The joy of patchbays

What should become clear from much of this article is that it’s possible to integrate vintage mix tools into your workflow, even if you invest in just a single channel strip or hardware preamp.

However, if you decide to go much further and you’re keen to make outboard a significant part of your workflow, it won’t take long before you run out of inputs and outputs from your audio interface to set up the kind of ready send and return systems that a single channel of external processing can offer. So how do you integrate a larger collection of external hardware and go about the process of making sure it’s ready, at a moment’s notice, to be a part of the workflow of your current production?

One way for you to do this is to connect your hardware to a patchbay so that you can reach for a choice of EQs, compressors, reverbs and the like whenever the mood takes you. Patchbays act as ‘exchanges’ for audio signals, whereby any signal can be routed anywhere else, simply by making temporary connections on the front panel via cables, which connect together ‘permanent’ connections made at the rear. Of course, if you’re really going deep with the amount of outboard you wish to integrate, the 2, 4, 8 or even 16 outputs your audio interface provides may well not be sufficient.

This is where the expanded digital options that audio interfaces provide come into their own; via analogue to digital converters, additional channels can be sent to your interface via AES/EBU, optical and MADI connectors, so that multiple streams of audio can be monitored and recorded simultaneously. Research these options if you’re intending to go big with vintage mix hardware.