John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Let's see if anyone has an answer for this. I have 3 rooms in my studio in which I want to install XLR/TRS wall panels in, guided to a (x 3) redco tt bantam 96 point patchbay with 12 db connectors in groups of 8 (6 x 8 outs, 6 x 8 ins). I will be using db25 to XLR or TRS snakes for the connections, most likely stripping the opposite ends from the db25 connectors to solder.

a) I want the live room to have 16 XLR F tie ins, 4 TRS ins, to go to DI on my mixer, and 4 TRS (returns?) for headphone amps listeners

b) The vocal booth with 4 XLR tie ins, 2 TRS ins, and 2 TRS (returns?)

c) Iso Room with 10 XLR tie ins, 2 TRS ins, and 2 TRS (returns?)

I want to solder all these connections within each room via a 8 channel snake to db25 connection at the patchbay end, but I believe I have an issue here. Since the db25 connectors are grouped in sets of 8 would I have to make it so that all my wall plates are in sets of 8 as well, giving me unneeded connections? Or would I have to overpass the non used ones?

For instance with the live studio wall plate, I have 16 XLR ties that can be connected to the db25 connectors no problem ( 2 sets of , but then I have 4 TRS connections returning to the patch bay as ins (1-4) leaving me with 4 non usable patch points (5-8) or I would have to add 4 more TRS in connectors to the wall panel so that they would group in 8.

Obviously I didn't think about this issue before I bought my patchbays, but is there anyway around it if I am using db25 connectors, or should I just either make the panels with 8 sets on each, or bypass the ones I don't want to use completely?

Sorry if my terminology was poor, Thanks

If I got you right the problem you have is like this (I'll simplify the description a bit): if you have 2 rooms with 4 XLRs in each of them, then at the patchbay you might end with inputs 1-4 (db-25 from the first room) and 25-28 (db-25 from another room). Is that what bothers you?

If so why don't you solder the cables from both rooms to one db-25?
You see, that's why I hate db-25 connectors. They are a pain to solder, snd in the situations like this you need to fit 2 or more cables in the very small hole. I'd personally have bought the solder connections patchbay instead of db-25 terminated.

Thanks for the response Ilya, I think I figured it out tho. I can end up getting 4 channel DB25's which should solve the panels with less Inputs, and for the rooms I wanna share the DB25's ill just make the shared ends extended so they can reach the room thru the conduit. I probably should have stuck to solder connections, but using these DB25's and Redco thru connectors, I have found a way to wire my entire studio without any soldering, saving me a hell of a lot of time, although I will miss that solder smell haha.

Glad to hear you've figured it out.
Another thing you may consider is heat-shrinking the separated wires so they will be better protected. I often heat-shrink the splits with smaller tubing and the place where they join together with larger tubing. Absolutely bullet-proof
BTW, are you crimping those db-25?
Ah well, gotta go sniff some soldering fumes

Actually Ilya, I've gone another route to save me even more money. I'm going to get the snakes pre-wired only to the DB25's on one end, that way it makes it more feasible for them to pass through the conduit. Then in the returning room I'm just gonna solder them to connectors mounted to the plates, eliminating the extra through connectors, which in turn should give me a more stable connection. You're right though, the dsubs do make it a bit more difficult when it comes to connector quantity, but my control room will be a hell of a lot cleaner with dsubs going right into the patch bay, rather than cable snakes everywhere.