Hello all,
I have been making music with the digi trinity for the past year, and have them all connected to one another. I picked up an Erica Synth’s Zen Delay a while ago, and just ordered a Nightverb from them last night. I am coming to the conclusion that I definitely do not want all 3 digi’s routing through these FX boxes at the same time. I also do not want to have to take everything apart when I get an idea.
I am thinking that a patchbay might be the way to go, but am uncertain if there are any down sides. I haven’t found many YouTube videos focusing on an Elektron setup in this regard, so if you know of any please link them.
I like this idea of a mini patchbay. I had been looking at others and they would have required me to mount it. I like that it is down on the desk. The patchulator videos show it does what I want. I like its interesting little switch in the middle. Left brain, right brain, or bypass. Just like me.
Although the Matrix Mixer blows me away, it is definitely way more than I need, and just the sort of thing that will make me spend even more than I need on yet more things to plug into it. I’m not a big fan of having all the connections on top. I like the compact size of the patchulator pro, and the fact I can keep everything plugged into the back. Just the top of the unit would have the controlled madness of mini patch cables, and the rest can stay hidden.
I think with just 2 fx units you might be better off just using a mixer with 2 fx sends, patch bay usually comes into play when you have a bit more complex of a routings like if you had 3 fx pedals in a chain but you liked to change the order of them often.
In my experience, it’s downsides all the way down. It added zero utility and some noise, while taking a lot of money and time in terms of new cables.
I paid $80 USD for the patchbay itself, $85 for Yongsheng connectors for patch cables, $35 for Mogami cable for patch cables, $25 for a Behringer cable tester, and a small fortune for extra cables from the patchbay to the mixer, plus spent a few hours soldering the patch cables (I’m not good at soldering). Overall it was way over $300, plus a lot of work that I didn’t enjoy, for a result that frustrated me a lot and killed my inspiration.
Then I considered upgrading to a proper patchbay setup to eliminate noise issues, which meant buying two or three 8 channel DI boxes ($130 each for Behringer DI-800), lots of new connectors and cables (since 6.3 mm TRS cables are hard to come by) that would easily cost at least $300-400, plus spending at least a dozen hours soldering it all.
As an alternative, I could use that money (plus $400 made from selling my current interface) on a new interface and two ADAT expansions.
It may even be cheaper than a proper setup with a patchbay. A patchbay plus three 8-channel DI boxes plus loads of balanced cables cost A LOT. Probably more than it would cost to exchange your current interface for a bigger one or add a bigger one and create an aggregate interface.
It will be way more manageable. I ended up taking my studio apart because I spent way more time troubleshooting it than making music. If you don’t have DI boxes, your unbalanced cables are probably too long, and patchbays with unbalanced cables may (or may not) have channel bleed. Even if they aren’t, I’ve found that the psychological pressure of having too many cables in an unnecessarily convoluted setup is killing my inspiration.
It will have less noise compared to the patchbay without DI boxes.
It will be way more convenient and flexible. You would be able to track all the instruments at once. You would be able to track both dry and wet instruments. You would be able to send one instrument to multiple effects, attenuating it as you wish.
Overall I can think of a couple cases when a patchbay is a better solution - for example, when you have a fancy interface with 2-4 super nice AD converters and don’t want to downgrade to the regular stuff, or when you want to stack multiple effect chains on sounds with fast attack (then the AD/DA latency would also stack). In that case, the Erica Synths Matrix Mixer is still a much better option - multiple routings, presets, less hassle overall.
But for your case with only two effects, I’d definitely just route sends from your interface or mixer to the effects.
Unfortunately I don’t know much beyond my XR18, and that, while being a great option, may be a bit of an overkill.
In your case, it should have at least 10 inputs (six for the digis, four for the effects) and 6-7 outputs (two for the speakers, four for the effects and maybe one going into the Digitakt for sampling right away).
It’s Behringer indeed, but the good kind of Behringer. I’ve used it for years without a hitch, and even online you’ll find few complaints. Except wi-fi, don’t even consider using wi-fi on it. It won’t work well. I bought a $10 wi-fi extender and connected it by cable, problem solved.
Patch bays are fine, if a bit expensive. That is to say, the patch bays themselves are not too bad but the cost for cabling adds up. Premade (and therefore reliable) is not that much more expensive than self-made.
Smaller patch bays aren’t worth it, IMHO. They’re almost as expensive as bigger ones and often even more expensive.
I have one of the cheap Neutrik ones. It’s ok. One of the channels already crapped out on me but I don’t care because I’m only using a handful anyways.
Having a patch bay is useful to me because I like rerouting things: synth into fx into sampler one day, laptop into fx into sampler the next, that sort of thing. If this is not how you want to work, a multi channel audio interface is likely more useful, though.
Thanks for the advice, everyone. After sitting with it, I’ve decided that the mixer route makes more sense for me. I had a chance to go to a local synth shop (Mission Synths on 24th st in San Francisco), and got an opportunity to look at things more practically. They had rack mounted patch bays and mixers on the floor, and after checking it all out, I am glad I took the time. My needs are better served by a mixer, so I ordered a Bluebox last night. Hopefully, happiness ensues.