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#1
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Studio wiring advice for newbies by newbies
Hi all,
I just realized I'm at that early stage in learning to wire a medium ambitious home studio where I'm experienced enough to have some advice, but not so experienced that I forgot one even needs to mention these things, so it's a great time to share. If this makes anyone else think of good advice in a simiar vein, please do share, or if anyone disagrees with any of this, I'd love to know. I have found that the following rules save so much time in understanding and using the studio that it even ends up saving vast amounts of time just in the rest of the wiring process itself because you don't have to repeatedly trace things down to recall what you were doing or find out what didn't get done the way you thought. Here goes... 1. Don't try to make your mixer do all your routing. Routing that way is too obtuse, and it will get in your way, and waste time during recording. Use your mixer for the kinds of routing it's good at, and use patch bays for everything else. 2. Don't try to do all your routing with patch bays. Use the mixer for the all kinds of routing it can be used for in the manner it was designed to do well. Use patch bays for the things mixers don't do well. 3. Before you start wiring - I have tried many systems for diagramming my wiring plan before hooking it up. All of those systems failed miserably until I came up with this one. - Begin with your mental picture of what the major stations are, and what physical order they are in. Come up with the closest thing you can to a sequential arrangement of them, and write them down the left edge of a page (an Excel spreadsheet is great). - Now, list all the gear to hook up across the bottom of the page not including mixers and patch bays which should be well represented in the column on the left. If something has both inputs and outputs, list the input and output as separate items. - Now, draw lines in the columns under each piece of gear showing the normal route of the signal to or from the device with dots at each connecting point along the path. If the path reverses direction, just make a U shaped line, and keep following the path. If the path connects to a point in another column, write a letter next to the point, and the same letter next to the matching point in the other column. - If there are common alternate paths you will need, draw the lines for those paths in a different color. Use letter designations as above where needed. Now, finally, you're ready to see how many balanced and unbalanced lines you need from where to where, how many patch points at each station, etc. As you start working that up, you'll find minor problems with the earlier planning stage, so clean them up. The diagramming system above is simple enough that it's not too time consuming to redraw from scratch if corrections get too messy, or use artists tape to cover up a column, and redraw it. 4. Follow the standard rules for wiring patch bays without exception, so you never have to wonder which are the exceptions - there are none. If you need just that one extra connection, you are so close to needing another patch bay anyway, that you might as well buy it now. In case you're wondering, standard rules for patch bays include... - Always using the top row for signals coming to the patch bay from the back (even when non-normalled). - Always use the bottom row for signals going from the patch bay in the back. - Always put left channels on odd numbers. - Always put right channels on even numbers. 5. In addition to the standard rules for patch bays, invent your own more detailed usage pattern rules, and stick to them as much as possible. Create standard rules for exceptions to the main rules, when exceptions are required. Some of my favorites are... - Always connect the same colored snake cable connector to the top and bottom points in the back of a 1/2 normalled connection. - Always route mixer channels Aux sends, etc., to the same numbered points on the patch bay if possible. If not possible, add or subtract exactly 10 if that is possible. Yes, I know your patch bay has a nice, intuitive divider in the middle between 12 and 13. I don't care - use offsets of 10. 6. Pick a standard order for the colors of your snake cable connectors, and always use it. A few judicious exceptions are OK, but just a few. I hope someone finds this info as useful as I do. |
#2
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I almost forgot. Another personal rule that has been helpfule is which point
positions to set as 1/2 normalled vs non-normalled on each patch bay. I find that I always need about 1/4 of the points to be non-normalled, so I standardize on 13-19 for that. By following a fixed rule rather than setting up the patch bays ad hoc, I always know which points I can use for non-normalled connections. I don't have to spend time figuring that out in my wiring plan, and I don't have to pull the patch bay out and reconfigure it when minor changes are made to the wiring plan. I do have to swap connection point locations, but that's easier than switching a module. On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 08:23:54 GMT, Steve Jorgensen wrote: Hi all, I just realized I'm at that early stage in learning to wire a medium ambitious home studio where I'm experienced enough to have some advice, but not so experienced that I forgot one even needs to mention these things, so it's a great time to share. If this makes anyone else think of good advice in a simiar vein, please do share, or if anyone disagrees with any of this, I'd love to know. I have found that the following rules save so much time in understanding and using the studio that it even ends up saving vast amounts of time just in the rest of the wiring process itself because you don't have to repeatedly trace things down to recall what you were doing or find out what didn't get done the way you thought. Here goes... 1. Don't try to make your mixer do all your routing. Routing that way is too obtuse, and it will get in your way, and waste time during recording. Use your mixer for the kinds of routing it's good at, and use patch bays for everything else. 2. Don't try to do all your routing with patch bays. Use the mixer for the all kinds of routing it can be used for in the manner it was designed to do well. Use patch bays for the things mixers don't do well. 3. Before you start wiring - I have tried many systems for diagramming my wiring plan before hooking it up. All of those systems failed miserably until I came up with this one. - Begin with your mental picture of what the major stations are, and what physical order they are in. Come up with the closest thing you can to a sequential arrangement of them, and write them down the left edge of a page (an Excel spreadsheet is great). - Now, list all the gear to hook up across the bottom of the page not including mixers and patch bays which should be well represented in the column on the left. If something has