gilkinted Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 Here's what I want to do. Take a control room balanced signal output from a studio desk (A & H ZED-R16) and send it to a monitor system elsewhere in the studio VIA ETHERNET CABLE which will then feed a standard integrated amp to passive monitors. If I were to deploy the PC I'm using which interfaces with the desk and the DAW I suppose I could derive a squeezebox solution but this is not ideal from a cue point of view. Anyone willing to talk me through any possible options? Cheers, Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J Pearce Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 If you have an end to end CAT5 cable (it can go through a network patchbay, just not a switch or router), then just stick hot and cold across a single twisted pair, discard the screen and you're done. Its how most TV studios did it for years, and I suspect there's still a few links like this in use even these days. I setup a link to a bandroom for rehearsals using our CAT5 infrastructure. Mono send, stereo return and conductor cam on the last pair using a video balun (stage cam went over the network on our video IP server). It worked fine, my attempts at mic level were a bit noisy, but line level worked beautifully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toby Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 Another option is a audio to cat5 box on each end Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J Pearce Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 Well most audio to cat5 boxes are doing just I said, often with a balancing transformer to support unbalanced signals.My bodge cables terminated direct to the cat5 patch, but if I was making them for long term use I'd have made a breakout box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david.elsbury Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 @ the OP: There's a difference between audio over ethernet, and audio over CAT5 cable. If you're using audio over ethernet, you will be routing the signal through networking switches etc, which means you need a box to encode it. This is considerably more complex and costly than "audio over CAT5 cable" which is basically just using the CAT5 wire to pass the signals. If you have a CAT5 line that's direct from point A to point B and does not run through any switches or routers etc, then you can do audio over CAT5 cable, but if not then you'll have to get boxes to encode and decode. Can you clarify which you mean?David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gilkinted Posted February 13, 2012 Author Share Posted February 13, 2012 @ the OP: There's a difference between audio over ethernet, and audio over CAT5 cable. If you're using audio over ethernet, you will be routing the signal through networking switches etc, which means you need a box to encode it. This is considerably more complex and costly than "audio over CAT5 cable" which is basically just using the CAT5 wire to pass the signals. If you have a CAT5 line that's direct from point A to point B and does not run through any switches or routers etc, then you can do audio over CAT5 cable, but if not then you'll have to get boxes to encode and decode. Can you clarify which you mean?David Thanks to all for input so far... You are right David - I hadn't expressed the application accurately. Your comment made me think about what I am actually trying to do! The studio happens to be equipped with network sockets over two floors, each an individual Cat5 historically attached to a central hub. This hub is no longer there so I simply have the individual cables terminating in RJ45's all emerging from a hole in the wall on the ground floor. I was hoping I could connect, say, four cables using some kind of hub, which would give me three distribution points plus the source from the control room. You are presumably saying that I have to physically connect one to one for audio over Cat5 or to take advantage of multiple outlets I have to set up a network with PC + IP protocols at each outlet? Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david.elsbury Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 It's quite possible to send balanced audio over a twisted pair - and inside a CAT5 cable there are 4 such twisted pairs. This is what J Pearce was suggesting above. You connect pins 2 and 3 on the XLR to a twisted pair at each end. Don't worry about pin 1 (audio ground) - although you can connect it to a spare pair if you like, but it's not required. In the same way you can split a balanced audio signal with XLR Y adaptors, you could do the same with your CAT5 cable. Just wire the pairs all together. You might like to use balanced isolating transformers, or a balanced audio distributor (DA) to make the process a bit easier and less prone to each leg interfering with another. David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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