I’m currently getting my home studio more organised, and along the way I’m sharing my thought process, decisions, discoveries and regrets.
The studio rack is on its way. Now I need to choose a couple of patchbays to go in it.
Why A Patchbay?
I want all the gear wired up and ready to go … but I can’t use it all at once. A patchbay allows me to quickly pick and choose which gear I want in the signal path whenever I want to use it.
If you want to know more, take a look at this LedgerNote article on patchbays. It’s been the article that’s guided me on this.
Choosing A Patchbay
I actually need two patchbays: one for XLR cables, and one for TRS cables. Choosing them turned out to be easier than I expected.
I decided to buy new, instead of second hand. While I’m sure that patchbays are well-made and durable, they are a partially-mechanical device: they have ports where you plug and unplug things. Anything mechanical eventually fails. As patchbays aren’t that expensive, I’d rather pay a bit more and hopefully avoid any problems.
There aren’t a lot of patchbays to choose from in these parts – especially when you rule out patchbays that are advertised for sale, but which aren’t actually kept in stock. I don’t want to order something, and find that it gets caught up in the impending Brexit-related import chaos.
Which Patchbays Did I Go For?
For the XLR patchbay, I’ve ordered the Art P16 Patchbay. It’s a simple 1U rack unit with 16 ports on the front, and 16 ports on the back in a straight-forward passthru arrangement.
For the TRS patchbay, I’ve ordered the Neutrik NYS SPP L1. This was my second choice. I would have preferred the Samson S-Patch Plus, but I couldn’t find anywhere that had one in stock. The NYS SPP L1 has a great reputation, and provides 24 socket pairs to work with.
I’ve ordered both from Thomann, and they should be here not long after the rack itself arrives.
I’ve also ordered a total of 12 patchbay cables to use on the front of the Neutrik unit. These are short TRS cables that’ll allow me to pretend I’m an old-fashioned telephone operator 🙂