Home wiring (non-electrical)

[Anonymous Poster]

<font color=blue>...My Sunsui stereo rcvr is 20 yrs old!...</font color=blue>

Maybe 30 years... /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif Ya must be a Vietnam vet... we all brought back from Japan/Philippines shore leave either a Sansui, Kenwood, Pioneer or Yamaha receiver... with those big beautiful speakers... and real wood cabinets...! /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

 

[shade2u2]

Sansui = 23 yrs old /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif - me = 40 yrs old (missed VN fortunately), but the receiver was bought through friends Military electronics magazine. I can't remember what it was called. You probably know it.
Remember 4 channel? It could have been surround-sound if it would have made it /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif Pink Floyd & the Beatles were probably the only ones to make 4 channel music back then... /w3tcompact/icons/eyes.gif
"Several small firry animals in a cave grooving with a pic" /w3tcompact/icons/eyes.gif/w3tcompact/icons/tongue.gif/w3tcompact/icons/cool.gif/w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif/w3tcompact/icons/love.gif/w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

 

[radman]

Tomorrow I am going over plans for structured wiring, home theatre, speakers etc for a house we're building. I can understand some to this stuff but the area is still evolving. I spoke with their designer yesterday. They are now using cat5e for speaker wire. I thought he was crazy. Said he just returned from a demonstration and he thought the sound was as good as or better than traditional speaker wire. I guess their is a specific wire that can plug into a cat 5 outlet and then into the receiver. Remember, if you plan to use cat 5 for networking, all 4 wire pairs are required. If you also want phone, you will need to add a 2nd cat 5 to those areas. I'll get more info tomorrow.

 

[MossRoad]

For 10/100 CAT5 only two pairs are needed. For gigibit, all four pairs are required. I would still punch down all four pairs to each jack. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[s1120]

<font color=red>"Several small firry animals in a cave grooving with a pic" </font color=red>

That old Floyd was the best. Nothing like dusting of the old head phones, turning off the lights, and just zoneing out.

 

[RanchMan]

If I understood your post correctly, no thinking about it - I agree with your first impression that he is crazy! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif The gauge of the wire is WAY to small to handle the power output from any respectable piece of audio hardware. As far as "sounding just as good" - no way - there must be another reason he's pushing cat 5e for stereo stuff. Perhaps I could see using it for control stuff (like IR repeaters, or other controls in a multi-room distribution system like something from Niles audio) but for the outputs from a receiver or separates - nope. I'd be real cautious here.... /w3tcompact/icons/hmm.gif

 

[MossRoad]

Think about it. If he used one CAT5 cable per speaker channel, that would be eight 24 gauge wires per speaker. Does anyone know what size wire that would translate into? It would be interesting to figure out. Think of all the choices of speaker location that would give you if you pre-wired the entire house with multiple CAT5 jacks with all 8 wires punched down to a central patch bay.

 

[AndyR]

I have an old connected farmhouse in New Hampshire and am installing network and video wiring throughout as I renovate. I pull 2 CAT-5's to each location (i.e. every room) and two RG-6 Quad shield for video. Everything home-runs to panels in the basements. In the kitchen, I am pulling 14 gauge twisted pair jacketed wire for the speakers. I don't know where your consultant came up with the idea for cat-5's for speakers but I don't think too much of it. Course marbe he has in mind some network compatible speakers that each get thier own IP address/w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

Anyway. For the price of a few items from Radio shack you can get a whole spool of wire for a good supplier. I am working down a 1000 foot spool of the Rg-6 Quad (shielding is good - we like shielding) that cost me around $100. Right now I have an antenna sitting on boxes in the attic - next phase will be to mount it on a bar with a rotor on it. Radio Shack now offers a rotor with remote control (let's see - I think that will be the 7th remote /w3tcompact/icons/eyes.gif). I have a dual box Direct TV dish and will also be feeding a number of X-10 cameras into modulators, so the video panel has a lot on it. The Cat-5s are used for both network and phone (but never in the same cable). Because we have our business in part of the house we have a digital phone system but I have used this same technique with analog systems and have had few if any problems. The supplier I use for most of this stuff is <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.milestek.com>Milestek</A>. They have plenty of intructional sidebars in thier catalogues and I have been very pleased with the quality of service.

Good Luck!

 

[shade2u2]

Thank you all for the info & links. I would also really like to know the net gauge of cat5 4pair all tied together for possible speaker use. If it would work, then something like this *http://www.milestek.com/frameset.asp?sPage1=topframe.htm&sPage2=multimedia_cable.htm (double cat5e & quadshielded cable in 1 run) would be convenient & cost efficient. What is the difference between cat5 & cat5E? Is all cat5 copper wiring?

 

[RanchMan]

Honestly, I hadn't even considered that he would run all eight wires in parallel to equal one speaker channel - I had assumed he would use a single strand or maybe a twisted pair to run each channel, but let's go with the 8 wires per speaker assumption for a sec.

If my math is right (someone else may want to confirm this /w3tcompact/icons/clever.gif), if you used all 8 solid copper wires in parallel, they would be virtually equivalent to 15 AWG stranded wire.

--- 24 AWG = .205 mm^2 area & .0842 Ohm/m
--- calculated out w/ all 8 in ||, 1.64 mm^2 & .010525 Ohm/m,
--- 15 AWG = 1.650 mm^2 area & .0107 Ohm/m)

I've never seen 15 AWG, but plenty of the even numbers out there.

If he used 2 pairs (4 wires) for each speaker, it would be virtually equivalent to 18 AWG - too small by my book. /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

You make a good point about if you had a patch panel to "move things around" /w3tcompact/icons/cool.gif - but you could do this with banana plugs or other connectors to do this instead of RJ45s.

That being said, I would assume that most folks who wanted "whole house" sound/video distribution would probably go a different route and get a 4/8/16 multichannel amp to do this instead of going into the wiring closet each time they wanted to "hang out" in a different room.

So based on this, it was driving me nuts - what would be the attraction to cat 5e? /w3tcompact/icons/tongue.gif Finally figured it out - PRICE!. The last catalog I got had Belden Cat 5e (UTP) @ 1/4 the cost of 16 gauge speaker wire. /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

So I think the question of "why" is probably answered, but personally, I still don't think I'd do it.

A) cost - OK, so it is 4x the price for regular speaker wire - but, we aren't talking about thousands for wire here, maybe a few hundred. What’s that compared to the price of the house?

B) I like the convenience of one pair of wires: one +, one -, much easier to "punch down" and far less likely to get your "wires crossed".

C) believe it or not, speaker wire is actually engineered for transferring audio signals, just as cat 5e is made for transferring data signals. Capacitance, inductance, etc. are all figured out for this purpose - does that mean Cat 5e would be "sonically bad"? - no - but since it wasn't made for it, it might have some sonic down-sides.

D) I haven't seen any manufacturers recommend cat 5e for their audio equipment - I'd think if there was a clear advantage to using it (other than price), they would probably recommend it.

I guess I'll stop rambling - but I think that your answer of using all 8 wires per speaker may be right on with regards to that designer fellow. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif