Chapter 4 - Connectivity Blog Post - Posted on 2016-12-31 by Hunter White

This chapter throughly described all the cords needed to record along with analog signals, cables and connectors and also talked about the coolest thing I learned about in the chapter called the patchbay. There are three differect types of connectors - two-conductor, three-conductor, and muli-pin connectors. I learned that analog audio cables are used to pass analog signals, which are maily low voltage electricity. This chapter also explained how there are unbalanced, balanced, and multi-channel balanced cables. Unbalanced cables  include RCA, instrument, BNC, and speaker cables. Balanced cables include XLR, TRS, TT, and snake cables. Multi-channel balanced cables include ELCO, DL, D-SUB cables. I learned that digital cables tranfer infomation in form of binary code, unlike analog cables which carry voltage. Examples of digital cables are light pipes, BNC, and TDIF cables. Now it's time to talk about my favorite thing in the whole chapter: the Patchbay. The patchbay is so cool. It's used to provide a central place where all analog connections can be made and then it dictates where the signal flow goes to in the studio. For instance if you want to use a specific mic, such as a SM58, you plug one end of the analog cable for that mic then you want to use a specifc plug-in for that mic when recording, you take the other end of the cord and plug that into whatever plug-in you want to use. Being able to manually switch stuff like that by cords to me is so cool. This chapter was my favorite one to study so far!