Hidden Patch Islands in the Apollo Studio

A question I get a lot is if all my synthesizers are midi and audio connected. Well yes most of them are. In several places in the studio there are little islands like this one in the picture. It is a low 19 inch rack that is usually hidden in the normal pictures below or behind some synthesizers. I run all analog audio and midi cables to these islands. Usually giving me 2 or 3 meters of analog cable at the most. In these islands are one ore more AD/DA converters, DI's and also 8x8 midi interfaces and or A880 midi patch bay (also 8x8). In this island there is one of each giving a total of 14 midi inputs and output ports. All 14 ports of course have 16 channels. Also for the analog audio there is a patchbay. From these islands only USB and ADAT cabling is running to my main desk. In this way I keep the cabling in my studio to a minimum. In total there are 4 of these islands and also in my main desk I use this same system in the lower cabinets. I hope this clears things up :)

Apollo Studio Cabling (Part 6)

I'm very busy at the moment connecting all the analog audio in the studio. For that I'm doing lots of soldering at the moment. On one side I'm making existing cables to the correct length. That means cutting the cable en resoldering the plug. Of course I can only shorten cables this way ;) The other thing I'm doing is soldering a lot of new cables. It is funny how you always end up with cables in two lengths: Too long and too short :) Ah well I don't mind soldering at all. I think it is nice work that I can relax too. I have doing this while listening to some old Vangelis and Jarre albums and that was quite OK :)

Here you see my stack of connectors that I use. Mainly XLR and Jack plugs. I always use the same brand by the way. It is called Neutrik and they are very high quality. The big advantage is that the part that holds the metal pins is made of Teflon and not regular plastic. That means that it doesn't melt on you when you make it hot. And with the new silver containing solder the temperature has gone up. I'm soldering at the moment at 350 degrees Celsius and most plastic is long gone by then.

And here is the result of a few hours of soldering. These are 32 cables with a male stereo jack on one end and an female XLR connector on the other end. I use them to connect the balanced outputs of my DI boxes to the patch panels I have on the patch islands in the studio. In total I need 64 of those cables so here I was halfway. I'm done by now by the way. And if you are wondering why I make these cables myself: Well to start with it is cheaper than to buy quality pre-made cables. Secondly they are exactly in the right length. This saves a lot of mess and space. And st last I just like doing it myself. And next is installing these cables in the patch islands. To be continued...

Apollo Studio Cabling (Part 5)

I though it would be nice to show you some more pictures of my cabling job so far. In the pictures on the left you see the back of my Friend-Chip DMX32. On the left of it are all the SPDIF connections running to my digital synthesizers. Most of the ports are optical and some are coaxial. You can also see the Word Clock connection on the BNC T-connector there as well and on the right you see the ADAT connections that are also optical. Above this DMX32 is also a DMX12 that I'm not using yet. This one will be only used to convert some SPDIF connections from coaxial to optical. Below the DMX32 is also a DMX16 that I use to hook up my digital Sound Effects equipment.

On the right is a picture of the right side of the back of my main desk. I showed you pictures of that before, but these are a bit more crowded as you can see. You can clearly see two of the hooks that I use to guide the cabling with. As I explained before I don't tie cables up any more, since that only makes it more difficult to remove or reroute cables later. Most cabling you see here is still only the digital cabling. I just started with the analog audio cabling very recently. The only thing working on that part is the monitoring part (the output) at this moment. Though it looks like a mess it is actually very organized :) I know exactly what everything is and where it is going to.

Here you see another picture of the left part of the back of my main desk. Here you can see the guiding system even a bit better. As you can see there is already quite come cabling in there. And there is more to come, but most of that wont go over these paths but more from the bottom 19'' cabinets into the studio. Last week I tested all the digital connections and everything seems to work perfectly. It was nice to finally hear some sounds coming from my main studio PC and also to test the new Sound Effects units that I acquired after I tore the studio down upstairs.

