Sound Equipment

[vincecr]

One of our rental facilities has a pretty high tech sound system. Now I am familiar with the power amps and the mixer and all that but the rest of the sound system is hard wired into the building. Under the board there is a graphic equalizer which I could recognize, a bunch of other stuff I couldn't recognize, and a box with a bunch of jacks on the front and cables that come out of the front and enter other jacks in the front. This reminds of a patchboard. Like the ones the telephone operators used to use. Is this actually what it is. Because the mixer only has 24 channels and there are around 40 microphone jacks in the facility. I have hypothesized that this box is a "hard patch" of the microphone jacks to channels on a mixer. Kinda like what we used to do in lighting before computer patch came out. Would I be correct in saying this. Also what other stuff might be there besides the intercom system, graphic equalizer, and cd/tape decs.

 

[chausman]

Well, there might also be wireless microphone receivers or compressors. Maybe something like the DBX Driverack or something similar. If you want help with something specific or just to know what things are, the best is to either post pictures or give us model numbers. Most equipment that is rack mounted will have model numbers on the front. And what you described does sound like a patch panel to me.

 

[DuckJordan]

... and a box with a bunch of jacks on the front and cables that come out of the front and enter other jacks in the front. This reminds of a patchboard. Like the ones the telephone operators used to use. Is this actually what it is. Because the mixer only has 24 channels and there are around 40 microphone jacks in the facility.

That sounds like exactly what it is. We installed 3 just recently in our venue to give us Audio Inputs and Outputs all over the place. Including 1 in the pit, 1 on stage and the final one at our sound desk.

It could be a huge range of equipment most of which shouldn't be messed with unless your trained. Just like you wouldn't dig around in a dimmer rack if you had no idea what a dimmer was.

 

[bishopthomas]

Yep, it's a patch bay, probably designed to do exactly what you think. Depending on what other mysterious gadgets are under the hood it might also be used to patch compressors, effects, etc.

 

[venuetech]

Hopefully there are some labels on the patch bay.
In theory most of your rack equipment inputs and outputs likely are accessible at this bay, without going behind the rack.

for example the EQ you mentioned should have a input point and an output point
the output is likely "Normalled Through" to the amplifier input.
meaning you do not need a patch cord to make the connection



patchbay - ControlBooth
Normalling Jacks - ControlBooth