OscarVelour
New member
Hi all, I've been using rack gear for a little while and I've decided it's finally time for a patchbay to manage it. My audio interface setup is the common Behringer UMC1820 and ADA8200 combo giving me 16 inputs. For the inputs on the rear of the UMC180 I'm going to make an xlr patch panel just so they're all accessible at the front of the unit. After a few videos I think I understand how to hook up a patchbay with an audio interface and various outboard pieces of gear but I have one question I haven't been able to find an answer to:
I believe the first thing a mic/instrument signal should go to is a preamp, in this case the 16 preamps on my interface. But I also want to use outboard gear such as a tube preamp, compressor etc while recording e.g. printed onto the track. Whenever I look up hooking up rack gear to an audio interface it's always as an effect you can access in your daw by routing already recorded tracks through the gear, never using the gear while tracking.
Basically I want to set up a patch panel to control the signal path of mics so they could go: tube preamp -> compressor -> audio interface, or I set it so they just go straight into the interface.
I get the feeling I'm not explaining this very well and just creating word spaghetti. If you can understand what I'm trying to do, could you let me know if it's possible? The way I can think to do it in my head is having all mics going into an xlr patch panel, then going into a patch bay where the inputs/outputs of all my rack gear is accessible, and the inputs of my audio interface is accessible. But this would mean that my audio interface and it's preamps would be last in the signal chain when using any rack gear, if that makes a big difference. Would that work?
I believe the first thing a mic/instrument signal should go to is a preamp, in this case the 16 preamps on my interface. But I also want to use outboard gear such as a tube preamp, compressor etc while recording e.g. printed onto the track. Whenever I look up hooking up rack gear to an audio interface it's always as an effect you can access in your daw by routing already recorded tracks through the gear, never using the gear while tracking.
Basically I want to set up a patch panel to control the signal path of mics so they could go: tube preamp -> compressor -> audio interface, or I set it so they just go straight into the interface.
I get the feeling I'm not explaining this very well and just creating word spaghetti. If you can understand what I'm trying to do, could you let me know if it's possible? The way I can think to do it in my head is having all mics going into an xlr patch panel, then going into a patch bay where the inputs/outputs of all my rack gear is accessible, and the inputs of my audio interface is accessible. But this would mean that my audio interface and it's preamps would be last in the signal chain when using any rack gear, if that makes a big difference. Would that work?