I did a LOT of googling when I was reading up on patchbays and didn’t come up with much. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty out there in terms of base knowledge, such as the meaning between normal and half-normal, and the technical side of what they’re there to do. However, I found very little when it comes to examples, peoples’ setups, “normal” setups, etc. The kind of “real world” info that is really useful. Hopefully, my setup helps you in yours. To preface this appropriately, I’m not a professional in this regard. I haven’t worked in a studio. I haven’t apprenticed as an audio engineer. This is purely from my own experiences in my own studio, getting knowledge from what’s available out there.
My Basic Understanding
I understood the absolute basics of a patchbay. It’s there to make your life easier, shifting the connectors behind devices to the front of an organized panel. This basic understanding led to a very simple use of patchbays in my mind. You have devices in a rack. You don’t want to keep plugging and unplugging shit from behind the rack. You use the patchbay instead. By that I mean, you have “Channel 1 Input” and “Channel 1 Output” on a device, you plug the output into the top of a channel in a patchbay, and you plug the input into the bottom of the same channel. There ya go, a simple one-to-one use. Now, that totally works and will still absolutely make your life easier. But…it can do SO much more!
I had a real aha! moment when I read one specific piece of info. I wish I knew had the specific article so I can attribute it and give it due credit. Imagine you had a second device in the same rack as above. Rather than just using another pair of ins and outs on the patchbay to do a one-to-one mapping of ins and outs on the device, you connect device one’s out to the top connector of the patchbay, and you connect device two’s input to the bottom connector of the same patchbay channel. Why does this help? It’s time we talk about normalling.
Normalling
I’ll be honest, I didn’t understand this at all at first. I read the definitions of Normal, Half-Normal, and Isolated probably a hundred times, and even though the words made sense, the use case didn’t. This is what I’m going to try to explain here. Let’s define these three different modes (taken from sweetwater.com):
Full-Normal:
Rear panel connections are linked, but are broken when a front panel connection is made.
Half-Normal:
Half-Normal bay is one in which the rear panel connections are linked, a connection made to the top row of the front panel does not break the link, but a connection to the bottom row does break the link.
De-Normal (aka Non-Normal or “isolated”):
Rear panel connections are not linked to each other and are routed directly to front panel connections.
Okay, so what does this mean? Let me try some different definitions that are a little more “layman.” Let’s settle on some terms so we can all follow along without losing our minds.
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#RT – The top connector of channel # on the rear of the patchbay
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#RB – The bottom connector of channel # on the rear of the patchbay
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#FT – The top connector of channel # on the front of the patchbay.
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#FB – The bottom connector of channel # on the front of the patchbay.
Full-Normal:
The signal plugged into #RT is sent to #RB as long as no cables are connected to #FT or #FB.
No Cables Connected: #RT -> #RB
#FT Cable Connected: #RT -> #FT; #FB -> #RB
#FB Cable Connected: #RT -> #FT; #FB -> #RB
#FT & #FB Cable Connected: #RT -> #FT; #FB -> #RBHalf-Normal:
The signal plugged into #RT is sent to #RB as long as no cables are connected to #FB.
No Cables Connected: #RT -> #RB
#FT Cable Connected: #RT -> #FT; #RT -> #RB
#FB Cable Connected: #RT -> #FT; #FB -> #RB
#FT & #FB Cable Connected: #RB -> #FT; #FB -> #RBDe-Normal (aka Non-Normal or “isolated” or “Pass-Through”):
The signal plugged into #RT is not sent to #RB at all. Only the direct signal paths between #RT -> #FT and #FB -> #RB exist.
No Cables Connected: #RT -> #FT; #FB -> #RB
#FT Cable Connected: #RT -> #FT; #FB -> #RB
#FB Cable Connected: #RT -> #FT; #FB -> #RB
#FT & #FB Cable Connected: #RT -> #FT; #FB -> #RB
Okay…so, why though?
Alright, so now we understand where audio signals go in all these different modes. Why is this useful? This is where my setup comes into play, where I can send audio signal from my DAW through any one or number of my rack devices, and back to my DAW, without a single cable. No more cables. None. And it’s awesome.
Instead of walking through my entire setup, I’ll just take a few pieces to illustrate the point, and you can then extrapolate that to as many devices, channels, etc., as you wish. The devices I’ll be showing is an 8-point patchbay, 4-channel audio interface (4i4), a stereo Behringer Sonic Exciter SX3040, and a stereo Behringer FX2000. Here is the layout of the connections, all eight patchbay channels are set to “Half-Normal”:
1RT – 4i4 Chan 3 Output
1RB – SX3040 Chan 1 Input
2RT – 4i4 Chan 4 Output
2RB – SX3040 Chan 2 Input
3RT – 4i4 Chan 5 Output
3RB – FX2000 Chan 1 Input
4RT – 4i4 Chan 6 Output
4RB – FX2000 Chan 2 Input
5RT – SX3040 Chan 1 Output
5RB – 4i4 Chan 3 Input
6RT – SX3040 Chan 2 Output
6RB – 4i4 Chan 4 Input
7RT – FX2000 Chan 1 Output
7RB – 4i4 Chan 5 Input
8RT – FX2000 Chan 2 Output
8RB – 4i4 Chan 6 Input
Whew, okay. Notice a pattern there? With all these channels set to Half-Normal, whatever is sent to #RT is automatically sent to #RB, no cable needed. So, in my DAW, if I set one of my channels to output to channel 5, I know that signal is going to be sent to channel 1 of my FX3000. From there, it comes right back to channel 5 of my interface. Easy, now it’s just a setting in my DAW. No cable needed. I can chain these however I’d like. For example, after I get that signal back from my FX3000, I can just send it back out to channel 3, and it’ll then go through the SX3040, coming back on channel 3. I can do it in pairs for stereo using 3/4 or 5/6. This is the real power of a patchbay, the real convenience. The other benefit of Half-Normal is if I need to send something else physical, maybe outside my rack, into one of my devices, plugging a cable into the input of the front of the patchbay breaks that automatic send from #RT -> #RB. Now it’s just a normal input from outside in.
Now I’m sure this will seem like patchbay 101 to a lot of people. But for me, this took some time and thinking and there wasn’t info that I found regarding this kind of setup, or anyone being this specific about using it in this way. So for all of you home producers out there, I hope this helped.