There’s no delay or turning back now. Virtually all reworks start with undoing, and such was the case last Friday when my friend Jim came over and got on one end of many wires no longer needed in the studio. I’m not sure he would have volunteered once he saw just how big of a job it was to remove that much cabling. I knew it would be a high number, but even I was surprised by the height of the coiled pile those cables created once removed. A lot of it had been installed for over 25 years.

The new system actually has more connection capacity than any prior setup, but with the new one comes more streamlined and compacted interconnectivity – such as digital ethernet snakes. And now instead of 4 interfaces, the new digital console will also serve as a single interface unit. So the studio now looks to be quite in shambles with 2 equipment racks emptied, 4 patchbays orphaned, and dozens of wires still “hanging out” that will be rerouted to the new system (along with other additional new ones).

And while I’m at it, I thought it was high time to address the original and later expanded desk tops that had gotten kind of tired. 35+ years of wear and tear by chair bumps, coffee spills, hole drilling and re-drilling, patchbay reworkings and such is calling for a restart on those surfaces. So today with spring weather here, the final cuts were made on the two main pieces and a sealer and stain applied.

In the meantime, what to do about my ongoing weekly work? Well it turns out that the new system is so self-contained and most of those needs only require that I hear the audio (all imported files – no recording), with two connections from a portable interface to a pair of the patchbay monitor inputs I was back in business (after rounding up the driver for the interface). It will definitely be great to get most of the studio back to a semblance of normalcy and expanded function, but in the meantime there’s no getting around this phase if you want to enjoy the full benefits of the new. There must be a proverb in there somewhere?!