The Creative Engineer’s 500 Rack

When inspiration strikes, you’ll never lose time removing and re-racking your modules to enact some clever routing. The PBR 8-500 is equipped with a fully balanced TT/Bantam patchbay for unlimited creative routing potential — a rarity in the 500-series landscape. You get Inputs and Outputs for every slot, as well as two Mults. The Mults offer a single input and two outs, each — allowing you to split the output of a single module to two others. It’s ideal for parallel processing.

Possibilities abound. You can easily audition a signal chain, reroute it, split it via one of the Mults, send it to modules in another rack, route it back, then output it — all right from the front panel.

And if you want to link two adjacent modules for stereo operation, it’s just a button press away. Internal jumpers are also available for setting up less common linking setups.

Stable Power

The PBR 8-500’s design was greatly informed by our years of experience modding audio hardware for low noise. We leveraged that know-how to ensure that the PBR 8-500 provides stable and reliable power not found in lesser 500-series chassis.

PBR 8-500 sports per-channel power regulation to ensure that noise and crosstalk from one module does not affect another. Its hefty power supply provides 400 mA per rail per slot maximum, with an overall 1.6A (1.8A non-continuous) per rail, whichever is reached first. We’re confident the PBR 8-500’s power supply is one of the quietest and most reliable ever built in a 500-series rack.

Build Quality

The PBR 8-500 is built to the same rugged quality standard of Black Lion Audio’s PBR-series patchbays. Its black-anodized aluminum faceplates make for a sophisticated look, while its audiophile grade XLR, TT, and DB25 connectors are all gold-plated to deliver maximum conductivity and signal clarity; the TT connectors are a custom-tensioned Black Lion exclusive design first implemented on the PBR-TT Patchbay. Its classy chassis is liberally drilled to optimize heat dispersion.