Show dictionary · Lighting
Hard Patch
A hard patch is the physical connection between a rig’s circuits and its power or dimmer outputs: actual plugs into actual sockets, at a patch bay, dimmer rack, or distro. It contrasts with the soft patch, the console-side mapping of addresses to control channels.
In practice
The term is a fossil with a working meaning: in dimmer-per-circuit houses, "patching" once meant literally routing stage circuits to dimmers at a patch panel. Modern rigs still hard patch every day at smaller scale: which fixture plugs into which soca circuit, which relay output feeds which mover.
The two patches must agree, and the paperwork that reconciles them (circuit, dimmer/relay, universe, address, channel) is the patch sheet. When channel 41 brings up the wrong fixture, the question "hard patch or soft patch?" is the entire diagnostic tree.
How you’ll hear it
"Console says 41, wrong fixture answers: check the hard patch on soca two, circuits five and six."
Related resources
Part of the eventools.io Show Dictionary, a free glossary of live event production terminology.