to patchbay or not to patchbay (micpres)

[Camilo Orozco]

Hello,
I'm going to buy a hi-end mic pre in the following days, and want to know if its OK to plug it to a 1/4 patch bay, pros??? cons???
Any input will be appreciated...

[Doug Ring]

Use a stereo one for balanced operation, obviously [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Kenny Gioia]

I say, if you can avoid a patchbay, avoid it.

The wires/electronics have to be a weak point in the chain.

Maybe I'm getting anal but if you can put the mic pre closer to the mic it's even better.

That's why Rupert Neve had starting building a remote controlled mic pre.
(I'm off topic here)

If you have a major studio, (64 inputs)
You need a patchbay.

But if you're like me, you have one or two great mic pre's and one or two mics and you usually record one instrument at a time.

In that case, I would avoid a patchbay.

Just my opinion

[Daniel_Dettwiler]

I can only second what produceher already said.

On my session the critical stuff goes from a good mic through a short good (!) cable to the Pre. The Pre I place in the recordingroom and let my assistant do the gain while the Musician plays. From there I go with linelevel direclty to the converter.

Daniel
ideeundklang

[tom_mac]

Slow degradation (and eventual failure) of mic preamps resulting from hot patching is one of the mixing console manufacturing community's dirty little secrets. If you route a phantom-powered mic through a patchbay, it's roughly equivalent to shorting out a cable every time you patch it. The mic preamp's input transistors progressively break down (called zenering), while the mixer channel gets noisy and can eventually totally croak.

(from Mackie designs website)

just happened to see this today
lucky you [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[CyanJaguar]

We are talking about the inputs right?

Can I patch the output of the micpre without destroying the pre?

[Camilo Orozco]

Thank you Produceher, Tom_Mac and everybody, I wish I could avoid having to patch the input of the pre, BUT, I have two separate rooms and only one pre, is there any other way to do this without degrading the signal??? [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img] What about turning off the phantom while patching???

Thank you all for your help [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[sdevino]

Just put the pre in the room with the mic. Routing the line level through the patchbay will not hurt the mic pre since there is not phantom power on that end.

You can send the output back to the control room via the patch bay or direct. Direct should be a little better but won't be much different.

[emilano]

You know, normally I would just dismiss what these pro's are saying as BS and think that they are just getting out of hand anal, and who could really hear the difference between a patch bay vs. short cable. But now I know to respect at least some of this kind of thinking thanks to a CD I picked up called the A/B CD (check outA/BCD). Shows me for being a know-it-all. This CD is great for lots of things and I could hear a difference between the patched and non patched cables (almost seemed like a subtle level drop). Also surprising to me was that an oxygen free cable compared with a Whirlwind (?) cable made a HUGE difference in certain takes on the CD (is whirlwind a real crappy cable?). Now I usually take the word "huge" with a grain of salt when I see it on this site, because usually people use it to describe differences that are either extremely subtle or that I don't even think exist (like "ohmygod, don't bounce your mixes to disk! there's a HUGE difference if you do it to an aux" puuhleeese). But this difference really was big, most noticeable in the high end. The disc is really great except for the fact that I would have liked more details about the recording processes and setup used and not be forced to leave as much to my trust of the person who created it...

But it compares things like a digital home studio recording vs. pro studio 2" (apples and oranges, but woah) pro digital multitrack vs. 2" (MUCH less difference than I would have thought except for during quiet parts where the noise difference is obvious) and even a stradavarius violin vs a normal one (the beauty of the strad really came out in headphones, but on my mackies and NS-10s, they just sounded very different, not necessarily one better than the other IMO).

I think everyone should buy this disc so we can compare thoughts on differences. Oops. went a little OT there.

[Barnabas]

I don't know about the change in sound caused by the patchbay, but the input to the preamp can be damaged by shorting it out, even with phantom being turned off. Most new preamps have designed this into their design. Older preamps might not fair as well.

The 1/4" patch does short the pins when inserted. This is also why 1/4" plugs make bad speaker connectors. They short out the amp when they are plugged in.

Definately, always turn off the Phantom before connecting a mic to a preamp, wether you use a patch bay or not. It's best to turn off the power to the preamp before connecting and disconnecting.