both inputs and outputs, list the input and output as separate items. - Now, draw lines in the columns under each piece of gear showing the normal route of the signal to or from the device with dots at each connecting point along the path. If the path reverses direction, just make a U shaped line, and keep following the path. If the path connects to a point in another column, write a letter next to the point, and the same letter next to the matching point in the other column. - If there are common alternate paths you will need, draw the lines for those paths in a different color. Use letter designations as above where needed. Now, finally, you're ready to see how many balanced and unbalanced lines you need from where to where, how many patch points at each station, etc. As you start working that up, you'll find minor problems with the earlier planning stage, so clean them up. The diagramming system above is simple enough that it's not too time consuming to redraw from scratch if corrections get too messy, or use artists tape to cover up a column, and redraw it. 4. Follow the standard rules for wiring patch bays without exception, so you never have to wonder which are the exceptions - there are none. If you need just that one extra connection, you are so close to needing another patch bay anyway, that you might as well buy it now. In case you're wondering, standard rules for patch bays include... - Always using the top row for signals coming to the patch bay from the back (even when non-normalled). - Always use the bottom row for signals going from the patch bay in the back. - Always put left channels on odd numbers. - Always put right channels on even numbers. 5. In addition to the standard rules for patch bays, invent your own more detailed usage pattern rules, and stick to them as much as possible. Create standard rules for exceptions to the main rules, when exceptions are required. Some of my favorites are... - Always connect the same colored snake cable connector to the top and bottom points in the back of a 1/2 normalled connection. - Always route mixer channels Aux sends, etc., to the same numbered points on the patch bay if possible. If not possible, add or subtract exactly 10 if that is possible. Yes, I know your patch bay has a nice, intuitive divider in the middle between 12 and 13. I don't care - use offsets of 10. 6. Pick a standard order for the colors of your snake cable connectors, and always use it. A few judicious exceptions are OK, but just a few. I hope someone finds this info as useful as I do. |
#3
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I almost forgot. Another personal rule that has been helpfule is which point
positions to set as 1/2 normalled vs non-normalled on each patch bay. I find that I always need about 1/4 of the points to be non-normalled, so I standardize on 13-19 for that. By following a fixed rule rather than setting up the patch bays ad hoc, I always know which points I can use for non-normalled connections. I don't have to spend time figuring that out in my wiring plan, and I don't have to pull the patch bay out and reconfigure it when minor changes are made to the wiring plan. I do have to swap connection point locations, but that's easier than switching a module. On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 08:23:54 GMT, Steve Jorgensen wrote: Hi all, I just realized I'm at that early stage in learning to wire a medium ambitious home studio where I'm experienced enough to have some advice, but not so experienced that I forgot one even needs to mention these things, so it's a great time to share. If this makes anyone else think of good advice in a simiar vein, please do share, or if anyone disagrees with any of this, I'd love to know. I have found that the following rules save so much time in understanding and using the studio that it even ends up saving vast amounts of time just in the rest of the wiring process itself because you don't have to repeatedly trace things down to recall what you were doing or find out what didn't get done the way you thought. Here goes... 1. Don't try to make your mixer do all your routing. Routing that way is too obtuse, and it will get in your way, and waste time during recording. Use your mixer for the kinds of routing it's good at, and use patch bays for everything else. 2. Don't try to do all your routing with patch bays. Use the mixer for the all kinds of routing it can be used for in the manner it was designed to do well. Use patch bays for the things mixers don't do well. 3. Before you start wiring - I have tried many systems for diagramming my wiring plan before hooking it up. All of those systems failed miserably until I came up with this one. - Begin with your mental picture of what the major stations are, and what physical order they are in. Come up with the closest thing you can to a sequential arrangement of them, and write them down the left edge of a page (an Excel spreadsheet is great). - Now, list all the gear to hook up across the bottom of the page not including mixers and patch bays which should be well represented in the column on the left. If something has both inputs and outputs, list the input and output as separate items. - Now, draw lines in the columns under each piece of gear showing the normal route of the signal to or from the device with dots at each connecting point along the path. If the path reverses direction, just make a U shaped line, and keep following the path. If the path connects to a point in another column, write a letter next to the point, and the same letter next to the matching point in the other column. - If there are common alternate paths you will need, draw the lines for those paths in a different color. Use letter designations as above where needed. Now, finally, you're ready to see how many balanced and unbalanced lines you need from where to where, how many patch points at each station, etc. As you start working that up, you'll find minor problems with the earlier planning stage, so clean them up. The diagramming system above is simple enough that it's not too time consuming to redraw from scratch if corrections get too messy, or use artists tape to cover up a column, and redraw it. 4. Follow the standard rules for wiring patch bays without exception, so you never have to wonder which are the exceptions - there are none. If you need just that one extra connection, you are so close to needing another patch bay anyway, that you might as well buy it now. In case you're wondering, standard rules for patch bays include... - Always using the top row for signals coming to the patch bay from the back (even when non-normalled). - Always use the bottom row for signals going from the patch bay in the back. - Always put left channels on odd numbers. - Always put right channels on even numbers. 5. In addition to the standard rules for patch bays, invent your own more detailed usage pattern rules, and stick to them as much as possible. Create standard rules for exceptions to the main rules, when exceptions are required. Some of my favorites are... - Always connect the same colored snake cable connector to the top and bottom points in the back of a 1/2 normalled connection. - Always route mixer channels Aux sends, etc., to the same numbered points on the patch bay if possible. If not possible, add or subtract exactly 10 if that is possible. Yes, I know your patch bay has a nice, intuitive divider in the middle between 12 and 13. I don't care - use offsets of 10. 6. Pick a standard order for the colors of your snake cable connectors, and always use it. A few judicious exceptions are OK, but just a few. I hope someone finds this info as useful as I do. |