In the picture on the right you see the back of one of the lower cabinets of the main desk. My furniture builder Gerrit also mounted some 19 inch profile on the back (just 8 HE) where I installed some patch panels now. I can connect synthesizers and AD/DA converters with short audio cables to these patch panels and then run multi-cables from there to the Islands I build. The advantage of multi-cables is that they are 8 cables bundled in one bigger cable and that makes less of a mess and is easier to install of course. I use these to travel distances of about 5 meters.

I didn't want to spare you a nice shot like the picture on the left either :) Again it looks like a mess, but it isn't ;) Well I hope this gives you an idea what I have been doing the last weeks and also why it is taking so long. It is a lot of cable and most of it has to be put in places where it is not easy to reach. What you see here is only the inter-cabinet cabling and there is also a lot of cabling inside the cabinets, but that is a bit difficult to show on the pictures. Last week I also tested all my AD/DA converters and now it is time to hook up the synthesizers and other equipment with analog outputs and inputs up to those :)

Apollo Studio Cabling (Part 4)

I'm still very busy cabling. By now I'm done with all power and midi cabling. And also all digital synthesizers that have USB are connected and most digital synthesizers over SPDIF are connected. But still lots of work is to be done. In the picture you see a mobile 19" rack that I use as connection islands. In total I have three of these throughout the studio. In these racks you see some patchpanels for balanced and unbalanced audio, some DI boxes to go from unbalanced to balanced, an AD/DA convertor, a midi interface, a midi patchbay and a box to transfer ADAT over UTP. In this way I can connect all analog audio and midi cables to the nearest island to keep the cables as short as possible.

In the picture on the right you see a picture of this rack from the top. The red cabling you see are balanced audio cables going from the back of the DI boxen to the patch panel. The multicables you see are going to the Lynx Aurora 16 AD/DA convertors that are in my main desk. So in this island I can chose to either connect a synthesizers audio output to the local AD/DA convertor that is a Behringer AD8000 or connect it to the Aurora 16. This makes the setup very flexibel of course. In the bottom of this rack is all the midi cabling, but that is a bit hard to see. On the top patchpanel I can connect all the unbalanced audio now coming from the synthesizers. I can chose to run them through a DI box to make the signal balanced (decouple it) or connect it directly.

Here you see another of these Islands racks in place. You can see the rack is on wheels which is very convinient since I can easily move it forward if I need to be on the back of the rack. As you can see they are positioned right above the cabling guiding system in the floor for easy access there as well. I put them righ above one of the outlets where it can get power and also UTP connection to the main desk right away. In this way I can connect every thing with a maximum of 3 meter cable where in the past I used to have 15 meter cables running through my studio and I can tell you that gets very messy. I also try to make cables fit to length as much as possible by cutting them on the right length and resoldering the plugs. Unfortunately this is not possible for all cables.

I get a lot of questions how much cabling I still need to do. Well you can see the crates in the picture on the right. They are all filled with cables that I pulled from my old studio upstairs. So most of these will have to go back in downstairs as well. And yes that is still a lot :) But I don't mind it is fun everything something new starts working again. Usually I test everything right away on a synthesizer I connect. And I need to pay attention not to play around with them too long. That slows work down a lot, but is fun of course :) But it is better to find problems right away that find that out on the end of the run and then do debugging. Once you just laid a cable you still know which one it is, but after a couple of weeks this gets harder and harder and usually it is also more difficult to reach since you put a lot of other ones on top. Just the other day I was very happy that I use this method, because I had a broken midi cable. That would otherwise have costed me a lot of time to find out afterwards. OK that's all for today. I you have any questions by the way feel free to E-mail me.

