John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello, have learned a lot at this site. Have a three room studio in construction (Las Vegas Nevada) and need to order a patch bay soon. I want to go balanced/normaled, and direct solder the cables to the back to eliminate extra connections. Hold on! What to do about phantom power? Should I just run a couple channels from each room directly to the board to keep the 48vdc where it belongs? Wire a couple patch bay jacks with a common ground to pass the dc? That won't work, can't route 48v through an opto compressor right? My brain is melting.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

David

Not totally sure where you are going with this.... But hopefully these help.

Phantom power can be out in patchbays.

The 48v is coming from your preamp input out to the mic... So the line level or mic level out of a compressor will not have the 48v on it making it fine to patching into any piece of gear.

Keep the questions coming if you still have them.

The 48v is coming from your preamp input out to the mic...

Yeah, but it goes through the patch bay on the way, and inserting or removing patches with phantom on can not only cause nasty spikes going into the pre-amps or compressor (and on to the headphones and speakers) it can actually damage some types of mic.

- Stuart -

First question: Is your phantom power switchable on/off on each channel or is it "always on" like some vintage consoles?

If you're wiring a tie line/mic input patch bay, I would highly suggest a point to point wiring. Do not buss your grounds on this particular bay. If your console has switchable power for phantom, running through the patch bay usually isn't an issue, but you do want to always keep a conscious mind about what and where you're patching. Plugging into another piece of outboard gear or ribbon mic could be disastrous to the equipment. It just comes down to using common sense when using. (keep the interns away from it...LOL).

A lot of older consoles had phantom on all the time and went through a patch bay, so it is possible. It really just comes down to the operator using it properly to avoid any problems.