#4
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Steve wrote
I almost forgot. Another personal rule that has been helpfule is which point positions to set as 1/2 normalled vs non-normalled on each patch bay. I find that I always need about 1/4 of the points to be non-normalled, so I standardize on 13-19 for that. By following a fixed rule rather than setting up the patch bays ad hoc, I always know which points I can use for non-normalled connections. I don't have to spend time figuring that out in my wiring plan, and I don't have to pull the patch bay out and reconfigure it when minor changes are made to the wiring plan. I do have to swap connection point locations, but that's easier than switching a module. On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 08:23:54 GMT, Steve Jorgensen wrote: Hi all, I just realized I'm at that early stage in learning to wire a medium ambitious home studio where I'm experienced enough to have some advice, but not so experienced that I forgot one even needs to mention these things, so it's a great time to share. If this makes anyone else think of good advice in a simiar vein, please do share, or if anyone disagrees with any of this, I'd love to know. I have found that the following rules save so much time in understanding and using the studio that it even ends up saving vast amounts of time just in the rest of the wiring process itself because you don't have to repeatedly trace things down to recall what you were doing or find out what didn't get done the way you thought. Here goes... 1. Don't try to make your mixer do all your routing. Routing that way is too obtuse, and it will get in your way, and waste time during recording. Use your mixer for the kinds of routing it's good at, and use patch bays for everything else. 2. Don't try to do all your routing with patch bays. Use the mixer for the all kinds of routing it can be used for in the manner it was designed to do well. Use patch bays for the things mixers don't do well. 3. Before you start wiring - I have tried many systems for diagramming my wiring plan before hooking it up. All of those systems failed miserably until I came up with this one. - Begin with your mental picture of what the major stations are, and what physical order they are in. Come up with the closest thing you can to a sequential arrangement of them, and write them down the left edge of a page (an Excel spreadsheet is great). - Now, list all the gear to hook up across the bottom of the page not including mixers and patch bays which should be well represented in the column on the left. If something has both inputs and outputs, list the input and output as separate items. - Now, draw lines in the columns under each piece of gear showing the normal route of the signal to or from the device with dots at each connecting point along the path. If the path reverses direction, just make a U shaped line, and keep following the path. If the path connects to a point in another column, write a letter next to the point, and the same letter next to the matching point in the other column. - If there are common alternate paths you will need, draw the lines for those paths in a different color. Use letter designations as above where needed. Now, finally, you're ready to see how many balanced and unbalanced lines you need from where to where, how many patch points at each station, etc. As you start working that up, you'll find minor problems with the earlier planning stage, so clean them up. The diagramming system above is simple enough that it's not too time consuming to redraw from scratch if corrections get too messy, or use artists tape to cover up a column, and redraw it. 4. Follow the standard rules for wiring patch bays without exception, so you never have to wonder which are the exceptions - there are none. If you need just that one extra connection, you are so close to needing another patch bay anyway, that you might as well buy it now. In case you're wondering, standard rules for patch bays include... - Always using the top row for signals coming to the patch bay from the back (even when non-normalled). - Always use the bottom row for signals going from the patch bay in the back. - Always put left channels on odd numbers. - Always put right channels on even numbers. 5. In addition to the standard rules for patch bays, invent your own more detailed usage pattern rules, and stick to them as much as possible. Create standard rules for exceptions to the main rules, when exceptions are required. Some of my favorites are... - Always connect the same colored snake cable connector to the top and bottom points in the back of a 1/2 normalled connection. - Always route mixer channels Aux sends, etc., to the same numbered points on the patch bay if possible. If not possible, add or subtract exactly 10 if that is possible. Yes, I know your patch bay has a nice, intuitive divider in the middle between 12 and 13. I don't care - use offsets of 10. 6. Pick a standard order for the colors of your snake cable connectors, and always use it. A few judicious exceptions are OK, but just a few. I hope someone finds this info as useful as I do. Here's what I've got planned, avoid as much outboard gear as posable! I'm setting up a DAW with only a simple mixer mainly for mic pre's and aux sends (for a headphone amp). I have one or two racked mic pre's and will use dedicated channel's on the mixer for them. |
#5
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Steve wrote
