Audio over Cat5 products

[soundman57]

A few companies are producing various boxes which offer audio over Cat5 e.g. Rat Systems offer their RATCAT range, Radial offer CATAPULT, CatCore (Germany) have their range, Vortex Comms (UK) have their PBE-202.

 

Are there any others, especially UK made, that any of you are aware of? Canford offer CatKit products but not it appears, similar to the products mentioned.

 

Has anyone used these for some time? What are the pros & cons if any? Can you recommend any make based on your experience?

 

I'm interested because there are some jobs which only require 4 sends from the stage and although I have some existing conventional and small stageboxes, I like the compactness the Cat5 systems offer plus lightweight cable to suit.

 

Opinions and views welcome.

 

Thanks!

 

Steve

Abbey Audio

Nottingham

[abbotsmike]

No issue with it in principle, and have done it in a pinch! But you do need to make sure that you use shielded cable, which will reduce the cheap/lightweightness somewhat.

 

Also, as far as I know, they're all basically just an ethercon to 4 sockets/tails, Ie nothing you couldn't probably make yourself, for vastly less money!!

[J Pearce]

Thomann also sell a fairly cheap solution. I'd use them for making use of house tielines, but I don't think I'd use them as a stage-snake solution, if only due to the mechanical handling properties of CAT5/6. I might use them for installing house tielines, as there's more labour used to pulling/laying network cable and it is smaller and easier to route.

 

We use CAT6 (shielded) runs for mic lines with in-house made adapters from flown mics in our concert halls without issue (wired as two lots of one pair doing hot/cold and one pair as ground - to allow phantom power, so only stereo over the 4 pairs). This setup may have even been broadcast on a national radio station...

[david.elsbury]

Have built some with some wall plates off eBay. Easy enough; I made 3ch ones to avoid the need for screened cable.

 

https://www.blue-room.org.uk/index.php?showtopic=59536

[Simon Lewis]

Are there any others, especially UK made, that any of you are aware of? Canford offer CatKit products but not it appears, similar to the products mentioned.

 

CatKit is a flexible Ethercon multicore system, i.e. it provides a convenient way of running multiple CAT5 cables in one jacket with corresponding Ethercon stagebox and tails.