I have listened ALOT of times and from my impression is that long cables reduce the low mid or high bass. maybe that eq effect is caused by the spooled cables that make like inductance effect?
I did a 6 mile test as well on the member side of the channel where you can really hear the losses. Don't think it's the coil but rather, the cable capacitance rolls off the HF and not unlike 70volt systems, wire that are long 8n relation to the wire diameter tend to lose attack and the ability to deliver lows quickly
I have done some calculations yesterday on the delay of wire (transit time). The speed of electricity in wire is approximately 299792458 m/s. So that would make the transit time of 1.5 miles of wire 8 microseconds. It would only take 31 milliseconds to get signal from a wire running coast to coast and back (6,000 miles total). In a wire a 20kHz tone would have a wavelength of around 15,000 meters! It's truly amazing how fast electricity moves.
When your cable is wound on the wheel, many things will not happen Open the cable!! THD+N will increase, that's the real situation Does your box meet this standard? AES72-2019: AES standard on interconnections-Application of RJ45-type connectors and quad twisted pair cable for audio interconnections
Cool cool and yes, we were consulted during the development of the AES standard as we were one of the leaders in developing analog over Cat5e. We use 2-O wiring. This is a simple test was to show that analog and phantom can be transmitted down long cable lengths, a test of THD or interference would be interesting and a different test using different gear.
Greed, I did another test up 6 miles and used Smaart. There is definitely roll off but still quite usable at 1.5 miles. At 3 miles it becomes quite noticeable and 6 miles is quite dull
A quantifiable test with signal generator, swept frequency, and attenuation graph would be most informative. If you are in my area, we could meet up for measurements. We could even do a TDR test.
I did another video and shpw the Smaart transfer function and phase curves for lengths up to 6 miles and posted om the member side of my youtube. This public version of the vid was mainly in response to some questions I was asked "in a pinch, how far can I run a pair of phantom mics down cat5e" and "what us the farthest I can run analog down cat5e" After about 1.5 miles, the hf rolloff starts to increase and by 6 miles it is significant and dramatic. That said, I wanted to keep this vid focused on, "if I do it, will it work" for the low to bandaid as realistically, anyone concerned with maintaining a high fidelity would just run fiber.
Well I'm not really that cautious of a human I kind of like the break things but plugging in a mic to hot phantom shouldn't hurt the mic and as long as the gain is down fairly low who cares if you get a pop! :-)
If both ends are properly balanced and loaded, then no. Not so long ago, we made an art of sending those same signals down many 100's of Km's of telephone cable with no side effects.. so really, what you're doing is very old skool.
Hmmm, I believe that doing an inteference susceptibility test of long cable lengths vs the subjective audible impacts of long cable lengths on fidelity, would be a different test, rather than a more real test
This is exactly the way we did broadcast in the analog days.from one town to the broadcaststation over telephoneline, if you balance the line this goes on for..... thousands of km...... from Hilversum The Netherlands to everycountry all over the world. From one radio station to another ......
Yes! And now with fiber there are better ways and sometimes just running a wire and sidestepping the complexities is the best solution for the application. Especially in adverse environments and cost conscience situations where max fidelity is not a pressure.
Thanks for doing this Dave. Im tasked with setting up a PA system down the length of a 590m long ski slope next winter and have been weighing up doing CAT 5 vs audio transmitters, though have yet to find ones that transmit more than 400m and a lot of them use RCA and mini-jack input's, so not very sutible for hooking up to amplifiers. The other complication of course will be the need to set delays on all of the speakers. One sub and two top speaker about ever 50m along the slope, so 24x 12'' tops and 12x 15'' subs with one amp driving 3 speakers. Anyway, this video at least gives me confidence in knowing that using CAT 5 could be an option.
Cool cool, yes, maybe usingvtransmitters with analog down cat5 as a redundancy. Though fiber would be the best solution, with either fiber or analog spwn cat 5 as redundancy.
ive encountered so many "sound guys" that think that using Cat5-6 cable is "stupid".... Ive pointed them to many web pages. and this sir is the holy grail! thank you for doing this!
