How Is An Audio Patch Bay Used?

A patch bay enables you to change the signal flow among the devices in your studio without having to crawl behind all your gear and unplug/replug your cables. In addition to eliminating the hassle, patch bays save wear and tear on the jacks of your equipment. Audio patch bays are switchboards for rerouting audio signals; there are also MIDI patch bays for - you guessed it - rerouting MIDI signals.

An audio patch bay is a panel which contains rows of input and output jacks. On rack-mountable patch bays used in home and project studios, there are typically two rows of jacks on the rear-panel and two rows of jacks on the front-panel. Devices such as mixing consoles, processors, and recorders can be plugged into the patch bay.

Patch bay jack sizes include 1/4" (balanced TRS or unbalanced), RCA, and TT (Tiny Telephone, used in some commercial studios to save space).

Patch bay jacks are arranged in vertical pairs. A jack on the upper row of the rear of the patch bay receives a signal from the output of a device. The jack immediately below it, on the bottom row of the rear of the patch bay, sends the signal to the input of a device.

A pair of patch bay jacks can be normalled, half-normalled, or de-normalled. Next week we'll describe each of these patch bay modes.

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