John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi

I have one control room in my studio and two live rooms .
I want to make 16 channel line/mic input stage boxes in both rooms (two different walls) but i want to have just one stage box in the control room so that i dont have to move my cables all the time when i record instruments from room 1 or 2

My idea is to connect both stage boxes from both rooms to one stage box in the control room , is this possible , am i going to lose signal of the mic if i connect this way ?

Of course i am not going to use same channels at the same time . So if i use 1-8 chanel in the first room i am going to use 9-16 in another .

I hope you undersatnd what i want to say ( me and my poor English )

Here is the sketch of my idea

Thank you very much

It isn't unusual to want to do this. The truth is, I have seen it done in practice with no undesirable side effects. But it's not a recommended practice. In the pro world, splitting mic lines usually involves transformer coupling on each line, to isolate the splits from one another. But this is assuming both side of the split will be used at the same time, i.e., feeding a mic to a FOH mix and a monitor mix. In a project sudio environment, you usually just want the input available in one location or another, not both at the same time. You just have to remember to never use both at once.

The other consideration is added capacitance of the cable hanging off the line. And if you don't use good cable that is properly balanced, you can potentially end up with an antenna effect. The unterminated cable will pick up noise.

Best advice is bring them into the control room separately, and use an XLR patch bay to connect the ones you want. I know it's an added expense, but not a huge one. If you are handy with a soldering iron, buy a prepunched rack panel and a bag of XLR's and you'll be done in no time.

Thank you Brian very much , i ll probably do that .

Cheers