AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - Studio wiring advice for newbies by newbies

In article am writes:

My day job is computer programming. There's a rather newish concept in
computer programming called refactoring. Refactoring is making changes that
improve the design, and should have no effect on the functionality.

Good in theory, but unless you're a highly disciplined programmer
working in a shop that goes strictly according to process, almost
every design "improvement" has an effect on functionality. Hopefully
it's positive, but not always, and sometimes some of the goofs slip
through because nobody ever thought that a user would try whatever
doesn't work.

As an example of "refactoring", I find that I want to group things
differently, and I now want to use patch point 5 for what point 1 was doing,
and point 19 for what point 5 was doing. So, I first move point 5 to 19, test
it, then update all the affected sticky notes. If I get interrupted now,
everything still works, and everything is still properly documented. Next, I
do the same moving point 1 to 5. Now, the refactoring is done, and point 1 is
available for the new functionality it needs to handle.

This may sound a bit arduous and excessive

Actually it makes good sense, but with something like a patchbay, you
don't really need to test the electrical continuity (which doesn't
change since you're using the same wires and the same jacks), you need
to test the user interface - do you REALLY want to have that patch
point in a different location all the time?

Keep simplifying:
After wiring, look for things that are complex or deviate from the standards
and don't actually need to be that way.

If you set standards to begin with, nothing should deviate from them.
The problem with patchbays is that most of the ones we use in studios
is that they're constructed with two parallel rows of jacks, and
there's presumed to be a direct relationship between the two rows. If
you have, for instance, more outputs than inputs, you'll have jacks on
the top row that correspond to "not connected" jacks below them.
Because we're a frugal lot, we hate to waste those jacks so we connect
something to them that's unrealted to the jacks above them and there
goes the system. While you can remove the normalling in most patchbays
so you don't have a connection that you never want, it does make
things hard to find.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
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