I almost forgot. Another personal rule that has been helpfule is which point positions to set as 1/2 normalled vs non-normalled on each patch bay. I find that I always need about 1/4 of the points to be non-normalled, so I standardize on 13-19 for that. By following a fixed rule rather than setting up the patch bays ad hoc, I always know which points I can use for non-normalled connections. I don't have to spend time figuring that out in my wiring plan, and I don't have to pull the patch bay out and reconfigure it when minor changes are made to the wiring plan. I do have to swap connection point locations, but that's easier than switching a module. On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 08:23:54 GMT, Steve Jorgensen wrote: Hi all, I just realized I'm at that early stage in learning to wire a medium ambitious home studio where I'm experienced enough to have some advice, but not so experienced that I forgot one even needs to mention these things, so it's a great time to share. If this makes anyone else think of good advice in a simiar vein, please do share, or if anyone disagrees with any of this, I'd love to know. I have found that the following rules save so much time in understanding and using the studio that it even ends up saving vast amounts of time just in the rest of the wiring process itself because you don't have to repeatedly trace things down to recall what you were doing or find out what didn't get done the way you thought. Here goes... 1. Don't try to make your mixer do all your routing. Routing that way is too obtuse, and it will get in your way, and waste time during recording. Use your mixer for the kinds of routing it's good at, and use patch bays for everything else. 2. Don't try to do all your routing with patch bays. Use the mixer for the all kinds of routing it can be used for in the manner it was designed to do well. Use patch bays for the things mixers don't do well. 3. Before you start wiring - I have tried many systems for diagramming my wiring plan before hooking it up. All of those systems failed miserably until I came up with this one. - Begin with your mental picture of what the major stations are, and what physical order they are in. Come up with the closest thing you can to a sequential arrangement of them, and write them down the left edge of a page (an Excel spreadsheet is great). - Now, list all the gear to hook up across the bottom of the page not including mixers and patch bays which should be well represented in the column on the left. If something has both inputs and outputs, list the input and output as separate items. - Now, draw lines in the columns under each piece of gear showing the normal route of the signal to or from the device with dots at each connecting point along the path. If the path reverses direction, just make a U shaped line, and keep following the path. If the path connects to a point in another column, write a letter next to the point, and the same letter next to the matching point in the other column. - If there are common alternate paths you will need, draw the lines for those paths in a different color. Use letter designations as above where needed. Now, finally, you're ready to see how many balanced and unbalanced lines you need from where to where, how many patch points at each station, etc. As you start working that up, you'll find minor problems with the earlier planning stage, so clean them up. The diagramming system above is simple enough that it's not too time consuming to redraw from scratch if corrections get too messy, or use artists tape to cover up a column, and redraw it. 4. Follow the standard rules for wiring patch bays without exception, so you never have to wonder which are the exceptions - there are none. If you need just that one extra connection, you are so close to needing another patch bay anyway, that you might as well buy it now. In case you're wondering, standard rules for patch bays include... - Always using the top row for signals coming to the patch bay from the back (even when non-normalled). - Always use the bottom row for signals going from the patch bay in the back. - Always put left channels on odd numbers. - Always put right channels on even numbers. 5. In addition to the standard rules for patch bays, invent your own more detailed usage pattern rules, and stick to them as much as possible. Create standard rules for exceptions to the main rules, when exceptions are required. Some of my favorites are... - Always connect the same colored snake cable connector to the top and bottom points in the back of a 1/2 normalled connection. - Always route mixer channels Aux sends, etc., to the same numbered points on the patch bay if possible. If not possible, add or subtract exactly 10 if that is possible. Yes, I know your patch bay has a nice, intuitive divider in the middle between 12 and 13. I don't care - use offsets of 10. 6. Pick a standard order for the colors of your snake cable connectors, and always use it. A few judicious exceptions are OK, but just a few. I hope someone finds this info as useful as I do. Here's what I've got planned, avoid as much outboard gear as posable! I'm setting up a DAW with only a simple mixer mainly for mic pre's and aux sends (for a headphone amp). I have one or two racked mic pre's and will use dedicated channel's on the mixer for them. |
#6
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#7
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#8
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I've got one for you -
always find a way to support your cables. I never imagined just how heavy all that crap gets until I had to tear it all out and put in storage. I noticed that the wire ties that kept everything (almost) organized were about to crack or had already cracked under the weight of the miles of wire. (I had a 48 channel board with anal retentive connections :-). When I rewire a new studio I plan on actually making wood supports to lay the wiring on from the console to the patch bays and equipment. The weight must have some negative affect on something. Connectors are obviously strained and who knows what another year of hanging would have done - just my 2 cents Steve Jorgensen wrote: Hi all, I just realized I'm at that early stage in learning to wire a medium ambitious home studio where I'm experienced enough to have some advice, but not so experienced that I forgot one even needs to mention these things, so it's a great time to share. If this makes anyone else think of good advice in a simiar vein, please do share, or if anyone disagrees with any of this, I'd love to know. I have found that the following rules save so much time in understanding and using the studio that it even ends up saving vast amounts of time just in the rest of the wiring process itself because you don't have to repeatedly trace things down to recall what you were doing or find out what didn't get done the way you thought. Here goes... 1. Don't try to make your mixer do all your routing. Routing that way is too obtuse, and it will get in your way, and waste time during recording. Use your mixer for the kinds of routing it's good at, and use patch bays for everything else. 2. Don't try to do all your routing with patch bays. Use the mixer for the all kinds of routing it can be used for in the manner it was designed to do well. Use patch bays for the things mixers don't do well. 3. Before you start wiring - I have tried many systems for diagramming my wiring plan before hooking it up. All of those systems failed miserably until I came up with this one. - Begin with your mental picture of what the major stations are, and what physical order they are in. Come up with the closest thing you can to a sequential arrangement of them, and write them down the left edge of a page (an Excel spreadsheet is great). - Now, list all the gear to hook up across the bottom of the page not including mixers and patch bays which should be well represented in the column on the left. If something has both inputs and outputs, list the input and output as