Features:

  • Professional patchbay eliminates cable clutter in your studio and adding order and clarity
  • Fully balanced high-quality ¼” TRS connectors
  • 3 modes, easily selectable per channel via top-side switches
  • "Normal" interconnects the two rear jacks of one channel; inserting a plug into one of the front jacks interrupts the connection of the rear jacks
  • "Thru" interconnects each rear jack with its corresponding front jack
The ultrapatch did exactly what it said it would. ...

The ultrapatch did exactly what it said it would. It works perfectly for the application we needed. We are running drum triggers through the ultrapatch, into the drum brain.I color coded the inputs with colored electrical tape to cortispond to the colored patch cables. Now our drummer can unplug his kit easliy and quickly, even in a dark club.

Works great

It’s pretty simple and it works well. It’s inexpensive, but the quality is decent. I use it in my studio all the time.

The single biggest improvement to any home studio

If you are setting up a recording studio, get this. For not a whole lot of money, you can save yourself the monstrous headache of trying to constantly re-route cables through a messy tangled nightmare. Just get this and some TRS cables and you'll never have to dig around under your desk again. Or at least until you add something else. For what it's worth, I use mine to patch effects and signal processors into my recording stream on the first 21 channels (set to Normal), then set the last three channels to "Thru" to allow an easy connection to the remaining inputs on the back of my interface. Now whenever I want to add compression to something, I can just patch in a compressor and adjust accordingly instead of having to reroute wires each time.

Get a couple

Great patchbay with 3 modes. Has come in quite handy in the few shorts months I've had it now. Saves the input jacks on my pricey mixers and rack units from repeated patching and tidies things up quite a bit. After recently upgrading mixers, I needed to change the modes from normal to pass-thru which took only minutes as opposed to older patch bays I've used that require opening and reversing the jacks. This is a much easier and preferable for a studio that changes somewhat frequently. Seems to be built well enough. I'm no stranger to Behr gear; some of it is good, some not so much. This one is a winner for sure.

Surprising

At first I was tentative. This being a Behringer product, I was worried about noise. However, I can assert that the noise level on this patchbay is nigh undetectable, at least to my ears, and my software. As a patchbay - quick, easy cable action. I may even get a second one.

great patch bay after the fact

After reading some review I decided to purchase this one. Behringer has always been a hit or Miss With their products. Some things are plain awesome and some are awful. This patch bay is awesome. When I first got it, it was factory sealed and it was easy to understand. However the front face plate was put on upside down! I was upset but when u took it off, i noticed the insides were super nice and easy to fix if need be. Each pair was on their own pcb. After that i patched the rear, set the mode switches, and i was patching away! I supported the rear patch work like others have suggested and all connections are nice and snug with no play in the connector. The pcb has a bit of play in the chassis but it's ok and will not effect the performance of the connections. I'm a happy engineer

It's what you need to have to organize the audio ...

It's what you need to have to organize the audio inputs and outputs in your studio! I can't live without a patchbay!

Very high quality

I've got to admit: I was slightly skeptical of this unit, considering all it offers and the low price. But I took the chance and ordered it, and am completely happy with it. Even though the owner's manual warns against using it for low-level signals (such as microphone lines), that is exactly what I wanted to use it for. Before wiring up everything, I went ahead and opened up this patch bay to see how well it was built, and was amazed: everything is well-shielded; each channel's shield is isolated from ground; and components seem really solid. So I did some testing, and could detect absolutely no new noise introduced when running through the patch bay. I wired it all up and put it into service, and it is performing beautifully. I used all inputs except for four of the "B" channels. All the signals are low-level. I've got it backstage at a church, where we have more microphone sources (jacks and wireless receivers) than inputs to the console. Using the switches on the patch bay, I've got it rigged so that normal sources are in use when no patch cords are in, but we can completely reconfigure the console within minutes by inserting patch cords. It works beautifully, and everyone on the audio staff seems to understand how to use it. It sure beats swapping XLR connectors around!

The jacks are plenty sturdy..

A very affordable quality patch bay. I chose this over similar models because it is TRS, and has Normal/Half-Normal/Thru switches on top of the unit instead of requiring soldering or switching parts around.The jacks are plenty sturdy...been using daily for about 3.5 months.

Behringer Patch bay rocks

Like many others I dismissed the Behringer patchbay because it was tooooo cheap, how could it possibly be anygood? A BIT OF HISTORY: Back in the 90's I bought some of the Neutrik TRS patchbays, back then they worked pretty well but over the years the newer versions of the Neutriks have different jacks in them that are difficult to plug in and the normal connections have gotten flakey. Besides the jacks getting cheaper and cheaper in the Neutrik units the metal work has changed from year to year, now the face plate is held on with two little screws that barely engage the metal and if you lose one the whole thing becomes a flimsy mess. So I looked for a replacement and almost passed on the Behringer units again because of the low low price. I'm an electrical design engineer by trade and build a lot of my own gadgets. There are 96 1/4" TRS jacks on one of these patchbays, $50/96= just $.52-cents per jack (not including metal work, packaging or labor), how could they possibly be any good? Then I found a review online from someone who had been using the Behringer units for years without problems. He stated that the key to using them was to support the cables so they don't put a strain on the jacks. Recently we were putting a broadcast studio together and needed some patch capability so we decided to try one of the Behringer units. It was sort of a joke at first, everyone expected these units to be crap. Instead, we found a product that works fantastic, is super easy to configure (due to the 3-pos switches) and the jacks are like buttered toast, no more fighting to get the cable in or out. TRS plugs glide in and out smoothly, easily and most important of all, reliably! I measured the impedance from input to output of one channel (passing thru the normal connection path) using a Fluke DVM and found less than one-ohm of series resistance, this speaks pretty well for the normalled connection not degrading your audio sonically. On some old "mil spec" patchbays I've measured as much as 10 ohms thru the normal path, that's what happens when the contacts get dirty. On one of our Neutirks that was going flakey I measured 39 ohms in series, that's enough to seriously upset the CMRR of a balanced line which can be a big source of noise. We now have four of the PX3000 installed and no issues with a single connection. I've used them in all three modes (normalled, unnormalled and half normalled) and they are in use every day. We don't do a ton of patching on them (the normal connections run our studio) but when we need to insert something or do a quick reroute these tools get the job done reliably. Each channel of the PX3000 is built on its own little circuit board (I had to look inside) which slides into the metal frame. You never have to access these little boards to configure the patchbay (like on Neutrik, DBX, and others) but the little boards do have a very tiny amount of give in the chassis, this is what makes it feel a bit "unsolid" to some folks. It's not a flaw, it's just the way they are built and so far it has not affected my installation one bit. Several of my Neutrik patchbays act the same way (channel boards moving slightly when you insert or remove a cable). I'm very happy with these and ordering a few more before they raise the price. REVIEW UPDATE: MARCH 2013 We're up to eight of these in our broadcast rig with zero problems, just ordered our 9th one. I make most of my cables myself using Canare and Mogami wire with Switchcraft plugs and have zero noise problems. I always clean my plugs with Deoxit prior to plugging them in for long use. I've know many people who just assume their connectors are clean, most have oil on them from manufacturing that can cause interference and distortion. Good music to everyone!

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