patch_bay cost

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kambo

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Apr 24, 2009
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i was thinking of getting a switchcraft 96 point patchbay.
either you have to spend hours of soldering , or buy adaptor cables...
and patch cables,. so 96 point switchcraft with ready cables comes to ~$2000  :eek:



 
My analog room ,what with a console, tape machines, outboard gear, speakers, power amps, computer, 
headphones, video, and monitors,  probably has 10's of thousands of dollars in wiring, Mogami and monster,
patch bays, , patch cables, and plugs, let alone all the soldering time.
Not cheap.
 
the cost of cabling, connectors and patchbays in general has gone up considerably. The only real way to get around it is to buy second hand then rework them.  If your local to L.A. I know a spot that can hook you up with cabling and patchbays on the inexpensive and even their prices have gone up a lot.
 
And that's 2 Gee's without a tally of person-hours to figure the opportunity cost.

I know that hard-wired is the best for integrity, but all things considered in a "my first patchbay" scenario in a professional project studio, a d-sub bay and d-sub snakes is the best way to go.  The component pieces hold their future utility much more than a hard-wired bay.  When you get a different monitor controller, console, DAW hardware, get more O/B, or have to sell the lot because you got a desk with it's own bays, the d-sub route is more flexible to change or more valuable to sell.  Plan that the normaling adds double person-hours to a hard-wired project, and TRIPLE to a re-work when you want to change some stuff.  Once you have a setup that you will use for years THEN I say hard-wire it.

If your goal is a vision quest, then never mind.
Mike
 
the switchcraft 9625 patchbays with ex norm are choice in that department. all db25 connections for the I/O and normaing changed with a greenie screw driver.  But they run close to 900.00 dollars
 
I have some used 96 point tt bays that are surplus.  $150 each to forum members plus pp & ship.
Mods, if this is in the wrong place, just delete it.
Best,
Bruno2000
 
Oh how i wish i hadn't skimped on cabling a few years ago by buying junk like hosa.
What a waste of time and money.
In my little pro/home studio I went the trs route to try and save a few bucks.
It's still in the 1000s of $ but I regret not going the tt route.
After only a few months I finally threw all the junk snakes on Ebay after spending hours one day of troubleshooting just to figure out it had been the 4th bad cable in a month. I just wouldn't believe it could be another cable.

That'll teach me.
It pays to listen.
Literally.

I quickly bought quality cabling and it was worth every penny.
 
The other extremity I'm seeing some larger studios take is buying the cheapest possible 1/4" bays with 1/4" rear connections, with the plan of tossing them out fairly regularly, keeping a stack of spares on the shelf ready to drop in.  For a room with no real tech on hand,  not willing to spend large for bulletproof reliability, maybe that makes sense.  It's what I do in my small room, given I need to change things around just enough to make me avoid hardwire in a bunch of places, and it's a small enough array I can change out a misbehaving bay in 15 minutes, patch around it if it goes funky in a session.  I seem to get 2-3 reliable years out of a cheap bay, so in a decade of tossing them I've still not spent half of what a top quality bay would cost.  YMMV....
 
depending on use those cheap 1/4 to 1/4 bays can break fairly regularly.  I maintained a studio that had those and although I do not wish to mention any one specific company the majority made by a company known for compressors often had to be removed and re-soldered regularly.  Oddly enough in this situation we replaced them with behringer which tended to hold up much better under the same rigorous conditions. First behringer product that really held up and was worth the $
 
Yep, I know one big studio full of those cheap Behringers.  I have used the cheap Neutrik several times in a row, they eventually become intermittent and it's easier to toss them out than troubleshoot.  In my experience re-soldering has not helped bad cards, seems to be plastic fatigue taking the entire path shape  out of spec. 
 
Having done a lot of integration work over the years. It is always the last thing thought about by even people who are at the fully commercial level. I have been told to GO EFF MYSELF by people when I tell them what integrating there new console into their room is going to cost only to get called back later after they went and asked other people what it costs, complete with sheepish look and a tale of your not the cheapest but you seem to be the more honest. 

Spending the time and money now will pay off long into the future. Even if it is just avoiding showing butt crack to the client when you go behind the gear yet again to make a patch.

Depending on your setup and size I always prefer "1/4 inch LONG FRAME"  patchbays as they are the most rugged and sturdiest out there, Nice big fat contacts and lots of metal coming together to make a nice connection. TT becomes necessary when you have a lot of points, lets face it twice as much in the same space has it's merits.

While on the subject patch cables are expensive and you also want to figure in adapter cables like XLR to TT or TRS to TT etc...

Buying a Ferrari you must also have a garage.
 
here is a thought is going  for an inexpensive 1/4" plastic bay really that much less money,  the amount of trs connectors you have to buy, is it really any more cost effective then anything else?
 
I've always dreamt of a digitally controlled patchbay. bring everythign into the back one, and let the relays wear themselves out over 20 years.

 
Rochey said:
I've always dreamt of a digitally controlled patchbay. bring everythign into the back one, and let the relays wear themselves out over 20 years.

I gave that a thought some time ago, if conventional ones are expensive imagine this. This goes exponential as the number of channels increases. If you really think what are the connections you might want to do and which you'll never do makes it realizable but not so flexible for expansion later or strange configurations experiments. Running a few preamps to the converter is not as hard but I guess not useful as you may better be picking the converters in the right order and have them connected directly to the converters, assuming you record clean and then you process. Once you get to the mixing stage it gets ugly. All your outputs to all your EQs, then to all the Comps, then back to all the EQs (so you can pick the order) and then to the converter... It gets nasty. If you only have 2 type of comps 8 channels of each and same for EQs would make it so much easier, but who does that?

JS
 
I went the balanced behringer route and I have to agree its  probably the most (only) durable product they make.
The 'normal, thru, half-normal' switch above each channel was the main selling point for me and it certainly made mapping it out and connecting everything a breeze. I'm not sure of the durability of the switches but I dont really see myself using them very often if ever.  So far the jacks have also held up well which had been a slight concern considering how awful they are on other behringer products.  Really the only problem I had with them was that they said 'behringer', but that was quickly resolved with a piece of silver duct tape.


 
i spend some accountable time back in two racks,
look s like, i will be using it heavily. i will go with tt bays for sure, with db25 to xlr's.
 

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