As part of a recent purchase of second-hand kit, we are now the owners of something like six or eight rows of switching jack sockets, and a tall data-cabinet style, er, cabinet.
So obviously (?), we should use this so we can quickly patch around any cable problems, right?
Or should we?
This is, after all, a rather humble and small community radio studio we’re talking about here, not Engineering Control in even a small regional centre of the BBC! Wouldn’t it be MUCH easier (and MUCH cheaper!) to just ensure pretty much everything is XLR-to-XLR; and where there are ‘weird’ connectors (like the analogue outs from our Sonifex S2, which are on a 15-pin D connector), we just make ‘adaptor’ cables to XLR, AND make sure there is a tested and working duplicate spare ‘adaptor’ cable?
That way, all we would really need for redundancy and backup purposes would be a bunch of spare XLR cables of differing lengths (short for CD to desk, long for desk PGM out to the wall sockets taking it to the control room, etc.) and the spare set of ‘custom adaptors.’
Before thinking about this and letting me know what YOU think we should do, bear in mind that we presently have NO spare cables of any kind: no XLR to XLRs, no patch cables for jackfields. So, it’s a clean standing start.
So, if you were us, what would YOU do? Jackfield or ‘spare cables?’ Should we invest the time and very real money needed to build a jackfield, just ‘because we can?’ Do you think it’s the right way to go, or not?
I’m especially interested in hearing your opinion if you are part of a community or student radio station, or similar not-for-profit or Very Small station. (And to Charlie and Tony and streamer, yes I do very much want to hear your views as well!)
Well, I’m in favour of certain parts being available on patches. Maybe not all, but possibly some inputs to the console so when someone turns up with some gizmo not invented yet etc. (or a wallbox with XLR’s/phonos) Also, what I believe is, the active transmission chain should be accessible. It’s real nice when you need to bypass stuff to stay on air whilst doing major work upstream of the patch! The times when any Optimod/Processing etc takes a dump and goes to la-la land, quick patch round and you’re back on air etc. Easier guiding someone with patch cords than them round the back of a rack trying to pull plugs!
Of course, I’m biased, at my TV station we have video and audio patches up the wazoo, but saved our bacon more times than I care. (The patch panels are all in a protected rack room where only maintenance and key operational staff have access).
If I was in your shoes, I would probably do the critical paths as a safety net. That’s my 2c.
Of course, I hadn’t thought about patching around the output processor: nice one!
I had, though, already decided the easiest way to run cables between the rooms (what we used to call ‘tie lines’ in my day) is wall socket XLRs, with several unused ones as spares so (again) we can pull and plug around the otherwise inaccessible cables through the walls.
As for ‘weird kit’ showing up, tour Sonifex S2 has a switched 6-input stereo line in channel. We’ll probably build an adaptor cable for that, so we can click in something like an Alice or Sonifex box on any of the six, to accept unbalanced inputs of the sort you mention (like DJ decks/mixer, for example).
In our TV chain, we leave the Master Control Switcher (Presentation Switcher in UK speak) , then it goes through the following gizmos
Frame Sync (cleans up switches as next box is fussy)
CBS Branding Device (Lydia) - Inserts logos and stuff automatically from in-stream signaling.
Frame Sync with ALC (Audio level control - like Optimod but can handle 5.1 surround)
Neilsen encoding for ratings
(to be added soon - Downstream caption inserter for branding, weather alerts and news headlines!)
Audio De-embedder to extract 8 audio streams for next stage
Dolby Encoder
FInally HD MPEG2 encoder…
So, anyone of those can go to la-la land and even though most have relay bypass, well, as an engineer you know the story.
