Quick question about an Alesis 3630 compressor, if you don't mind. ;-)
I'm reworking the patch bay and rack that I inherited, replacing the
incredibly horrid Tascam PB-32 with a pair of dbx PB-48 patch bays.  The
Tascam forced me to use every pair on the bay as normalled.  The dbx has no
such restriction, so only a few of my bay pairs are normalled.  Among the
non-normalled connections are the sidechain send and return for our Alesis
3630 compressor.
The other day, I tried using the compressor for the first time since the
upgrade.  To my shock, I was getting no compression.  Occasionally, one or
two of the LEDs on the the gain reduction meter would flash, but this
happened only if I really yelled into the microphone or thumped it hard.  I
tried switching the inputs from +4 down to -10, tried a powerdown of the
compressor, a rack powerdown, you name it - nothing worked.  Fortunately, I
was able to live without it at the time.
Just today, after I got home, I realized the difference in the new setup.
Where the old setup had the sends of the sidechain insert cables normalled
back to the returns, the new setup doesn't.  In fact, the new setup doesn't
even have the send patch points above the returns - they're next to each
other.
I'm not going to be able to test this until Monday, so I'd like your
opinions and notes from experience.  Have I found the cause of my problem?
Do I need to normal the sidechain sends back into the returns, like the
inserts on my 1604-VLZ?
If so, why is this a problem at all?  Isn't there some way to build a
circuit smart enough to know that there is no physical connection between
the send and return, and to therefore bypass that part of the circuit?  Am
I just practicing extreme wishful thinking here? 
Thanks for anything you can offer.
    -Lee
... Support your local Drum & Bugle Corps! - http://www.dci.org
--- Blue Wave/Max v2.30
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