separate items. - Now, draw lines in the columns under each piece of gear showing the normal route of the signal to or from the device with dots at each connecting point along the path. If the path reverses direction, just make a U shaped line, and keep following the path. If the path connects to a point in another column, write a letter next to the point, and the same letter next to the matching point in the other column. - If there are common alternate paths you will need, draw the lines for those paths in a different color. Use letter designations as above where needed. Now, finally, you're ready to see how many balanced and unbalanced lines you need from where to where, how many patch points at each station, etc. As you start working that up, you'll find minor problems with the earlier planning stage, so clean them up. The diagramming system above is simple enough that it's not too time consuming to redraw from scratch if corrections get too messy, or use artists tape to cover up a column, and redraw it. 4. Follow the standard rules for wiring patch bays without exception, so you never have to wonder which are the exceptions - there are none. If you need just that one extra connection, you are so close to needing another patch bay anyway, that you might as well buy it now. In case you're wondering, standard rules for patch bays include... - Always using the top row for signals coming to the patch bay from the back (even when non-normalled). - Always use the bottom row for signals going from the patch bay in the back. - Always put left channels on odd numbers. - Always put right channels on even numbers. 5. In addition to the standard rules for patch bays, invent your own more detailed usage pattern rules, and stick to them as much as possible. Create standard rules for exceptions to the main rules, when exceptions are required. Some of my favorites are... - Always connect the same colored snake cable connector to the top and bottom points in the back of a 1/2 normalled connection. - Always route mixer channels Aux sends, etc., to the same numbered points on the patch bay if possible. If not possible, add or subtract exactly 10 if that is possible. Yes, I know your patch bay has a nice, intuitive divider in the middle between 12 and 13. I don't care - use offsets of 10. 6. Pick a standard order for the colors of your snake cable connectors, and always use it. A few judicious exceptions are OK, but just a few. I hope someone finds this info as useful as I do. |
#9
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I've got one for you -
always find a way to support your cables. I never imagined just how heavy all that crap gets until I had to tear it all out and put in storage. I noticed that the wire ties that kept everything (almost) organized were about to crack or had already cracked under the weight of the miles of wire. (I had a 48 channel board with anal retentive connections :-). When I rewire a new studio I plan on actually making wood supports to lay the wiring on from the console to the patch bays and equipment. The weight must have some negative affect on something. Connectors are obviously strained and who knows what another year of hanging would have done - just my 2 cents Steve Jorgensen wrote: Hi all, I just realized I'm at that early stage in learning to wire a medium ambitious home studio where I'm experienced enough to have some advice, but not so experienced that I forgot one even needs to mention these things, so it's a great time to share. If this makes anyone else think of good advice in a simiar vein, please do share, or if anyone disagrees with any of this, I'd love to know. I have found that the following rules save so much time in understanding and using the studio that it even ends up saving vast amounts of time just in the rest of the wiring process itself because you don't have to repeatedly trace things down to recall what you were doing or find out what didn't get done the way you thought. Here goes... 1. Don't try to make your mixer do all your routing. Routing that way is too obtuse, and it will get in your way, and waste time during recording. Use your mixer for the kinds of routing it's good at, and use patch bays for everything else. 2. Don't try to do all your routing with patch bays. Use the mixer for the all kinds of routing it can be used for in the manner it was designed to do well. Use patch bays for the things mixers don't do well. 3. Before you start wiring - I have tried many systems for diagramming my wiring plan before hooking it up. All of those systems failed miserably until I came up with this one. - Begin with your mental picture of what the major stations are, and what physical order they are in. Come up with the closest thing you can to a sequential arrangement of them, and write them down the left edge of a page (an Excel spreadsheet is great). - Now, list all the gear to hook up across the bottom of the page not including mixers and patch bays which should be well represented in the column on the left. If something has both inputs and outputs, list the input and output as separate items. - Now, draw lines in the columns under each piece of gear showing the normal route of the signal to or from the device with dots at each connecting point along the path. If the path reverses direction, just make a U shaped line, and keep following the path. If the path connects to a point in another column, write a letter next to the point, and the same letter next to the matching point in the other column. - If there are common alternate paths you will need, draw the lines for those paths in a different color. Use letter designations as above where needed. Now, finally, you're ready to see how many balanced and unbalanced lines you need from where to where, how many patch points at each station, etc. As you start working that up, you'll find minor problems with the earlier planning stage, so clean them up. The diagramming system above is simple enough that it's not too time consuming to redraw from scratch if corrections get too messy, or use artists tape to cover up a column, and redraw it. 4. Follow the standard rules for wiring patch bays without exception, so you never have to wonder which are the exceptions - there are none. If you need just that one extra connection, you are so close to needing another patch bay anyway, that you might as well buy it now. In case you're wondering, standard rules for patch bays include... - Always using the top row for signals coming to the patch bay from the back (even when non-normalled). - Always use the bottom row for signals going from the patch bay in the back. - Always put left channels on odd numbers. - Always put right channels on even numbers. 5. In addition to the standard rules for patch bays, invent your own more detailed usage pattern rules, and stick to them as much as possible. Create standard rules for exceptions to the main rules, when exceptions are required. Some of my favorites are... - Always connect the same colored snake cable connector to the top and bottom points in the back of a 1/2 normalled connection. - Always route mixer channels Aux sends, etc., to the same numbered points on the patch bay if possible. If not possible, add or subtract exactly 10 if that is possible. Yes, I know your patch bay has a nice, intuitive divider in the middle between 12 and 13. I don't care - use offsets of 10. 6. Pick a standard order for the colors of your snake cable connectors, and always use it. A few judicious exceptions are OK, but just a few. I hope someone finds this info as useful as I do. |