I know at least one sound guy who does the opposite… Where I used to work, one of the bands that came through would bring their own console (the big LS-9) and share it for FoH and monitors. They left it on-stage so the band could walk over and tweak their ears while the sound guy mixed FoH from a laptop running Yamaha Studio Manager. There was one show where their FoH guy kept getting disconnected from their wifi, though, and the next they came though again, they’d made a pair of “ethernet to dual XLR” adapters so they could run data over a couple channels of our analog snake. Anyway, they eventually got a probably 100m cat5 cable, but I always got a kick out of the XLR adapters.
Very cool and I did some testing on that. Using SoundTools cat tails or catbox backwards allows a cat5e input to 4 XLR, use a conventional snake and then another catbox or cattails to convert back While not optimal and the bandwidth vs length is much more limited, it does work and is easy to do.
This video reminds me of why I love and miss the LAN line days. No latency during phone calls, so people wouldn't really talk over each other. Today with smart phones and wireless tech we've regressed in a way. Latency is very obvious and annoying. Anyway, what I'm getting at is a wired connection will always be king. I appreciate these cool videos Dave.
Not to mention the number of female to female connectors that are inline over that mile an a half. I count 25 female to female connectors with two RJ45 connections each. That 50 connections plus the 2400+ meters of cable. It did a lot better than I thought it would do. I would love to see the other channels have standard line level signals run down them at the same time as this test to see if there is any crosstalk.
Here is a vid I did on crosstalk with Cat5e that does not have individually shielded pairs. ua-cam.com/video/gGgPDEz5sNU/v-deo.html. I am pretty sure that crosstalk would not be any more of an issue with ultra long cables, as it tends to be in the higher frequencies and the long cables roll off the highs. Possibly an issue if you ran signals in opposing directions and then really boosted lots of HF to compensate for the lost HF. ua-cam.com/video/gGgPDEz5sNU/v-deo.html
I did further testing up to 6 miles and posted Smaart phase and response curves of the various lengths on the member side of my youtube. I will release that video to the public at some point.
Well, here are a few things to consider. First, if indeed that is the case, then the test I am doing would show worse results than uncoiled cables and one could possibly expect to run even longer cable runs and achieve the same or better results. Also, the susceptibility of coiled cables to inductance varies based on the cable type and signal. A single wire coiled, like a hot of a feeder, will be very impacted by coiling inductance. A non twisted pair of wires will be slightly impacted by coiling. A twisted pair of wires will have almost non existent impacts from coiling, especially if the pairs are tightly twisted and shielded. So, while there is a possibility that the test reselts would be slightly improved by uncoiling, I dont believe the differential would be relevant. As in, perhaps 1.5 miles of coiled shielded cat5e cable will sound similar to 1.55 miles uncoiled shielded cat5e. Regardless, the context of this test is to show that running a mile of cable is functional and has some slight audible dulling. And will conrider doing some tests to help clarify as there is a bit of confusion about what types of cables are impaxted by coiling
So you are thinking the switch makes the results better or worse? I did another video that is currently only on the paid member side, that tests the cables up to 6 miles and I show the freq res and phase curves and well using smaart
I did another vid that is currently on the paod member side of my youtube channel but will release public at some point. I test up to 6 miles of cable and show smaart curves of freq reap and phase
Wow for sure I would have said no way phantom is going to make it on (24 awg?) copper. Just goes to show how little current is required by a phantom device (therefore negligible voltage drop over that distance). Loved it!
Yes! and I did exactly that and posted a test with smaart phase and response curves going back and forth 4 times down 1.5 miles to hit 6 miles. Its up on the paid member side of my youtube channel and will eventually release it public as well
Does the cat5e must be shielded or that won’t matter ? I had an issue using cat5/6 when using over video it lower the quality and gave me some weird frames on the video
For analog audio over cat5e, shielding is important for reducing hum. For video, shield should not matter as much as using cable with higher bandwidth or shorter lebgths
@@DaveRat my question comes as I bough a 3.5mm jack over Ethernet it was a typical blue cat5 cable I doubt it had shielded cable inside and it there was a hum it was a small distance maybe 15 feet the mixer was picking up the noise it would go after I put music all these test were tests while everything was connected . Some how i don’t trust yet or have maybe bought the right quality gear I am talking about maybe 7 yrs ago anyways that was in analog mixer but now I got a digital mixer xr18 from behringer and some day it have a feature that I can now have a personal box via Ethernet as behringer sale a p16 but that would be for me more reliable than a simple cat 5 by itself as I think , digital signal is send and there length should matter as much and radio interference as a basic analog audio signal passing throw a cable over distance .?
