Hi I'm Dominique, an intern here. The mic lines are normaled to the Neotek mic inputs. The top left row of the patch bay is labeled mic lines 1- 48. Insert a patch cable in one of these patch points and you break the normal, allowing you to route the signal to whatever outboard pre you want to use. The output of the mic line would have to be patched to the input of the disired pre amp and the the output of the pre would need to be patched into the tape channel or back into the board thats up to you. all the necessary patch points for this kind of routing are on the patch bay and labeled. Hope that helps. Greg might come and post a better answer to your question shortly.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

My question is how are the outboard mic pre's patched at EA? Do all the mic lines run to a patchbay and are then patched into the selected outboard pres? Are the Elite mic pre inputs on a patchbay too? Are the outputs of the mic pres also located on a patchbay to then go into the selected tape channels input or are they fed to board channels? Are the lines hot patched? Any light on the subject would be greatly appreciated

Someone else will have to answer this for you. I only know a little about it. I think that with a tt patch cable the sleeve is ground and the tip is where the phantom power would come from. When you insert a patch cable you don't make the connection to ground until after you've made the connection that sends power. With an xlr cable you make the ground and the signal connection simultaneously. That's why patching or pulling patches with phantom power engaged is risky. I'm not sure how you prevent this when phantom power is preset.

Thanks, for the response. The only thing I'm still wondering is about patching with phantom power present. I've heard this can be a potential bummer for frying the input on an incorrectly patched unit.

I think that what Fuzz meant is what's happening to the input of the preamp the mic lines are normalled to. That'll be a problem when the mic lines are half normalled to the Elite mic pres, it's no problem if they're fully normalled.And how the hell is normalled spelled? With or without a double L?

I'm actually quite interested in this myself, especially how you all deal with the phantom power through a tt patchbay.

Thank you very much

The mic line normal connections break if a jack is inserted into either socket. Phantom power is not supposed to be switched on until patched.