ART P16 XLR Balanced Patchbay

For the money you can't beat it. Works as expected and no noise.

This 16-point XLR patchbay delivers reliable performance in a straightforward, no-nonsense design. The build quality is solid - housed in a sturdy 1U rack chassis that feels substantial without being overly heavy. The front and rear XLR connections are robust with good grip, showing no signs of loosening even with frequent cable changes.The normalling scheme is well-implemented, with clear labeling that makes signal flow easy to understand. The parallel wiring configuration is particularly useful for studio applications, allowing flexible routing without introducing unwanted noise. The gold-plated connections provide excellent signal integrity, and I've experienced no degradation or interference across multiple patching scenarios.Installation is straightforward, though the depth might require some planning in shallow racks. The unit runs cool and doesn't require any special ventilation considerations. The spacing between XLR connections is adequate for most cable types, including some of the bulkier premium cables.While the price point is higher than TRS alternatives, the professional-grade XLR implementation justifies the cost for those needing balanced connections. The only minor quibble is that the front panel labeling strips are a bit small - you might want to use additional labeling for complex setups. For studios, live sound installations, or broadcast facilities requiring reliable balanced patching, this unit hits all the right marks.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Good

I bought this patch bay so that I could have easy access to both my outboard preamps and the preamps in my Apollo interface, all of which have inputs on the back (which is normal, but hard to get to in my small studio.) I purchased a short xlr snake to run between the preamps and the patchbay, and now everything is nicely organized. I really only needed 8 inputs, but then I realized that I can use the other channels to connect to my mixing board for rehearsal, etc.You may be asking yourself if you really should just use a TRS bay instead, but if you use preamps / mics with phantom power a lot, I'd use this bay in conjunction with a TRS bay. While a TRS bay will pass phantom power, you have to make sure you never patch/unpatch a mic from a preamp with the PP engaged! You can damage the preamp this way ("hot patching.") I use the ART XLR bay to send mic signal to preamp, since there is no risk of hotpatching with an XLR input. Then I connect the output of my preamp to a Normalled channel of my TRS bay (Sampson S-patch) that feeds back to my line inputs on my interface unless interrupted with a patch cable if I need to send the signal to a processor. It's a bit more complicated but will save your preamps from hot patching when your brain is in a thousand places during a session and you can still use XLR M-F cables.I detect no noise or signal loss from this unit, and the jacks are nice and tight. The construction of the unit feels solid enough to take some abuse if you were to use it in a live sound application, and it's a definite plus that you can flip the rack ears around, which allows you to select male or female jacks on the face. Overall a great patchbay, especially for a home studio or live rig.

It’s a patch bay, what else can I say.

Seems well built. Passes +48V. I wish you could reverse individual channels. I did, however, saw the PCB in half and flip 8 of the channels, and it fit back into the chassis perfectly. So I suppose I could configure it more if I wanted to cut it into smaller PCBs, but I wish ART had done it for me.

It’s a patch bay. It’s handy for accessing the rear inputs of gear that’s in a rack or otherwise difficult to get at. You can only access the inputs OR the outputs depending on how you orient the rack ears. If you want to have access to inputs AND outputs, you have to buy a second unit... OR...So I removed all the screws and disassembled the unit. The Jack’s are all soldered to a single card. I cut the card in two between inputs 8 and 9 by scoring it with a utility knife and snapping the card in half (very carefully of course). Then I turned one card around and reassembled the unit. The most difficult part was removing and replacing all 78 screws. Now I have access to 8 inputs and 8 outputs. That’s all I need.Of course now the warranty is void, but all of the Jack’s still work, and I really don’t see how much can go wrong with the unit.Of course YMMV, but if you’re handy and willing to take the risk and don’t realistically need 16 inputs OR outputs, this may be a handy mod to consider.You can also find videos on YouTube of people doing this as well.

I read mixed things about running phantom power through patchbays. I know it can be done, but my specific patchbay's (Neutrik 1/4") online documentation specifically said it doesn't support it (and I did try it and it didn't work). Once I got this XLR patchbay, it seemed silly that I was directly connecting a mic cable to my preamps. Some of my recent preamps are channel strips that have an EQ that can be used with a line input and I now have the flexibility to use them during mixing as well as during recording.I don't actually know how to rate the sound quality, so I left it at 4 stars. I assume it is fine, but if there are people who take careful measurements of these things, I'll leave it to them to rate the sound quality.