MOTM

Boy am I spewing random thoughts today!

The great thing about 1/4" and 1/8" jacks as opposed to bananas is the
ability to set up normalled patches. The bad thing, besides not being able
to stack inputs, is that the patch cables are more expensive.

So, who has found cheap, reliable patch cables? Is it still cheaper to make
them yourself? Is there such a thing as a decent molded cable, or is
everybody using Switchcraft?

As to normalling (here I go with Emu again), it would be nice to build into
the modules the ability to normal without having to actually solder directly
to the jack. Emu modules brought the normally closed terminal of each input
jack up to a pin on the pc board, and brought the hot terminal of each
output jack up to several pins as well. Then you could plug in these simple
stranded wire normalling cables in the back, and change them almost as
easily as patching from the front panel.

This scheme could be designed into new modules fairly easily - just modify
the artwork to place pads for some pins, which could even be left unfilled
so that the customer could choose whether to install them or not. The bad
thing about this scheme is that the modules already out there or near
release don't support this, and would require modification by hand.

Any thoughts from anyone about other normalling schemes that could be
repatched easily?

Dave Bradley
Principal Software Engineer
Engineering Animation, Inc.
daveb@...