#11
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On 25 Jun 2004 13:37:31 -0400, (Mike Rivers) wrote:
In article am writes: I just realized I'm at that early stage in learning to wire a medium ambitious home studio where I'm experienced enough to have some advice, but not so experienced that I forgot one even needs to mention these things, so it's a great time to share. Good list. You've obviously been thinking about it. It sounds to me like you may be ready to take a major step and not wire things with off-the-shelf cable assemblies, but rather, buy some two-pair, four-pair, and eight-pair cable stock, a couple of big boxes of connectors, patchbays with solder connections rather than jacks-on-the-back, and some good tools. One "rule" that I didn't notice in your list was that you should wire everything with two-conductors plus shield, even if it isn't going to balanced inputs or outputs, and use patchbays with two-conductor (balanced) jacks. That way, you'll be ready for balanced gear when it comes in the door, and you'll have more flexibility in "one end only" shield grounding of unbalanced equipment if it's necessary to reduce hum. I like to cut out paper dolls - a pad of 3x5 Post-Its, one for each piece of equipment (stick some together for mixers since there are lots of connections) and stick them on a large sheet of paper, drawing lines between them with a pencil. That way, you're sure you don't forget anything, and you can easily move the blocks around to make your drawing neater and easier to follow. Label every cable at its end. This is easy if you're making your own because you can print a label on your computer or with a label printer, stick it on the cable lengthwise, slip a piece of clear heat shrink tubing over it, and it's done. Label individual cables in a snake, and give the snake a descriptive name (Mixer Direct Outs) as well. Think about how you're going to secure your cables so there's no strain on the connectors. You don't want the weight of an 8-channel snake hanging on a 1/4" phone jack, particualry one on the back of a patchbay. Thanks, you've got several things I didn't already know in that list. |
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On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 17:50:31 -0700, Danny Taddei wrote:
I've got one for you - always find a way to support your cables. I never imagined just how heavy all that crap gets until I had to tear it all out and put in storage. I noticed that the wire ties that kept everything (almost) organized were about to crack or had already cracked under the weight of the miles of wire. (I had a 48 channel board with anal retentive connections :-). When I rewire a new studio I plan on actually making wood supports to lay the wiring on from the console to the patch bays and equipment. The weight must have some negative affect on something. Connectors are obviously strained and who knows what another year of hanging would have done - .... Thanks - that's 2 times that came up in reply to my post, and I've always wondered why the connections go flakey on the back of my $100 patch bays. I guess that's probably why. |
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On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 17:50:31 -0700, Danny Taddei wrote:
I've got one for you - always find a way to support your cables. I never imagined just how heavy all that crap gets until I had to tear it all out and put in storage. I noticed that the wire ties that kept everything (almost) organized were about to crack or had already cracked under the weight of the miles of wire. (I had a 48 channel board with anal retentive connections :-). When I rewire a new studio I plan on actually making wood supports to lay the wiring on from the console to the patch bays and equipment. The weight must have some negative affect on something. Connectors are obviously strained and who knows what another year of hanging would have done - .... Thanks - that's 2 times that came up in reply to my post, and I've always wondered why the connections go flakey on the back of my $100 patch bays. I guess that's probably why. |
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Danny wrote
I've got one for you - always find a way to support your cables. I never imagined just how heavy all that crap gets until I had to tear it all out and put in storage. I noticed that the wire ties that kept everything (almost) organized were about to crack or had already cracked under the weight of the miles of wire. (I had a 48 channel board with anal retentive connections :-). When I rewire a new studio I plan on actually making wood supports to lay the wiring on from the console to the patch bays and equipment. The weight must have some negative affect on something. Connectors are obviously strained and who knows what another year of hanging would have done - Yes, its called a wire loom, not unlike the one's used for car motor sparkplug wires. Also you can use a snake and rout thing's so they don't cross high volt AC lines. |
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Danny wrote
I've got one for you - always find a way to support your cables. I never imagined just how heavy all that crap gets until I had to tear it all out and put in storage. I noticed that the wire ties that kept everything (almost) organized were about to crack or had already cracked under the weight of the miles of wire. (I had a 48 channel board with anal retentive connections :-). When I rewire a new studio I plan on actually making wood supports to lay the wiring on from the console to the patch bays and equipment. The weight must have some negative affect on something. Connectors are obviously strained and who knows what another year of hanging would have done - Yes, its called a wire loom, not unlike the one's used for car motor sparkplug wires. Also you can use a snake and rout thing's so they don't cross high volt AC lines. |
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On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 08:23:54 GMT, Steve Jorgensen
