TM-30 Pro: Patch Matrix

The TouchMix-30 Pro’s Patch Matrix feature lets you quickly manage your audio inputs.

On the back of the mixer you’ll find the physical audio inputs, which are represented onscreen by a set of graphical controls and processing for each audio channel.

Let’s call these “Inputs” and “Channels” respectively.

As you would expect, the audio for Input 1 is controlled and processed by Channel 1, Input 2 is controlled and processed by Channel 2, etc.

But there are occasions when it may be useful to route an Input to an alternate Channel.

Let’s say, for instance, you’re running a music festival and a new band is plugging into the stage snake every hour.

You may want to rearrange the order these inputs appear on your screen. You can do so using the Patch Matrix.

But before you do this, there are a few things to understand. The Patch Matrix only affects the digital audio signal.

Each physical input is still hardwired to its corresponding input trim knob.

So even if you reroute Input 5 to Channel 8, for instance, that doesn’t change the fact that its input gain trim still has to be set using the Trim 5 control.

Also, unless you keep track of the changes you’ve made, altering the default patching can make signal tracing confusing later on.

You know the microphone is connected to Input 1 but why isn’t there any signal showing up on Channel 1?

So before making a change on the Patch Matrix, ask yourself if it wouldn’t be easier and potentially less confusing to physically re-patch the input.

If the answer is no, here’s how to proceed. To access the Patch Matrix, simply go to the Menu screen and select Patch Matrix.

The first time the Patch Matrix is accessed after the mixer is powered on, it may take a few moments to load.

Once it’s ready, you’ll see the Analog Inputs across the top of the screen and the Destination Channels down the right side.

A connection path is indicated with lines joined by a blue circle.

To change a connection, touch the button of the analog input you want to repatch. At that point, the button will turn blue.

Then touch the button of the Destination Channel where you want to route that input.

This Channel will also turn blue, and a new connection path will indicate your new routing.

If you make a mistake, simply touch that channel again to restore its previous routing.

When you’re done, touch the analog input button again to complete the re-patch.

Patching a channel will automatically add a textual tag to that channel’s name, to remind you that this channel is now receiving audio from a different input.

You can rename this channel to delete that tag, but then you might forget about this patch later on, so be careful!

Perhaps one of the best uses for the Patch Matrix is to route a single input to two or more channels. This is known as “Multing”.

The term comes from old-school analog patch bays that had some jacks wired in parallel so that a single signal could be patched to multiple destinations.

You can mult an analog input simply by selecting multiple destination channels in the Patch Matrix.

So why would you want to do this? Well here’s one example.

Let’s say you’ve got an acoustic guitar on stage and you’ve dialed it in for the main speaker system.

But no matter what you do, you can’t get it to sound right in the monitors without compromising the sound the audience hears.

It would make your life much easier if you had the guitar on two different channels

so you could EQ one for the main speakers, and EQ the second channel differently for the monitors.

You could do this by using an XLR Y-Cable to patch the guitar into two analog inputs

or you could use the Patch Matrix to mult the existing guitar input to a second channel.

In the Patch Matrix, just touch the input channel – in this case input 11, - and select another channel that you’re not using.

You can see now that Input 11 is routed to both channel 11 and channel 12.

Then you can set up the EQ and processing on Channel 11 to get the acoustic guitar sounding right in the house PA

and then work on Channel 12 to get it sounding right for the guitar player’s stage monitor.

Another example of why you’d use this feature:

Perhaps a single microphone is shared by two different people, and you need to EQ each of their voices differently.

You could mult the microphone to two channels as before, and then use the Mute buttons on the mixer screen to toggle which one is active.

This same idea applies if you have a vocal part in a song where the singer is supposed to sound like she’s talking on a telephone, or some other strong effect.

With the microphone multed into two channels, you can apply the effect to the second channel

and use the channel mutes to switch between the sound of the effect and a normal sound.

It’s worth noting that you can store a patch matrix setup using the store and recall functions on the Patch Matrix page.

And, most importantly, you can quickly reset the patch matrix to factory defaults here as well. We’re going to do that right now.

And that’s it. The Patch Matrix. Just One more way the QSC TouchMix-30 Pro goes beyond mixing to help you get great results – fast.