Apollo Studio Cabling (Part 3)

A lot of cabling was done last week in my new studio. Here you see 4 UTP cables sticking out the cabling guiding system. They are all mounted now on an in internal connector. You can see a lid that I can lift and under there are now 4 UTP connections and two power connections. In total 5 of these connection boxes are distributed through the studio. Very convenient. I'm looking now for stuff to transport over UTP next to normal network connections of course. So far I found KVM, USB, DVI, HDMI, analog audio, SPDIF and ADAT over UTP. So that should be sufficient I guess :)

Here you see where all the UTP cables come together. This is one of the lower cabinets of my main desk. Here I now have 14 UTP cables going to the rack in the server room and also 20 UTP cables going to the connection boxes in the studio. The white patch panel I use to cables stuff that is mounted in the main desk itself. In this cabinet you see also two strips of power switches. They are used to switch also the power in the connection boxes now. I did decide to divide the power on the left and right side of the studio, so I have two of these power strips on the right side of my desk as well.

The power for the whole studio is coming now by the way from an 3000 VA UPS mounted in the server room. It is enough to power the whole studio in case of a power failure. It also protect the studio from wrong power (too high or too low). The power from the server room is mounted now on two of these boxes that are behind my main desk. One is on the right and one on the left. This is basically the main power distribution running to the power strips with switches that are in the previous picture. So by now I'm completely done with the power cabling. Every piece of equipment has power now.

To connect the equipment in the upper cabinets in the main desk I mounted a lot of power strips up side down under the main desk. They all connect to one of the switches. In this way I can switch equipment on and off in groups. Very nice. I tried to divide everything into logical groups that I often use together. The biggest job by the way is that I made all cabled exactly in the right length. I cut of the normal power connector from all the strips and replaced them with female euro connectors that go directly into the power strips with the switches. It has cost me a lot of time, but I'm very happy with the end result.

Meanwhile I started cabling midi in the studio. Quite a hard job since behind the lower cabinets it is quite dark and some connectors are in small places. I have to hold a flashlight in one hand for this and try to put in the connector in with my other hand, usually laying on my back. Ah well that is life ;) As you can see in the picture it can be a bit crowded and then still there has to go audio cabling in as well.

Some of you wonder why the cabling is taking me so long. Well there are two reasons for that. The first is that it is a lot ;) The second is that I still have to do other stuff in between as well. So I cannot work on it constantly. Besides that I usually test everything I connect right away to be sure it is installed correctly and not that I will have to do trouble shooting after wards and maybe not be able to reach the faulty cable as easy anymore. I'll continue with this next week.

Apollo Studio Cabling (Part 2)

Last week I spent a lot of time cabling the studio. As I showed before there is a lot of UTP in the studio. Coming from the main rack in the server room there is a bundle of 14 CAT6 UTP cables coming in a bundle to the studio. My electrician mounted this neatly on a patch panel that I mounted in the mean time in one of the lower 19 inch cabinets under my main studio desk. I just have to pay attention because in the main rack they are numbered 11 to 24 and in the studio they are numbered 1 to 14. This is because the first 10 connections in the main rack are going to the power cabinet upstairs. As you can see this is an old picture since here still the aluminum 19 inch profiles is mounted in the cabinet.

In the mean time it looks like this. In the center cabinet you can see a power distributor on top with a build in Volt and Ampere meter. This way I can see if I don't overload the UPS that will be feeding the studio later. I actually have two of these one for the right side and one for the left side of the studio, since they can only run 10 Amps a piece and I have 16 Amps in total. Below that is a keyboard drawer, I'll get back to that later. Below that two strips with power switches. These are also on the left and the right. From here I can centrally switch everything on and off. I divided everything into logical groups for myself. Last week I wired all the power outlets that I mounted in the lower cabinets to these switch panels. Then you see the patch panel that was installed before and shown in the first picture.

There will be another patch panel below that to mount all the blue UTP cable on that is still sticking out there. These cables run to outlets in the cabling guiding system that was installed the floor. This way I can patch stuff over UTP from the central desk to other places in the studio. In the picture on the left you can see the same thing from the back. The gray cable is going to power outlets in the same cabling guiding system. Hopefully my electrician comes tomorrow or the day after to finish this job. This is actually the last thing they need to do. Not that I can't do it myself, but I already payed them to do it ;) And I'm currently very busy with other things. There is a lot of cable that has to go in there.