wrote: Hi all, I just realized I'm at that early stage in learning to wire a medium ambitious home studio where I'm experienced enough to have some advice, but not so experienced that I forgot one even needs to mention these things, so it's a great time to share. If this makes anyone else think of good advice in a simiar vein, please do share, or if anyone disagrees with any of this, I'd love to know. I have found that the following rules save so much time in understanding and using the studio that it even ends up saving vast amounts of time just in the rest of the wiring process itself because you don't have to repeatedly trace things down to recall what you were doing or find out what didn't get done the way you thought. I thought of some more... Sticky notes: When doing the actual wiring, and prior to finalizing, put a sticky note at every point saying where the signal comes from or goes to, via what other points. If you change a routing, change the sticky note, and use the -via- info to see what other sticky ntoes also need to be updated. Labelling: After the wiring is doner and finalized (nothing is ever final, but you know what I mean) copy the info from sticky notes to strips of artist's tape. Make sure the from/to information is in think black lines you can read in dim light, and add "via" info in small print, possibly on a second strip next to the first on a blank plate, or something along those lines. Refactoring: 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. The idea is that if a new requirement needs a different infrastructure, first get the infrastructure changes done and tested without actually implementing any of the new functionality (refactor), then implement the new functionality. Refactoring is done in the smallest possible steps, and testing is done after each step. Everything should be just as functional after each small change/test as it was before. 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, but it ends up saving vastly more time than it costs, because when something goes wrong, you know exactly what the cause is - the cause is the very last thing you changed. Worst case, change it back, and everything should be OK until you have time to look at it again. Now, you can diagnose and fix the problem at the first time it occurs before it becomes vastly more difficult to track down, and before there are multiple problems masking each other. Keep simplifying: After wiring, look for things that are complex or deviate from the standards and don't actually need to be that way. Fix those. After that, you'll see some more, fix them. In all these changes, use the refactoring technique described above. |
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On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 08:23:54 GMT, Steve Jorgensen
wrote: Hi all, I just realized I'm at that early stage in learning to wire a medium ambitious home studio where I'm experienced enough to have some advice, but not so experienced that I forgot one even needs to mention these things, so it's a great time to share. If this makes anyone else think of good advice in a simiar vein, please do share, or if anyone disagrees with any of this, I'd love to know. I have found that the following rules save so much time in understanding and using the studio that it even ends up saving vast amounts of time just in the rest of the wiring process itself because you don't have to repeatedly trace things down to recall what you were doing or find out what didn't get done the way you thought. I thought of some more... Sticky notes: When doing the actual wiring, and prior to finalizing, put a sticky note at every point saying where the signal comes from or goes to, via what other points. If you change a routing, change the sticky note, and use the -via- info to see what other sticky ntoes also need to be updated. Labelling: After the wiring is doner and finalized (nothing is ever final, but you know what I mean) copy the info from sticky notes to strips of artist's tape. Make sure the from/to information is in think black lines you can read in dim light, and add "via" info in small print, possibly on a second strip next to the first on a blank plate, or something along those lines. Refactoring: 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. The idea is that if a new requirement needs a different infrastructure, first get the infrastructure changes done and tested without actually implementing any of the new functionality (refactor), then implement the new functionality. Refactoring is done in the smallest possible steps, and testing is done after each step. Everything should be just as functional after each small change/test as it was before. 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, but it ends up saving vastly more time than it costs, because when something goes wrong, you know exactly what the cause is - the cause is the very last thing you changed. Worst case, change it back, and everything should be OK until you have time to look at it again. Now, you can diagnose and fix the problem at the first time it occurs before it becomes vastly more difficult to track down, and before there are multiple problems masking each other. Keep simplifying: After wiring, look for things that are complex or deviate from the standards and don't actually need to be that way. Fix those. After that, you'll see some more, fix them. In all these changes, use the refactoring technique described above. |
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On 27 Jun 2004 11:54:49 -0400, (Mike Rivers) wrote:
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. Actually, there are a lot of us programmers who have learned that strictly following processes that divide up refactoring and improvement stages are well worth doing, and we do it pretty rigorously. Refactorings are, by definition, things that should not affect functionality unless done wrong, such as finding 2 blocks of code that do the same thing, changing the code so that they are literally identical (1 step), then moving the block of duplicated code into its own procedure (another step). This can be done in conjunction with Test Driven Development in which a test sequence will have already existed to ensure everything that was completed worked, and the test sequence can be re-run after each refactoring step to make sure everything still works. If something broke, your last step was the problem, so roll it back, and find out what's going on. Unfortunately, fully automated, complete, repeatable testing is, AFAIK, not possible with a studio wiring plan. it would be nice if it were. 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? Ah, but it's not the same jack, and was the module properly normalled? Is it the same wire, or did I use a different cord because it needed to be longer? Last night, in fact, I spent a lot of time tracking down a problem that could have been more easily caught if I'd done better tesing as I went. I had a point that was supposed to be non-normalled, and I tested it only after patching the top and bottom points together for both left and right connections. I should have tested the normal case first (no sound), then the left, then the right. Later, when the points were unpatched, there was still sound coming to the main mix on the right channel! I didn't think of checking the patch point for a while, and of course, when I found it, I had to unhook all the wires from the patch point, get behind the rack with a flashlight, and turn the module around while the band waited for me. 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 should have been more clear. Yes, as I said in my previous post, there are -rules- that should never be broken, but there are also lesser, target rules and rules of simplicity that must often be broken because concerns conflict with one another. This includes things like matching the numbers of the patch points with the corresponding channel numbers (or offset by 10) conflicting with a personal rule of having 1-12 and 19-24 1/2-norm, and 13-18 non-norm. After wiring, it is usually possible to mitigate a couple of these problems, and after those changes, something is usually freed up to mitigate some more. Ideally, when all is said and done, the wiring plan looks, for the most part, very simple and inuitive, though the process to arrive at it might have been anything but. |