For 15 feet, analog or digital should both be very quiet with a properly wires and grounded setup. With analog you will need shielded cable to keep the noise out, with digital, shield is more to keep the noise in.
I believe, based in other testing I jave done, that the quality of the twisted pairs in cat5 cable is so good that it makea them uneffected by being coiled. Also the cat5e I use is shielded qhich also makes them less susceptable to coiling. That said, if coiling does anything, it would make the resuts worse, so possibly ever so slightly you could have slightly longer cable runs to achieve similar results.
@@DaveRat What's the purpose of your test anyway? Most people aren't going to record using that long of a Cat5e cable. Are you just doing this so you can have some silly UA-cam video to make some side money with?
Love it! Any chance you could look at USB track transfer / distances? 16ft is max spec length, but even at that I had issues with a 48x48 USB from console to my Mac Mini (which I didnt have with a 32x32 link). Went shorter with a ferrite and that worked. What difference do ferrites make? What difference does cable "quality" make etc? How many channels can I run down a 25ft USB cable? and so forth. Thanks!
Brilliant!!! Next take the same feed and do a return trip going down the same cable. Since you got 4 lines in the Cat you could multiply the distance by 4. Plus it would be interesting to see if 48v would even work. Great demo Dave! I’m sold on it.
This is so stupid yet SO cool, thank you for everything you do Dave!!! Also who TF would be actually running a MILE + of cable for a mic! notice he's running analogue not even digital. Impressive!
Ha! It actually came from someone asking me about the SoundTools supercat cable and how long they can run analog down it. Soooo, figured there is one way to find out! There is an extended version of this video on the members where I ramp it up to 6 miles of cable! You can then really hear the impacts come to play
If Boeing or Lockheed were into selling high end XLR cables for 100s of $Billions in tax payer dollars per year Dave would now mysteriously disappear or his otherwise flawless vehicle would explode. Just sayin.
Interesting test! Can you reproduce he microphonic cable effect i talked about in the noise video with sammy? crank up the gain and hit the spool. maybe its only my crappy cat5e cable
Yeah, this is the public version, the in "meanfull" audio nerd version I test up to 6 miles and show the freq reap and phase with comparisons using Smaart. That test is currently on the paid sis of my youtube channel and will release it public at some point.
Mic cable will have similar results, as will snake cable. Actually larger diameter cable for lower capacitance and the thicker conductors for less resistance will perform even better for long lengths
I intentionally use inexpensive and easily accessible gear for the vids so that people seeing the vids do not attribute the results to high quality gear they don't have. Ive done other testing with high end gear and I get comments from people requesting I do tests with gear they actually own and use. So for this test, I fugured that people with big budgets will use fiber and people in a pinch needing long cable runs would use what ever they have available, as being most relevant.
In the next test, could you wait a little bit longer after switching between runs on the condensers? I know that I can literally turn phantom off on some of mine and it'll hold enough charge for a few seconds to keep trucking. I know (as you've shown in another video) that these mics can handle a large voltage swing but maybe let it settle to see if it further affects it? Also would be neat to put a voltmeter across the loaded leads at distance!
the u89 under the full cable length sounded like it lost a little low end / low mids on my speakers ? i might just be imagining it though from a small volume difference.. all things considered really impressive..
The test is so-so, only you know what you are hearing. Connect oscilloscope and generator, then you can compare. Besides, it's a symmetrical transmission… what you expected. Probably muted the HF a bit.
For the general public I posted a simple fun test that lets people hear the basic reality that you can run long cables with phantom in a pinch and they will work. I did another test of various lengths up to 6 miles with Smaart phase and response curves for the various lengths that I posted on the member side of my youtube channel. I will make the free and public at some point as well.
@belly tripper oh my! Are you really so curious that you are yelling at me to post information? Here I am, devoting a significant amount of time to offer free and interesting info and have spent many years helping people in the industry learn and sharing knowledge I have accumulated over the past 40 years working in live sound and you want me to post more info right now, so you decide to text shout at me? Good stuff, tell ya what, let me know something you have done recently or do on a regular basis to help someone out or help out people in general, purely to assist others. And I will post Smaart curves and graphs for you of the freq and phase responses of the various cable lengths. Sound good?
