Hi all,

Some background first!

I've cleared out and renovated my garage, set up my shelves, guitars on wall hooks (looking good), added ceiling spot lighting, set up a bench with my trusty VS2000CD, powered monitors etc, and sharing my screen with the VS2000CD VGA and computer.

I've never used and will not be using a computer DAW. For years I've directly connected my VS2000, mics and outboard gear with XLR, TS and midi cables as required.

I'm about to purchase a TRS patch bay - I've never used one before!

Also purchasing an 8 channel microphone preamp with basic compression (Focusrite Scarlett OctoPre Dynamic). It will provide phantom power along it's XLR input mic cables as required.

The 8 balanced TRS line preamp outputs will be loomed to the top back of the TRS patch bay. These 8 lines will then be 'normalised' just below to 8 inputs loomed into my VS2000CD channel 1-8 TRS lines.

I have some old outboard units eg Yamaha SPX90 effects rack (purchased new in the 1980's). These take single unbalanced mono TS jack in and return two unbalanced TS jack outs. I used to connect VS2000CD aux outs with TS jacks to the SPX90 and then bring the L/R TS jacks back into the VS2000 TRS channel using a two TS cables.

Here are the questions:

#1 How do I connect the outboard gear i/o to the patch bay, TS or TRS cables?
Most online discussions involve DAW's and audio interfaces, but I have neither.

#2 How do I connect my VS2000CD outs (rca or TS jack) to the patch bay, TS or TRS cables?
I want to use the patch bay to route VS2000CD outputs into outboard gear and return signals back into various VS2000CD using the already connected patch bay bottom row.

So there you have it - some simple questions from a TRS patch bay newbie!

Thanks,

woof.