bdesmond said:
Cable itself isn't the problem. It's the IP backbone that might not be as accomodating.
Even if it's not IP, if it's digitizing signals, serializing them, transmitting them, receiving them, deserializing them and converting them back to analog on a dedicated
circuit it's still too much delay.
If it's not digital, but just speaker-level signals using Cat-5 cable, there's other problems. The actual
wire inside Cat-5 cable is #24
AWG... pretty skinny for any kind of
power. Copper is a good
conductor, but it's not perfect - it has resistance. In the case of 24AWG it's about .026 ohms per
foot. How many feet between the
amplifier and the
speaker? Lets assume 50 feet of
wire. But you've got to get there and
back, so it's actually 100 feet of
wire (2.62 ohms) in series with the
speaker. Assume a 4-ohm
speaker. The
amplifier is rated to provide 300 watts into a 4-ohm load, but it's actually seeing a 6.62-ohm load, so it falls back to about 220 watts. Of that 220 watts, 87 is wasted in the resistance of the
wire. Your "300
watt"
amplifier is maxed out at 220 watts, but only 133 watts are getting to the
speaker.
Calculations like that are why my
power amps sit directly behind the stacks of main speakers, a separate rack of amplifiers on each side of the
stage.
Speaker cables are no longer than necessary (4' for 18" each sub, 6' for each 12" mid-bass and each
horn) and are all #12
AWG. For monitors the cables are a
bit longer - 25' - but they're still #12
AWG and a separate cable runs from the
amplifier to each
speaker - I don't "
daisy-chain" speakers. If anyone wants to do the math, #12
AWG copper
wire is .00162 ohms per
foot.
John