Hey guys,

Ive been totally ITB in mixing and production the past few years except for obvious mic pres and such, i sort of grew into the industry when itb was starting.... Anyways now that im workin and great studio im getting a tast of some outboard gear i really like. So im goin to grab some pieces such as couple distressors and couple dbx 160. maybe a nice api eq or 500 rack.

My question is how would i set this stuff up with my current set up. I use a focusrite saffire 56. Im a Pro tools and Cubase user. I like the idea of opening them as inserts in pro tools.

As its been so long since i was in school and never had to do the physical practice i dont really remember the basics of Normalled, half norlmalled, balanced, unbalanced anyone want to give me brief description of differences and uses?

Also should i go with a patch bay or wait till i aquire a lot more gear? What options are for patch bays? i know at work they use elco connectors.. How do i leanr more about the use and setting up of these?

Any help much appreciated! Thank you

I would personally just set them up hard-wired to your IO and open them as inserts in PT. Obviously you have a few channels of IO to play with so you don't really need to wire them all to a patchbay if you dont want to. If you need chains, you can just manually hook them up. Doing a patchbay properly can be expensive.

One thing...Does the basic version of PT let you use delay compensation on hardware inserts? Worth checking.

J

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www.jackruston.com

SOS did this article fairly recently, if you haven't seen it already: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may10/articles/hybrid.htm