Cat 5 UTP cable for XLR connections

[HangDawg]

Well, what do you think? It's good enough to transmit 100MB ethernet up to 100 meters. Could it work for audio too? Being a network administrator, I have a shitpile of the stuff I've tore out over the years.

 

[knightfly]

Nope - Cat5 is 4 twisted pair, which makes it somewhat noise immune due to the twisting, but no shield that I'm aware of.

the only reason you can run 100 Mbit on it, is that it's most likely pretty low capacitance. Most digital cable is, so it doesn't round off leading/trailing edges of pulses as much.

You might get away with using it for XLR's until you get a cable too close to a noise source, but I wouldn't recommend it.

I have heard of people using a Cat5 patch bay and cables for digital audio, since the real thing is so expensive - I'm not sure how/where they converted to the RJ- series connectors though. I personally wouldn't recommend even that, after reading about jitter, etc., on sites such as these -

http://jitter.de/english/engc_navfr.html

http://www.digido.com

Maybe the best thing you could do with all that Cat5 cable is get a few pounds of RJ conn's and a crimper and sell short Cat5 cables, use the money to buy XLR's. That's what I would do, if I didn't need the Cat5 for its intended use... Steve

 

[HangDawg]

Ah, that figures. I'm gonna be finishing my control room soon and I will be in need of some cabling and thought maybe I could get off cheap. Shoulda known better.

 

[frederic]

Well, what do you think? It's good enough to transmit 100MB ethernet up to 100 meters. Could it work for audio too? Being a network administrator, I have a shitpile of the stuff I've tore out over the years.

Cat5 is unshielded twisted pair. So you don't have shielding at all. But it can work for audio, I've used it in a pinch. Just watch where you run it...

 

[Sonixx]

Re: Re: Cat 5 UTP cable for XLR connections

Cat5 is unshielded twisted pair. So you don't have shielding at all. But it can work for audio, I've used it in a pinch. Just watch where you run it...

UTP is Unshielded-Twisted Pair...

CAT5 can be UTP or STP (Shielded-Twisted Pair)

 

[darrin_h2000]

You can still use it for your phones and modem

 

[dpaton]

Ah, that figures. I'm gonna be finishing my control room soon and I will be in need of some cabling and thought maybe I could get off cheap. Shoulda known better.

I'm wiring up a load of patchbays, so I feel you pain. I looked around for a while and found Belden 9451..it's great. Order it at www.newark.com for ~$97/1000ft. 2x 22awg stranded conductors plus a shield and a very nice drain wire, all in a 0.135" OD package. The shield strips with the jacket, making things very tidy. It's my new favorite non-Mogami install cable. It's available in colors, but when I ordered mine all they had was grey and green. 4 spools of grey, some clear heatshrink, and a boatload of wire marker tape later, I'm a soldering fool.

-dave