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This is an old revision of WindowPatchBay made by admin on 2009-12-23 14:12:12.
The Patch Bay Window
[this stub article is unfinished and not fact-checked - feel free to add or correct]
The Patch Bay is one of the most amazing features of PARIS. It is accessed by pressing B on your computer keyboard, or the number 7 followed by a period on your C16.
Mastery over signal routing in the Patch Bay gives the ability to create PatchHeadphones individual headphone mixes, or PatchClick route click tracks to headphones, PatchHeadphonesWfx supply reverb/FX in different quantities to different headphone mixes, PatchExternFx patch in external effects processors, send a strip of audio SMPTE to an external output to drive an external sequencer without having to listen to it, keep live mics open for player feedback without recording them, route blocks of external tracks through PARIS - all with zero latency and pristine quality.
The Patch Bay also contains certain peculiarities and assumptions that can reduce seasoned PARIS users to despair. We've included a couple of general observations about the Patch Bay worth bearing in mind.
What's in your Patch Bay?
The patch bay contains representations of your external hardware (MEC and its associated modules, etc) and your internal software (PARIS mixer) and allows you to patch between them. There is no visual distinction between the two, so it's important to keep clear in your mind what is software and what is hardware to avoid confusion. They work whether or not they are visible in the main window of the Patch Bay, you drag them into that window to *examine* or *change* their patching.
These objects are representations of external parts of your PARIS hardware:
- MEC Master A (or B or C or D etc) - if you have a MEC this represents its built-in hardware I/O.
- MEC Modules A (or B etc) - this represents any modules in your MEC, such as an ADAT module. Double click to open it and configure the modules you want to access. There is space inside the object for two blocks of 8 inputs (eg two 8i cards) and two blocks of eight outputs (eg two 8o cards).
- Interface 442-A (or B etc) - this represents your IF-442 if you have one
These objects are representations of internal parts of your PARIS software:
- Mixer-A (or B or C or D etc) - This represents the sixteen inputs into your PARIS mixer, and two types of output (Main L/R and Monitor L/R) If you have sixteen hardware inputs (say 2x 8i modules) you can connect each input to an individual mixer channel. An important note: the outputs of the mixers for each card are different! Mixer A's output is the sum of all submixes. Mixers B and higher output *only the mixed audio from their respective submix*. Thus unexplored potential exists for sophisticated patching that permits things like bus compression by patching the output of Mixer-B (ie, submix B) to the digital out of MEC Master B, connecting to external digital equipment and looping its output back to MEC A's SP/DIF input and then to a pair of channel strips.
- Mixer-A FX (or B etc)- this actually represents Auxes 1 through 8 on the relevant Mixer A window. Its inputs and outputs are labelled in stereo pairs - 1 through 8 (L and R) - but they're sixteen discrete channels.
- Mixer A Insert (or B etc) - this represents the "EDS inserts" on each channel in Mixer A.
General observations:
1) A hardware input can feed multiple mixer inputs. For example, input 1 on MEC Master A can feed any or all of your mixer channels, should you need sixteen tracks containing the same information. However, each software input can only receive *one* input. You can't attach Inputs 1 to 4 from MEC Master A all to Mixer A's "Track One".
2) You can have eight modules installed in a single MEC - but you can only place them into four slots in the Patch Bay. Hence you can't use more than four I/O modules at a time (each ADAT module really sort of counts as two modules - 8 channels of ADAT input and 8 channels of ADAT output).
3) Sometimes a patch will not work until you *complete the loop*, meaning to connect both "to and from" the target. This can be frustrating if for example you just want to send to a headphone amp, which usually only needs to be a one-way trip (there's nothing you want PARIS to receive back from that amp). Just "close the circle" by routing that aux's return to any input you aren't using such as an unused mixer in or Aux.
4) You cannot patch across submixes - eg you can't patch Mixer-A FX into Mixer B's inputs.
It may seem illogical to permit eight modules to be installed in your MEC when only four at a time can be accessed, but it has its uses; for example you can store one Patch Bay configuration that uses one group of modules and another that uses another group.
The following are detailed tutorials on commonly-used functions of the Patch Bay
- Routing SMPTE timecode out of PARIS
- Feeding PARIS signal from an eight-bus board
What You Need To Know About Storing And Recalling Patch Bay Setups
To come - tutorial on how PARIS stores the setups.
More notes on patching-related topics, which will eventually be sorted and compiled here, are available at John Bercik's excellent Paris Notes site.
