seperate monitor mixes for studio and musicians

[zionminstrel]

Ok, I think I figured out my dilema. I've been trying to patch everything directly and haven't considered the possibilities of using a patchbay. (partly due to the fact that during a brief introduction to 1/4" patchbays I noticed an audible differance between the direct signal going to the recorder and the patchbay signal through a neutrik ssp or whatever the call # is) I haven't been considering using a half-normaled connection and sending one to the recorder and the other to the board for monitoring. But this brings up yet another fidelity question. Will taking the signal half-normaled and sending one half to the recorder and the other to monitor degrade the signal to the recorder from doing a direct patch?
thanks for all the input so far.