Cat 5 Monitors

[MikeJM]

Anyone have any good/bad, or any experience at all with monitors using cat 5 cable? Stories,comments, recomendations???
Thanks,
Mike M

[RelativeMischief]

Never used them, but my first thought would be only to use them at indoor, "easy gig" venues. cat5 cables are really really fragile, if they get run over with a roadcase they're ruined. I'll just stick to my NL4 thanks.

[mixsa]

why would you use cat5 cable?
just cos its convenient
or do you have your speakers 'networked' somehow?

that would be quite neat for a permanent installation, if you could somehow send an digital audio signal through a network - say from a pc or mac to a receiver and a set of speakers somewhere else on the network. Much like lighting.
though dont know how much inteference would be an issue - as cat5 aint shielded.
hmm

[mixsa]

oo
i just saw this
http://www.prosoundweb.com/studyhall...port/audio.php

[mixsa]

oo
i just saw this
http://www.prosoundweb.com/studyhall...port/audio.php

[The_Guest]

http://www.aviom.com/Products/products1.html

Its great for getting nice monitor mixes that the performers will enjoy, but you still have master control over the unit. Its uses a cat5 interface with analog outputs and inputs. You can buy (or even make) durable Cat5 for much cheaper than the price of an XLR or 1/4" cable. Whats nice about this is many venues (esepecially schools) have cat5 in the wings for computers to connect up to the facility's network. Like for example, in this years musical the directors had a computer connected up to powered and it played all the music for the earlier rehersals. The directors actually would drop the orchestra pitt just low enough to see the stage clearly and controled the music and did their work there. So think about how nice this system would be, you could actually connect the monitors cat5 sends through the cat5 at foh/booth and connect it up at the wings. Thats not patching, the units will find each other see it's IP based I believe. Actually once heard a story about a school running there hazers through there IT department's CAT5 system. It worked fantastic I heard.

[MikeJM]

Thanks for your input guys even though it sort of got off subject.
Speaking of networking, cat 5 and audio, check out the new Crown I-Tech AMP. I have read about it and I know about it, I was just wondering if anyone has used it, I haven't seen it in real life.
I heard a story about someone wanting to get one, but why would you get one if you are only using one amp????????????

[DMXtools]

A problem with any kind of digitized audio is latency - the time required to digitize a sample of a waveform, put it in an IP frame, encapsulate the IP frame in an ethernet packet, transmit it, receive it, extract the frame from the packet and the data from the frame, converti it back to analog and get it to the speakers causes a delay. In some cases it's only enough to cause a phase shift and comb-filtering, in others it can be bad enough to be audible as a discrete echo, depending on whether there's other traffic on the network. Digital is good for recording and playback, or broadcast operations where there's no chance of the listener simultaneously hearing the original and reproduced signal. It's terrible for sound reinforcement... and especially for monitors.

John

[bdesmond]

I'm with John here. If you're going to go IP based, please don't use the existing switching infrastructure. Get your own switch. Us IT folks like to do heavy maintenance tasks after hours when a concert might be going on. Such things sometimes hog up a lot of bandwidth and will make your hazer control signal potentially latent and groups for packet drops.

Likewise, don't use up all the bandwidth for your concert - you need your own VLAN for that at a minimum

[The_Guest]

Actually, many theaters actually have direct stage/foh cat5 lines. Sometimes its not even IP based, many of these systems just use cat5 wires because cat5 is just so inexpensive to use. But yes, I completely agree with you Dave. I would never run any cat5 apps without getting them approved/notified by the IT people. But the non-packet transmission ethernet apps do not show any lag. For example, say you need to adapt RS485 to RS232 but you need a long run at RS485 XLR isn't an option. A crossover cat5 cable crimped with the RS485 pins matched up. Although that was slightly off topic since we're discussing audio over IP Cat5, for most apps I've seen non-ip cat5 apps do not show any significant or prominent lag. I have seen monitoring systems that are not using packet transmission (IP), it was basically the same thing as using XLR or TRS.