Really Strange Cable Problem - Need Help

Hi all, looking for someone with more knowledge than me to help me out with strange cable problem which I can’t work out. It’s making me tear my hair out.

I’ve just bought 3 patch bays to go with my 3 audio interfaces so I can expand my studio set-up. I current have MOTU 16A, Focusrite Octopre and Behringer ADA8200.

The patch bays are Neutrik which I’ve just purchased from Thomann.

To link it all together I’ve bought some balanced Jack looms from Gear4Music. Nothing expensive.

Started to hook things up and the MOTU doesn’t appear to like either the patchbay and/or cables. Hooking up the looms and patchbay I get no audio through. However if I use some other jack cables I have it all works flawlessly.

First though was dodgy cable. No, using the same cable with the Octopre or ADA8200 it works perfectly. I keep trying multiple permutations to try and isolate the issue and at different angles everything seems to work. All the cables work and all the patch jacks work on each patchbay, except when plugged into the MOTU.

Trying to plug stuff directly into the MOTU and that works ok as well.

I need at least 24 TRS cables to make this work and I don’t have enough spare to do this. Before I drop any money on new cables (again!!) anyone have any ideas or explanations???

It’s freaking me out.

A jack cable is a cable right? Or am I overlooking something

HELP!!!

This sounds weird, indeed … I have a couple of Neutrik patchbays (NYS SPP-L1) and never had such an issue. Since the MOTU has balanced/unbalanced input it should work fine, theoretically.

There might be a problem with your grounding. I remember that the manual of my patchbays explained how to make sure that each module is grounded properly. There was also a quantity of small silver clips in a bag to be used for grounding.

Thanks I’ll check that out.

try using TS cables instead of TRS cables and see what happens. If all works fine, your issue is caused by an erroneous differential interconnect at some point of the signalchain. If so, investigate further, testing connections between every extra piece in the chain.

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My wife is away this weekend and didn’t want to miss the opportunity to get this all set back up so I risked it and bought some different cables.

My studio has been in bits for a month now so I’m itching to get it put back together. Thankfully it’s done the trick