This post was first published in July 2014 at projectstudiohandbook.com/PSHforum
Ok, we admit it, not the most exciting blog post title, but this week we've had cause to hail the humble row of connected patch bay sockets called parallels.
So what are parallels? Simply put, a row of patch bay sockets are connected together such that a signal can be inputted and multiple copies outputted. That's right, you can duplicate signals.
We know what you're thinking. "Don't you need special boxes with expensive circuitry to ensure impedances are matched, group loops don't materialise and children can sleep safely in their beds?".
Most of the time ..no!
Back in the midst of time before a zillion audio product manufacturers began dreaming up and selling us niche gear we will hardly ever use or need, we had a thing called a mixing desk (Google it!). And believe it or not we used the mic pre-amps in it, the eq and it's patch bay. We didn't feel the need to surround ourselves with as much outboard as today. And records sounded great. Funny that.
Any patch bay worth it's salt had 2 or 3 rows of parallels. A standard use would be for splitting a guitar signal so it could be DI'd and sent to an amp for mic recording at the same time. Or for creating side-chain signals. Or for duplicating foldback signals. You get the idea.
This week, we used parallels for splitting a signal from a mic/pre amp so we could send it to our DAW for recording (via an analogue to digital convertor), and to a fold-back monitor mixer that is simultaneously receiving the monitor mix from the DAW. Thereby, we have latency free monitoring and control over separate fold-back mixes.
Think of it. A simple hi quality / sound card interface, a small monitor mixer and a patch bay = NO latency monitoring and flexibility for other tasks. Throw in a cheap monitor reverb from eBay (we like the Yamaha Rev500) and you have a great trouble free mic recording and monitoring system.
Sometimes its the simple things that please!
Thanks for reading.
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