@@DaveRat Love ya Dave keep up the great work for all you do man! too bad some of these guys dont know who you are or the experience you bring to the game! thier loss and huge gains for the rest of us! again thank you for sharing the wealth of knowledge
Hmm, due to cost and lack of availability of flexible HDMI, I have not. Though we do bundle 3 cat cables and create 12 channel snakes that are flexible and available to build in long legths with inexpensive locking connectors.
Very informative! Would love to see a video testing the link between X/M32 consoles and stage boxes with your various SuperCAT cables. Specifically with regards to the ESD issue they're known for, various cable lengths, roll cases over the cable to see if you lose sync, etc.
Interesting, not sure where the offset came from, will take a look at the waveforms of the original audio, the rendered audio pre upload and a downloaded version of the vid and see if I can locate it and where it shows up in the process
Since cat5e is designed for 100Mhz which is 5000 x higher than the 20KHZ we strive for in audio, and these long lengths are rolling off the hf, which is the most susceptible to crosstalk, I don't see crosstalk and a significant concern. That said, will write it down as a potential test to do.
Maybe you can do amplifier load tests and see how much power they actually do at different impedances, one channel and bridged. I bet you'd get alot of views, maybe speakers wire lengths gauges..
Hey Dave! Great stuff as always. I would really like to see some kind of demonstration of interference between audio and power cables. Ive been on some horror show gigs as a blow in and had to chase down some serious problems with general audio/power cable management (rats nest behind amps/single distro for everything etc etc). Maybe it could be an interesting video to explore? Cheers lad!
I did anotger video thatvis on the paid member side where I ran the signal down the cables then back and then down and then back for a total of 6 miles.also I show screen shots of smaart freq and kphase resp for the various lengths. I also, though not posted, ran smart curves of 2400 meters of 1 channel vs 2400 m of supercat vs 2400 m of supercat sound cable using all 4 lines. Length has an impact, # of channels shows no real differrences
I try and use cheap gear for tests rather than expensive stuff that many people dont have. I do this for several reasons, one is I encorage people to diplicate tests whenever possible, also I want to show worst case and real world rather than shiny shit and rhen have people get worse resulta wjen using what they own
awesome dave.., not sure if i 've missed an.episode, but are there any crosstalk or interference issues when running 2 or more signals in opposing directions down the same cat5se cable. i.e.. in a typical 2x2 send / return config.
Sounds pretty much like expected. The longer the cable run the more definition is lost. I'm wondering how much these lengths of cables reduced the phantom power voltage.
I wish I had measured. That said, the cable resistance is less than 300 ohms, maybe 200, and phantom power is run through 6800 ohm resistors when sent, so that vable resistance is less than 5% of the resistance ofbthe phantom circuit. Most resistors are +/- 10% or 5%, so the cable resistanve is less than the typical tolerance error
I freaking love your videos Dave! Thank you. I do think a coiled wire has a better conductance or maybe even faster than a straight wire. The magnetic field created during the current flow it allows it to move faster (in this case) verses if we were actually in a show and the spools are empty. What do you think? And would it effect the current flow?
Hmmmm, not sure coils alter the speed. And the speed or electricity is so fast compared to the speed of sound, like over 800,000 times faster. So wire length is pretty much irrelevant regarding speed. Electricity takes about 1 millionth of a second to travel down 1000 feet of wire.
@@DaveRat would the quality of sound be effected on a straight wire verses coiled? That’s what I meant. I had commented before I finished the video and then I heard you say “coiled cables tend to make things worse” which I think it’s not true. Oh well only experimenting would define that. Thank Dave.
It depends. If the wires are separate, like power feeder, coils will make it much worse. If the there are well twisted pairs, the coils will make no real difference. If there are poorly twisted pairs, the coil can make it slightly worse. If there is no twisting, just pairs, and lots of coil, it can make it audibly worse
For voice yes, for crisp he, not so much. I did another test up to 6 miles that I will post public at some point (currently is in the paid members side) that shows the freq roll off and phase response.
I did another vid testing up to 6 miles of cable and show the smaart reap and phase curves. I have been posting the more tech versions ofbvids on the paid member side of my youtube channel. The general public aeems to prefer the simple stuff and the $4.99 a month is a substantial enough of a hurdle that it filters out a lot of the internet noise
@@DaveRat I enjoy how you break it all down. One day when I can work again I will happily subscribe to your channel. Soon you will need to start growing your "Wizard beard" All the great mentors in our business have them.
