[sdiy] midi controlled audio patchbays

[BrightBoy]

Sound Sculpture offers a 16x16 (and 8x8) audio patchbay that might 
fit your needs:

http://www.soundsculpture.com/products/switchblade.htm

The professional guitar community loves their products especially
since they've been upgraded with 'instant access" capability....

Cheers,

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: tuj at fuse.net
Sent: Nov 22, 2004 12:26 PM
To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
Subject: [sdiy] midi controlled audio patchbays

I'm sorry this sort of strays from topic, but I was wondering if anyone knows of an audio patchbay that allows the routing of points on the front side to be controlled via midi?

I would love to find a unit that had say 24 1/4" jacks on the back, and 24 buttons on the front.  Patching two points would be as simple as holding down a button in one row, then pressing a button in another.  Default would be fully normalled, switching to open when a point was mapped.  Configs could be dumped and reloaded via midi, and switching routing between points would be quick and inaudible (no clicks).

Anything like this?  The only thing I've come across was the Anatek SMP-16.  Otherwise everything else seems to be geared towards more telco-style construction (ie punch-down panels on the back) and also quite expensive.

Maybe I'm naive, but I can't see why something like this should really be so expensive.  I'd gladly pay 3-4 times the cost of a standard patchbay for something like this, but not the several grand of the units I've come across.  Thoughts?

-Jesse Farmer