies such as Hosa, Re'an, and A.P. Audio. It is also probable that you can buy patchbay cables from most of the same makers of the patchbays themselves. Sometimes, the connections on the cables and jacks may get a little grimy from dust and dirt, and in these cases, I recommend that you insert the cables into the jacks several times to clear off the connections. This works well, and is a better and cheaper alternative to buying cleaning solvents.

One final note about patchbay models. Most of the bays I have described use balanced 1/4" jacks. You can also buy patchbays that instead use balanced TT jacks (tiny telephone), which are smaller and allow you to have many more patchpoints on each row. While most commercial studios use them for this reason, it may be expensive to buy the correct TT-to-1/4" cables to utilize this, so consider the additional cost for cabling before buying one of these patchbays.