Your channel is becoming the MythBusters of the live sound world and I’m here for it!! 👍
awesome!!
@@DaveRat I couldn't agree more, this is something I'd wanna try in my garage!
MADE MY DAY! If FOH is 1.6km away I dare say maybe the sound crew better buy tickets for the show lol
At 1.5 meters to mix, avoiding that 103 DB noise limit at FOH becomes simple
Thank you Dave. Insightful. Really like that you're able to knock out tests that very few people would have the resources to pull off.
Awesome and the Ultra long 6 mile version of the test with Smaart is now up!
I’m absolutely amazed that the difference is so small on 2400 meter. Awesome stuff! Thanks Dave!
Me too!
You should do this with an unbalanced cable and see what happens :)
Interesting and yes, showing the importance of balanced is a cool idea
Yes, see how many radio stations you can pick up!
@@petetrott7568 You read my mind, but it would be interesting to hear it happen in a test.
It wouldn't even have to be unbalanced cable. Just disconnect one leg of the signal.
@@danielplusben good idea, I will do that with a shorter run and see .
Love these kinds of videos
love your remixes
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Seems like a plot for the sound human to work from home.
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I have listened ALOT of times and from my impression is that long cables reduce the low mid or high bass. maybe that eq effect is caused by the spooled cables that make like inductance effect?
I did a 6 mile test as well on the member side of the channel where you can really hear the losses.
Don't think it's the coil but rather, the cable capacitance rolls off the HF and not unlike 70volt systems, wire that are long 8n relation to the wire diameter tend to lose attack and the ability to deliver lows quickly
I have done some calculations yesterday on the delay of wire (transit time). The speed of electricity in wire is approximately 299792458 m/s. So that would make the transit time of 1.5 miles of wire 8 microseconds. It would only take 31 milliseconds to get signal from a wire running coast to coast and back (6,000 miles total). In a wire a 20kHz tone would have a wavelength of around 15,000 meters! It's truly amazing how fast electricity moves.
👍👍👍 awesome!!
When your cable is wound on the wheel, many things will not happen
Open the cable!! THD+N will increase, that's the real situation
Does your box meet this standard?
AES72-2019: AES standard on interconnections-Application of RJ45-type connectors and quad twisted pair cable for audio interconnections
Cool cool and yes, we were consulted during the development of the AES standard as we were one of the leaders in developing analog over Cat5e. We use 2-O wiring.
This is a simple test was to show that analog and phantom can be transmitted down long cable lengths, a test of THD or interference would be interesting and a different test using different gear.
This is incredible. The audio quality is astounding for that long of a run😂
Greed, I did another test up 6 miles and used Smaart. There is definitely roll off but still quite usable at 1.5 miles. At 3 miles it becomes quite noticeable and 6 miles is quite dull
I'm glad you mentioned the lengths of the reels in Meters!!!!!!!!
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What if you did Dante on 100meters?
Hmmm, digital is a different adventure.
A quantifiable test with signal generator, swept frequency, and attenuation graph would be most informative. If you are in my area, we could meet up for measurements. We could even do a TDR test.
I did another video and shpw the Smaart transfer function and phase curves for lengths up to 6 miles and posted om the member side of my youtube.
This public version of the vid was mainly in response to some questions I was asked "in a pinch, how far can I run a pair of phantom mics down cat5e" and "what us the farthest I can run analog down cat5e"
After about 1.5 miles, the hf rolloff starts to increase and by 6 miles it is significant and dramatic.
That said, I wanted to keep this vid focused on, "if I do it, will it work" for the low to bandaid as realistically, anyone concerned with maintaining a high fidelity would just run fiber.
How did you wire the XLR connectors to the CAT5? In other words, which pairs of the CAT5 are connected to pins 1,2,& 3 of the XLR?
I did it using soundtools shielded analog over cat5 products.
soundtools.com/audio-over-cat5-systems-page.html
Please .... never, ever connect and disconnect microphones with 48V phantom voltage active.
Well I'm not really that cautious of a human I kind of like the break things but plugging in a mic to hot phantom shouldn't hurt the mic and as long as the gain is down fairly low who cares if you get a pop! :-)
Wow. If you had asked me I would have guessed -3db per 100m. It sounds like you're only getting that much loss over the whole distance.
