Cat5e and Audio

"Rick Measham"

Cat 5 is for data - didn't you know ?

........... Phil

• The runs are VERY short and the speakers high impedance.

• You use LOTS of CAT5 runs.
• You don't want decetn quality sound.

shielded?

Wires are out , wireless is in

You try pushing data though wireless at 1Gb/s. If you can show me a way to do this cheaply I'll gladly ditch my switch.

Unless you are talking about wireless transmission of audio, in that cased i don't know what I'm on about and I'll just shut up now.

Interestingly, there is a new start-up in Sydney developing the latest in wireless surround speakers and audio stuff. Yes, wireless is probably the next big thing, but you can't beat having copper in your walls. It sure was a pain in the !@# to install my surround speakers!

Dave :)

"David L. Jones"

Shame most Aussie start ups are blatant criminal scams.

........ Phil

Not really , there are Lithium battery based systems , however the best part is total musical control in a house enviroment .

By that I mean you can have multiple players controlling different zones or total syncronisation of music , its all programmable and flexible to suit the enviroment , without getting it totally wrong in the installation side.

It also means that consultants are not really required and it puts the power back into the hands of the consumer .

at low power levels

it's probably best used with balanced signal, if you use transformeres at each end to balance it you'd probably get acceptble performance.

seems same as Q2 to me.

you'll definately need balanced lines for the audio with that setup.

running the speakers through transformers (ev 100V loudspeaker transformers) could help with power but may increase crosstalk from speakers to or may help... line level signals.

get a 100m case of cat5 and put your CD player and speakers on one and and the amp on the other see what happens.

if you want to run speakers off cat5 the best way is probably to send the sound information digitally and put the amp close to the speaker.

have you considered using cat-6?

My God, what a weird direction this thread took. .. thank you all, I guess. I think between all of your crud I learned a thing or two ..

Cheers! Rick Measham

Yeah, the usual animosities. Upshot is run shielded around the place. I just did the same in my old villa - cat-5 for 'puters plus two audio to the living areas, plus TV aerial and cable-TV to various locations. The

Cheers.

Ken

Yes, forget Cat5 for audio stuff. Definitely install proper heavy gauge speaker wire in the "entertainment" room(s). Work out were your speakers are going now and install the speaker wire for the entire system (fronts, rears etc). You can get banana plug & RCA wall plates which are a good solution for this. You should also run a shielded coax lead for the sub to where ever it needs to go.

Where do you want to run all the other "audio" stuff to and for what purpose? A set of speaker wires out to the garage and/or back yard could come in handy, you can then switch music out to those areas from your main system.

Dave :)

Or setup an AirPort system for wireless audio delivery :)

Whatever kind of cable you install, in a few years it will be out of fashion and you'll want a new sort. If you install conduits (with no sharp bends) with draw wires then when you discover that you need some new-fangled Cat26 or some optical thing or whatever it is in 5 years, then you can install it. Just be aware that there may also be some rules regarding the minimum spacing between mains cables and phone cables and possibly also between other types of cables, and they may not be allowed to run in the same conduit. It might be worth looking up the rules on this so that you don't run into problems later.

Chris

This NG is not aus.i'm.a.total.f****it.&.know.nothing.about.audio

A bit pointless when you are building your own house and can install all the copper you like!

Dave :)

Are you talking about the Philips Streamium system? Saw one in Harvey Norman yesterday. The base station is about $1500, and the satellites about $500. Nice idea.