While professional studios invariably make use of compact bantam patchbays, most home studios are forced to go the quarter‑inch jack patchbay route, mainly because of cost. Admittedly, there's a certain convenience aspect to quarter‑inch jacks, because of the predominance of the jack as an instrument connector, but in my experience, the normalising contacts on most budget jack bays become intermittent after a few months. While bantams are not immune to intermittency problems, the design of the connectors makes them less vulnerable to dust, and most of the professional systems are easily disassembled for cleaning.
Those who'd prefer to use bantams may be interested in the Prosonix bantam patchbay, which provides 24 pairs of TRS sockets in just half a unit of rack space, and which costs around the same as a decent budget jack patchbay. Each pair of sockets comprises a Neutrik NJ3TT/2 dual‑socket assembly mounted on its own circuit board, with a 4‑way DIP switch. Because the connector assembly is fully enclosed, the only way in for contamination is via the jack holes. Should cleaning become necessary, a plastic cover can be prised off, revealing the gold‑plated contacts. The boards themselves simply slot into the metalwork, so you don't need any tools at all to take the patchbay apart.
Normalising is handled by three of the four DIP switches (the fourth is redundant), allowing you to normalise the tip and ring separately, and also to isolate the input and output grounds if required. When normalised, the sockets follow the semi‑normalised convention, whereby the top row (outputs) can be used to provide a feed without breaking the signal flow, but inserting a jack into the bottom row breaks the contact. The rear connections on the review model were hard‑wired, which entails soldering your cable harness directly to the patchbay; while this may seem tedious, it actually saves a lot of money in connectors and is a lot more reliable. However, Prosonix are planning models with connectors on the back, including the 'D' connector used by some manufacturers (Tascam and Fostex, for example).
Bantam patch cables are traditionally very expensive compared to quarter‑inch jacks, but Prosonix have sourced a range of low‑cost cables from Piranha, who use Neutrik plugs and cable, both in a choice of colours, to produce a balanced patch lead for under £10.
Prosonix may be a new name in the patchbay market, but the guys behind the company were founding members of the original P&R, a name which is well known to project studio owners, so it's not surprising that they're applying their talents to bringing prices down. This is the first of their products I've seen, but there seem to be few compromises, and it's obvious that a lot of thought has gone into simplifying the design to reduce manufacturing cost. Inevitably, panel space is in short supply for labelling, though standard sticky labels apparently fit, but even so, you'll need to use some fairly cryptic abbreviations. My own instinct would be to use bantam patchbays for insert points, aux send/returns and outboard gear, but to retain standard jacks for any line inputs likely to be used for DI'ing instruments. That way you avoid having to make or buy adaptor leads. Other than that, bantams clearly have the advantage when it comes to saving space and keeping the contacts clean. Paul White