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If both ends are properly balanced and loaded, then no. Not so long ago, we made an art of sending those same signals down many 100's of Km's of telephone cable with no side effects.. so really, what you're doing is very old skool.
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Dave, you’re my kind of sound geek. Love real world tests of application.
Thank you thank you!
dear rat if we make a 1 meter y cable from the processor to the power amp, would we lose data?
Cable is canare starquad L-4E6S
Thanks..
Short cables have no impact on sound in almost all situations.
a lot of Cats 🐈🐈🐈🐈 cables and dave rat tests debunk audiophiles that don't have test gear plus dave rat is cool 🐈
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Guy sounds like Matthew McConaughey 😂
Thank you
Amazing...thanks for sharing Mr. Rat !! ...(where is Sammy today )?
She was running sound and cams for the vid shoot
to get a real test result, you should uncoil all of those cables. Radio signals on space does not hit bodies of cables in your test.
Hmmm, I believe that doing an inteference susceptibility test of long cable lengths vs the subjective audible impacts of long cable lengths on fidelity, would be a different test, rather than a more real test
Sounds like Matthew mconohay
Well thank you
Phantom does better
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This is exactly the way we did broadcast in the analog days.from one town to the broadcaststation over telephoneline, if you balance the line this goes on for..... thousands of km...... from Hilversum The Netherlands to everycountry all over the world. From one radio station to another ......
Yes! And now with fiber there are better ways and sometimes just running a wire and sidestepping the complexities is the best solution for the application. Especially in adverse environments and cost conscience situations where max fidelity is not a pressure.
That's amazing! Is the cat5e utp?
The violet and black are s/utp and the blue cable is u/stp
You think regular xlr would work at that distance too?
Yes, about yhe same or maybe better as thicker cables tend to work well farther
The 1.5 sounds like lower... interesting
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Thanks for doing this Dave. Im tasked with setting up a PA system down the length of a 590m long ski slope next winter and have been weighing up doing CAT 5 vs audio transmitters, though have yet to find ones that transmit more than 400m and a lot of them use RCA and mini-jack input's, so not very sutible for hooking up to amplifiers. The other complication of course will be the need to set delays on all of the speakers. One sub and two top speaker about ever 50m along the slope, so 24x 12'' tops and 12x 15'' subs with one amp driving 3 speakers. Anyway, this video at least gives me confidence in knowing that using CAT 5 could be an option.
Cool cool, yes, maybe usingvtransmitters with analog down cat5 as a redundancy.
Though fiber would be the best solution, with either fiber or analog spwn cat 5 as redundancy.
ive encountered so many "sound guys" that think that using Cat5-6 cable is "stupid".... Ive pointed them to many web pages. and this sir is the holy grail! thank you for doing this!
Thank you! And fun!
I know at least one sound guy who does the opposite… Where I used to work, one of the bands that came through would bring their own console (the big LS-9) and share it for FoH and monitors. They left it on-stage so the band could walk over and tweak their ears while the sound guy mixed FoH from a laptop running Yamaha Studio Manager. There was one show where their FoH guy kept getting disconnected from their wifi, though, and the next they came though again, they’d made a pair of “ethernet to dual XLR” adapters so they could run data over a couple channels of our analog snake.
Anyway, they eventually got a probably 100m cat5 cable, but I always got a kick out of the XLR adapters.
Very cool and I did some testing on that. Using SoundTools cat tails or catbox backwards allows a cat5e input to 4 XLR, use a conventional snake and then another catbox or cattails to convert back
While not optimal and the bandwidth vs length is much more limited, it does work and is easy to do.
This video reminds me of why I love and miss the LAN line days. No latency during phone calls, so people wouldn't really talk over each other. Today with smart phones and wireless tech we've regressed in a way. Latency is very obvious and annoying. Anyway, what I'm getting at is a wired connection will always be king. I appreciate these cool videos Dave.
Awesome and thank you!
we gon 'miss rat sound at coachella
Rat Sound is missing the hell out of Coachella and even more, missing all our friends we see every year
Not to mention the number of female to female connectors that are inline over that mile an a half. I count 25 female to female connectors with two RJ45 connections each. That 50 connections plus the 2400+ meters of cable. It did a lot better than I thought it would do. I would love to see the other channels have standard line level signals run down them at the same time as this test to see if there is any crosstalk.
