I’m currently getting my home studio more organised, and along the way I’m sharing my thought process, decisions, discoveries and regrets.
I’ve spent the last two days getting the studio rack wired up at last. And, during the process, I’ve grown a bit frustrated with the Neutrik NYS SPP-L1 patchbay that I bought for this project.
As I’ve put gear into the rack and wired it up, I’ve discovered a few mistakes in my wiring plan. There were a couple of gear input / outputs I’d forgotten to put onto the plan, and some where I’d got the inputs on the top row of the patchbay instead of the bottom.
This has meant that some of my jack pairs had the magic jack in the wrong place. The only way to sort that out is to take the whole patchbay out of the rack, disassemble it, flip the card(s) as needed, then put it all back together.
Now, it’s only the 3rd or 4th time I’ve had the Neutrik NYS SPP-L1 apart to do this, but I’m sure it’s getting harder to put it back together. It took me a good 15 minutes to get all the PCBs lined up so that the front case would go onto it this time.
That’s on top of the time it takes to uncable it, remove it from the rack, take it apart, flip the PCB(s), screw it back into the rack, and cable it back up.
I wish it had a switch that I could push to change the mode. It would save me so much time.
The Bottom Line
I have no complaints or concerns at all about the audio quality of the Neutrik NYS SPP-L1.
If you think you’re going to be changing the jack pair modes at all – and especially on a regular basis – you’ll probably get frustrated at how much time it takes to do that.
I know I have.
It’s really easy to get it all aligned, just start at the left (or the right) by getting the first two or three through the holes and loosely put in the screw, then (as you already might have done with those first two/three) one by one you fiddle te next one and the next one and the next one etc until they’r all in place, inbetweens from time to time slightly fastening the screw at your starting point. The most important,key to the whole matter is to align the boards by first of all pushing them all firmly into place in the backpanel and then as you are moving along the frontpanel align them by using a pencil or screwdriver through the holes of the front panel (so do not try to fiddle behind the frontpanel to align it, that takes ages) one by one get them in place by sticking a pencil through the next hole for the plug to go into and align the board from in front of the panel, through the holes. It’s a matter of one, two minutes that way, really, once they’re all in place tighten the left (or right screw while holding the panel and put in the other screw. Really, piece of cake. You do not even have to take it out of the rack if you can access it from behind to unplug, either by getting behind the rack, or leaving some space above it so you can reach the plugs in the back from the front of the panel by reaching behind. Please let me know if this was of any help, or if I’m missing some complication you’re experiencing having figured this out already anyway.
You don’t even have to unplug everything if you can leave it in the rack, even better not to, makes aligning easier, just the ones you want to flip.