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On 28 Jun 2004 07:35:09 -0400, (Mike Rivers) wrote:
In article am writes: Actually, there are a lot of us programmers who have learned that strictly following processes that divide up refactoring and improvement stages are well worth doing, and we do it pretty rigorously. That's a good thing if you're working for customers who can afford it. But it's one of the things that makes software more expensive than many people believe it should be. That point can be debated, but I'll assert that it's not at all true. The fact is that most of the time spent in the programming process is debugging your own work, and figuring out why what you just wrote doesn't work. Programming using a cycle of refactoring and improving stages means you find bugs sooner after they are created, and spend less time tracking them down later. Keeping code quality high as you go makes it easier and less time consuming to work on the code. Unfortunately, fully automated, complete, repeatable testing is, AFAIK, not possible with a studio wiring plan. it would be nice if it were. It's not automated, but you should test every path, and every jack. It takes time, but it can (and should) be done, at least once, when you install it. Unlike software, wires break and jacks don't always make good contact, so even if you know it used to work, sometimes it breaks. Ah, but it's not the same jack, and was the module properly normalled? Is it the same wire, or did I use a different cord because it needed to be longer? Well, you're using a jack that used to work (but you may have miswired it when you make the change). And if you change the cable, then you've made two changes without testing. I think we're on the same page. |
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Mike Rivers wrote:
In article am writes: Actually, there are a lot of us programmers who have learned that strictly following processes that divide up refactoring and improvement stages are well worth doing, and we do it pretty rigorously. That's a good thing if you're working for customers who can afford it. But it's one of the things that makes software more expensive than many people believe it should be. Some of the newer development environments will actually do automated refactoring. In theory this makes it pretty cheap to do and makes it less error-prone. Even without automated help, you might be surprised how mechanical a process refactoring is. There is a procedure, and it's designed to minimize errors. For instance, when you are removing code from a function and making it its own function, you create the new function and *copy* the code into it without deleting the original. Then you compile, then you comment out the copied code and replace it with a function call. Then you compile and test. Or something like that. The point is, the process is designed so that there are safeguards to ensure you didn't screw something up, and even if you did, you can easily put everything back like it was before. Anyway, most of the work that's put in on a lot of software (games excepted) is in maintenance, and it's often being done by someone different than the person who wrote the original code. Cleaning up the code can make that process smoother and less likely to introduce new bugs. - Logan |
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I like to cut out paper dolls - a pad of 3x5 Post-Its, one for each piece of equipment (stick some together for mixers since there are lots of connections) and stick them on a large sheet of paper, drawing lines between them with a pencil. That way, you're sure you don't forget anything, and you can easily move the blocks around to make your drawing neater and easier to follow. Label every cable at its end. This is easy if you're making your own because you can print a label on your computer or with a label printer, stick it on the cable lengthwise, slip a piece of clear heat shrink tubing over it, and it's done. Label individual cables in a snake, and give the snake a descriptive name (Mixer Direct Outs) as well. I agree with the labelling of every cable, at BOTH ends. I've gone with a numbering system, its not as obvious to someone else trying to trace a cable, but now that I have my own place, I don't have to worry about anyone else. If you have Excel or a similar spreadsheet program, its easy to set up a multi page workbook with separate sheets listing each category of equipment. Every piece of gear gets a unique number and each piece of cable is indexed to the gear at either end. Building it all inside of a single workbook allows you to set things up so that a single change gets carried throughout the various pages with minimal fuss. There may be some slick way of doing this in a database, but I like the ability of sketching basic diagrams in Excel to help with the endless lists. I've found Excel to be a surprisingly good program for drawing wiring diagrams - just set up square cells at an appropriate scale and take advantage of the grid system. My final comment concerns do it yourself cabling verus pre-fab. While I have wired a couple of studios "from scratch" starting with thousand foot coils of Mogami 2944, there is an alternative worth considering. There are several custom wiring shops out there that will take your detailed sketches and fabricate exactly what you need for surprisingly fair prices. I recently took delivery of a complete cable "system" from AVCable.com for my monitoring system. These guys must get some amazing prices on parts, connectors, cable, etc. because their final price for a dozen pre-fab'd cables was less than I would have paid, for the same parts they used! And instead of spending countless hours measuring, stripping, tinning, soldering, labeling, shrink tubing, etc., I just opened a big box and plugged the cables in. They all were fabricated to the exact dimensions that I had supplied and the quality of the work was definitely better than I could have done. While any studio owner should know how to build whatever cable they might need, these pre-fab places can save you an enormous amount of time that you can then spend on other work. Highly recommended. Good luck. Steve |
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