Here is a vid I did on crosstalk with Cat5e that does not have individually shielded pairs. ua-cam.com/video/gGgPDEz5sNU/v-deo.html. I am pretty sure that crosstalk would not be any more of an issue with ultra long cables, as it tends to be in the higher frequencies and the long cables roll off the highs. Possibly an issue if you ran signals in opposing directions and then really boosted lots of HF to compensate for the lost HF.
ua-cam.com/video/gGgPDEz5sNU/v-deo.html
You should make trhe same test but with a whitenoise-signal at microphone level - that could be interresting :-)
I did further testing up to 6 miles and posted Smaart phase and response curves of the various lengths on the member side of my youtube. I will release that video to the public at some point.
@@DaveRat Cool :-) I´ll look forward to that :-)
The coils in the spools of wire make inductors. You need to pull them all out in a straight line. Or a big messy pile.
Well, here are a few things to consider. First, if indeed that is the case, then the test I am doing would show worse results than uncoiled cables and one could possibly expect to run even longer cable runs and achieve the same or better results.
Also, the susceptibility of coiled cables to inductance varies based on the cable type and signal.
A single wire coiled, like a hot of a feeder, will be very impacted by coiling inductance.
A non twisted pair of wires will be slightly impacted by coiling.
A twisted pair of wires will have almost non existent impacts from coiling, especially if the pairs are tightly twisted and shielded.
So, while there is a possibility that the test reselts would be slightly improved by uncoiling, I dont believe the differential would be relevant.
As in, perhaps 1.5 miles of coiled shielded cat5e cable will sound similar to 1.55 miles uncoiled shielded cat5e.
Regardless, the context of this test is to show that running a mile of cable is functional and has some slight audible dulling.
And will conrider doing some tests to help clarify as there is a bit of confusion about what types of cables are impaxted by coiling
Wow! This is love for science! 👍👍
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Do it without the switch. Then I'll trust it.
So you are thinking the switch makes the results better or worse?
I did another video that is currently only on the paid member side, that tests the cables up to 6 miles and I show the freq res and phase curves and well using smaart
Dave is that a Behringer spot monitor?
Ha, yes. We have a pile if them for shout for com
outro killed my ears :)
Then you must have a nice system as those notes are low low low
Would be interesting to measure level and frequency response across the different lengths. Also, check for changes in the noise floor.
I did another vid that is currently on the paod member side of my youtube channel but will release public at some point.
I test up to 6 miles of cable and show smaart curves of freq reap and phase
Wow for sure I would have said no way phantom is going to make it on (24 awg?) copper. Just goes to show how little current is required by a phantom device (therefore negligible voltage drop over that distance). Loved it!
And the 6 mile vid is coming shortly!
Oooh! And with this setup, can we loop the audio back through the super cat cables, up to 4 times to make a 4 mile cable run ?
Yes! and I did exactly that and posted a test with smaart phase and response curves going back and forth 4 times down 1.5 miles to hit 6 miles. Its up on the paid member side of my youtube channel and will eventually release it public as well
Okay, now you're just showing off.
Playing with toys!
Great experiment Dave.
Really enjoy seeing you 'fiddling about with stuff'.
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Awesome thank you Shane!
I am sorry was I suppose to hear a difference? Great job! 😅👍
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Does the cat5e must be shielded or that won’t matter ? I had an issue using cat5/6 when using over video it lower the quality and gave me some weird frames on the video
For analog audio over cat5e, shielding is important for reducing hum. For video, shield should not matter as much as using cable with higher bandwidth or shorter lebgths
@@DaveRat my question comes as I bough a 3.5mm jack over Ethernet it was a typical blue cat5 cable I doubt it had shielded cable inside and it there was a hum it was a small distance maybe 15 feet the mixer was picking up the noise it would go after I put music all these test were tests while everything was connected . Some how i don’t trust yet or have maybe bought the right quality gear I am talking about maybe 7 yrs ago anyways that was in analog mixer but now I got a digital mixer xr18 from behringer and some day it have a feature that I can now have a personal box via Ethernet as behringer sale a p16 but that would be for me more reliable than a simple cat 5 by itself as I think , digital signal is send and there length should matter as much and radio interference as a basic analog audio signal passing throw a cable over distance .?
