Studio Tech Tip - Patch Bays, Part II
By Dennis Kambury

We recently reviewed the ins and outs of patch bay technology, and why you should make a point to include one or more in your growing studio. Once you've set up your patch bay system and you're no longer crawling behind your rack for every single change, it becomes much easier to be creative with your routing.

In And Out
You're likely to have a synth or two patched in your rack that serves your needs well. Occasionally, though, another keyboard may want to play through. Thanks to normalled connections, it's simply a matter of plugging the output of the guest synth into the "to mixer" jacks on the patch bay that are usually normalled to the home synth output. This breaks the connection from the home synth, and your guest synth is ready for action.

You can also tap off the normal output of a device, run it through an external processor such as a distortion stomp, and then back into the patch bay: