Brand: Several different brands.
Model: Patch Bay
BLURB:
Boring, cheap but essential. These patch bays keep everything talking to each other and make it easy to route signals all over the place.
What goes though the patch bay:
Most of the desk inputs and outputs
CV/GATE ins and outs of all the big synths and analogue sequencers, and MIDI-> CV convertors
Audio outs of all the stand alone synths
Ins/Outs from the computer’s card
Ins/Outs of outboard FX, compressors and other filters.
…basically almost everything.
PROS:
Almost every piece of gear arrives at the patch bay. This means we can patch anything to anywhere very easily. In effect, we’ve converted our entire studio into one massive modular synth. We can even patch signal from a SoftSynth through any analogue filter….which is kinda cool…but we never use softsynths.
CONS:
The back of it is a MESS. It takes 2 days to pull the entire modular apart and around 7 days to re-assemble….it’s a massive task.
Maintaining leads is expensive and time consuming. If a lead dies it’s major surgery to replace it….fortunately this rarely happens.
HINT:
You can buy a decent Patch Bay for around $50-100. Run your synths/desk and computer though it. Having a modular patchable approach in your studio really opens up many possibilities. It becomes quick and easy to patch and build complex sounds. Many of our sounds can only be built because the patch bays allow us to get around conventional sign path thinking.
eg: synth -> delay -> bit crusher -> compressor -> filter
