Week 4 - AA1 – Input, Output and Monitoring

Today we listened to a number of topics. The wallbay, the Mackie inputs, the patchbay and the final step in planning out the session, floor plans. I figured it best to sort that wallbay out first. The wallbay is set up so Studio 2 can use the Dead Room and the Live Room and Studio 1 can use the Dead Room, the Live Room and Studio 2 as recording rooms. So with the wallbay sorted I can concentrate on signal flow.

Patchbays are fairly simple devices. It’s basically two rows of plugs that utilises the top row as outputs and the bottom row as inputs. Patchbays are a remnant of the old telephone operator days. They are used to conveniently patch outboard audio devices like effects and compressors into the signal path or take the signal path elswhere. The settings for patchbays that we discussed were normalised and half normalised. That means a signal can flow directly from output to input without a patch lead and, a signal can be split if a patch lead is inserted in the output while it still flows into the input respectively.

For the floor plan, signals 1 –12 (drums) and 14-15 (Bass) are patched into the Live Room’s wallbay through inputs 1-14 and sent to Studio 2. Signals 13 and 16 (Guitar 1 and guide vox) are sent to Studio 2 through the Dead Room wallbay via input 1 and 2. Guitar 1 is sent through input 1 in the Dead Room and sent through to the Live Room (or EMU space as it’s written on the chart above) to feed Amp 1.

Well there was a lot more discussed today like auxilliaries, busses and headphone sends but I am already over the 300 word count. Oh yea. And remember to book the studio rooms with a pencil or fear the wrath of the roaming pompousaurus.