Here is a picture of the back of my desk. To get behind there I need to crawl under the center part of my desk. And that is quite low now with the extra drawer mounted. But once I'm behind there I can stand up. There is about a meter of space between the desk and the wall. As you can see I mounted some hooks under the upper and lower part of the desk to run the cabling through. And believe me this is only a very small part yet ;) I started hooking up my two PC's in the studio. So what you see there now is some power, DVI, Ethernet, USB and a few audio cables to my monitors. I did hook up some audio because I'm testing out different monitors. This evening I will start hooking up my Word Clock cabling and some digital audio.

I tried to make a picture of the back side of my main studio PC, but it was quite dark there, so it is not very sharp. But I guess you'll get the idea. There is already a lot of USB connections on there. I have a lot of equipment that uses USB, but as far as synthesizers I only connect the ones to this PC that need Midi Clocking for accurate timing. All other machines that only use USB for editing or updating software will be connected to my other PC. There is a limit in the number of stuff you can connect in terms of midi drivers to one PC. And since I had trouble with that in the past I'm trying to avoid this now. Some synthesizer need a separate USB 2.0 port like the Virus TI that does audio streaming over USB, but other only do little data and can do USB 1.1. Most of these I connect through USB hubs. There is actually more USB hubs that you can see in the picture here. Well enough for now. I'll update you later in the week on the progress of this cabling project.

Apollo Studio Cabling (Part 1)

Last week we did a lot of cabling. I decided to make a series of postings on this as well since it will be quite some work ;) All cabling from the power cabinet upstairs to the server room are in place now. The most important for me was to get network downstairs so I could start moving and installing servers in the rack. Here you see the top part of the rack with two 19'' UTP patch panels on top. From the top panel 10 UTP cables go upstairs and the remaining 14 are going to my studio desk. This way I can easily patch stuff back and forth. You see different colors of patch cables. I do this to seperate different signals. I use blue for network, yellow for ISDN, white for PSTN and green for serial cabling. Below the patch panels you see a 24 port Cisco Gigabit switch and below that a power distributor that also has and Volt and Amp meter integrated. In total my rack uses 3 Ampere and the moment. Below that is an 8 port KVM switch and under that you see three NAS devices that each hold about a Terebyte of storage.

Here you can see the backside of this rack. As you can see the on the backside of the KVM switch two sets of keyboard and monitors can be attached. Through a key combination you can select any machines from the remote location. I will later on extend these console to the studio. For this reason we also put in a lot of UTP cabling because you an transport a lot of stuff like video, audio, USB, KVM over UTP and this makes it very flexible in this way. I already bought two KVM over UTP extenders that will take these consoles to my main studio desk later on. On of them also has a local remote switch so I can add another set of keyboard and monitor in the rack itself. Of course that is very convinient when I'm working in the server room.

All these cables run through the cabling guiding system that we installed before. I'm already very happy with it. A lot of cabling already is in there and there is still plenty of room for more :) Next to the blue UTP cabling you also see some gray cabling. These are power cables. One is coming from the server room and hold a separate power group for the studio and the other ones go back to all the power outlets that will be installed in the cable guiding system. In this way I can switch all these outlets separately from my main studio desk and also everything has one central earth to prevent ground loops. So basicly it is a star topology. We did the same for UTP. In the cabling guiding system are also 4 UTP outlets with every of the 5 power outlets in there. So in total 20 UTP outlets. When the studio desk is in place we will also put everything on 19" patch panels on that side.

The last thing I want to show you is the sub power cabinet that is also in the server room. This cabinet holds all the power groups for downstairs. There is a seperate group for all lights, the studio, the cinema, the 19" rack in the server room and also some extra airco groups. There is also some room to expand if necessary. From here a very big cable runs to the power cabinet upstairs. It will be more than sufficient for sure. The splitter you see left from the power cabinet is for cable TV and radio. So it is a passive CAI splitter. This way we can also watch TV and listen to radio downstairs. For the cinema I also put a Satellite cable downstairs to watch the HD channels on the Astra satellites later on :) And I'm planning to also watch the Formula 1 races next season down there :) OK enough for now. I will update you with more later