Lesson 5 - Posted on 2013-03-22 by Griffin Plack

In this lesson I learned about patch bays and how to use them as well as signal flow and its path. A patch bay lets you patch audio signals in the studio from a central point and send them to other gear in the studio. It also helps the cabling nice and tidy and professional looking. On a patch bay, there are two rows of connectors, either RCA or 1/4" audio jacks in a single rack space configuration. On the back, a corresponding number of jacks or contacts for soldering signal leads can be found. A studio patch bay can be configured in 4 ways Open, Normalled, Half-Normalled, and Parallel. In a parallel configuration, all terminals of one module are interconnected. This is used to split up and send one audio signal to several different destinations. In a half-normalled configuration the contacts of the two jacks one the rear are interconnected. When you are able to tell where you're signal is coming from, where it's going, and what is happening to it along the way, you are an engineer. If you don't know where you're signal is or where it's going, you're going to make some clients not very happy. A patch bay is a friend when determining where your signal is and where it's going.