1. ANALOG STUDIO SETUP Basic Overview of Recording Studio I/O

2. Studio Layout  Recording studios require literally miles of cable in order to connect all of the facilities’ equipment.

3. I/O  The I/O of a studio can be broken down into three areas:  Control Room I/O  Machine Room I/O  Studio/Iso booth I/O Control RoomMachine RoomStudio/ Iso Booth Recording Console I/O Tape Machine I/OMic Inputs from Studio and Iso booths Outboard Gear I/O – including Time Based and Dynamics Effects, outboard Mic Pres’s Monitor Amplifier/ Cue amplifier I/O Speaker level cue outputs for headphones DAW interface I/O

4. The Control Room w/ Patchbay The Control Room w/ Patchbay Mixing Desk Speakers Producer’s Desk Sound Diffuser Patch Bays All of the I/O in a studio is wired to a patch bay for ease of operation and efficiency in routing signal. Patch bays are either attached to the console (as shown) or are in a separate rack.

5. Signal Routing and Patch bays  A patchbay is set up as pairs of rows  The top row is usually an output row, the bottom an input.  I/O from gear, mic panels, etc are wired to the backs of the bays.  The patchbay connects a point on the top to the point directly beneath it.  This is referred to as “normalled”.  The diagram to the right shows the most widely used configuration for a patch bay - The half-normalled connection.

6. 3 Types of Patch bay Connections 1.Non normalled or open 2.Fully Normalled 3.1/2 Normalled

7. Non Normalled Used where you don’t want the two rows to connect. Most commonly used for outboard gear to avoid feedback.

8. Full Normalled Generally only used for the mic line and mic preamp input rows To avoid one mic being connected to several preamps at once.

9. Half Normalled The most common row, used for all rows except the mic line/mic pre and outboard gear rows. All the line level I/O (except for outboard gear) is connected on half-normalled rows.

10. Half vs. Full Normalled Half: When a patch cable is plugged into the input (bottom) row the connection from top to bottom is broken. Not true for the output (top) row - if a cable is plugged into the output row the connection from top to bottom is maintained.

11. Half vs. Full Normalled Full: When a patch cable is plugged into the input (bottom) row the connection from top to bottom is broken - just like half. However, if a cable is plugged into the output (top) row the connection from top to bottom is also broken.