Comments on: Ethernet Cable Audio Extension

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Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:26:41 +0000

[...] Ethernet Cable Audio Extension | uC Hobby [...]

By: Berni

Berni — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:00:22 +0000

CAT5 cable is about the most useful kind of cable there is. Its perfect for making breadboard jumpers or wiring up your DIY projects.

I always keep a length of CAT5 cable handy.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:41:43 +0000

Yes it amuses the manufactures greatly to put shields on audio cables. You should see them laughing so hard their false teeth fall out over that little white strip they put on speaker zip wires. They really do have a great time with that stuff.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:36:01 +0000

OH and I should add that I am an avid listener. Driving two Warferdale speakers with about 200 Watts each, they are just barley warmed up at that. It seems that while the Ethernet cable is not the ideal solution, its not easy to hear the difference even with great listening equipment.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:32:00 +0000

Hey thanks for the comments, I am a EE myself so I understand and agree, would be better to use shielded cables and matching, but this was an experiment to see how well CAT5 would work for about 20 feet. I cant hear the difference between this setup and the one I had before with an Airport express from ITunes. At least now any sound source works to drive my stereo.

By: A name is required

A name is required — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:11:43 +0000

Why do you think they put shielding on the RCA cable – for amusement of the manufacturers?

By: David

David — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:44:13 +0000

This is a clever idea, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and that applies here as well. CAT5 twisted-pairs are low-impedance balanced cables, whereas, consumer and semi-pro audio signals and cables, as well, are high-impedance unbalanced (i.e., the signal is referenced to ground). This probably won’t matter over short distances in low RF environments, but if you try more than a few few in an urban setting, this is going to be a disaster. You really need a balun, which is a transformer that converts from unbalanced-to-balanced on one end of the CAT5 and then another balun on the other end. Check amazon.com for “niles balun” to handle audio, video, etc. Unfortunately, these things are not cheap, nor are they completely transparent because iron coupled inductors with parasitic capacitance are going to cause unwanted filtering of the audio signal. So, just like other fields of pseudo-science and pseudo-medicine, sometimes it’s best to trust the experts. In this case, good shielded high-impedance unbalanced audio cable will be a bargain in the long run.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:20:45 +0000

@Anon Yes 100 MBit Ethernet only uses two pairs (4 wires) of the 4 pairs available (8 wires) We could use the other wires to route signals between the Ethernet jacks. I’m sure we can think of some good uses.

I’m thinking a serial home control network.

By: Anon

Anon — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:01:44 +0000

with plenty of wires left over to run a 100Mbit network over there too… if you wanted

By: Florin

Florin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:13:22 +0000

It always feels good when you can recycle something. Even nicer when it’s electronics