For 15 feet, analog or digital should both be very quiet with a properly wires and grounded setup. With analog you will need shielded cable to keep the noise out, with digital, shield is more to keep the noise in.
You should unwind them and check the difference...
I believe, based in other testing I jave done, that the quality of the twisted pairs in cat5 cable is so good that it makea them uneffected by being coiled. Also the cat5e I use is shielded qhich also makes them less susceptable to coiling.
That said, if coiling does anything, it would make the resuts worse, so possibly ever so slightly you could have slightly longer cable runs to achieve similar results.
@@DaveRat What's the purpose of your test anyway? Most people aren't going to record using that long of a Cat5e cable. Are you just doing this so you can have some silly UA-cam video to make some side money with?
Love it! Any chance you could look at USB track transfer / distances? 16ft is max spec length, but even at that I had issues with a 48x48 USB from console to my Mac Mini (which I didnt have with a 32x32 link). Went shorter with a ferrite and that worked. What difference do ferrites make? What difference does cable "quality" make etc? How many channels can I run down a 25ft USB cable? and so forth.
Thanks!
Cool, I will pinder some USB testing
Brilliant!!! Next take the same feed and do a return trip going down the same cable. Since you got 4 lines in the Cat you could multiply the distance by 4. Plus it would be interesting to see if 48v would even work.
Great demo Dave! I’m sold on it.
Ooooh. I did more than that. ua-cam.com/video/SorO-QpqYRU/v-deo.html
This is so stupid yet SO cool, thank you for everything you do Dave!!! Also who TF would be actually running a MILE + of cable for a mic! notice he's running analogue not even digital. Impressive!
Ha! It actually came from someone asking me about the SoundTools supercat cable and how long they can run analog down it.
Soooo, figured there is one way to find out! There is an extended version of this video on the members where I ramp it up to 6 miles of cable! You can then really hear the impacts come to play
If Boeing or Lockheed were into selling high end XLR cables for 100s of $Billions in tax payer dollars per year Dave would now mysteriously disappear or his otherwise flawless vehicle would explode. Just sayin.
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Interesting test! Can you reproduce he microphonic cable effect i talked about in the noise video with sammy? crank up the gain and hit the spool. maybe its only my crappy cat5e cable
working on it
@@DaveRat Thanks man.
Interested to see the next video, with more specfic measurement with smartt. Signal gen and see the frequency and amplitude drop etc
Cool cool, yeah, not sure when I will move it to public but will do at some point
I think I'm impressed! ... but I have no idea how bad regular XLR cables sound if you go past 300 ft. 🙂
similar
MEANLESS! Do an audio frequency sweep from 20-20K hz and show it on a 'scope A-B frequency and attenuation.
Yeah, this is the public version, the in "meanfull" audio nerd version I test up to 6 miles and show the freq reap and phase with comparisons using Smaart.
That test is currently on the paid sis of my youtube channel and will release it public at some point.
Great test!!!!!
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@David Do you use Behringer only for testing purposes? Had in the past lot of reliability issues with Behringer mixers.
yes, they are utility units to grab for simple stuff around the shop
Amazing! Is this a reflection of your SC cable or would have similar results with a standard xlr cable?
Mic cable will have similar results, as will snake cable. Actually larger diameter cable for lower capacitance and the thicker conductors for less resistance will perform even better for long lengths
I realize its Dave Rat, but one would think he’d want to use something better than a behringer mixer?
I intentionally use inexpensive and easily accessible gear for the vids so that people seeing the vids do not attribute the results to high quality gear they don't have.
Ive done other testing with high end gear and I get comments from people requesting I do tests with gear they actually own and use.
So for this test, I fugured that people with big budgets will use fiber and people in a pinch needing long cable runs would use what ever they have available, as being most relevant.
@@DaveRat That totally makes sense Dave! Thanks for the response:)
@@StereoAnthony 👍
In the next test, could you wait a little bit longer after switching between runs on the condensers? I know that I can literally turn phantom off on some of mine and it'll hold enough charge for a few seconds to keep trucking. I know (as you've shown in another video) that these mics can handle a large voltage swing but maybe let it settle to see if it further affects it? Also would be neat to put a voltmeter across the loaded leads at distance!
I meant to check the voltage but forgot.
the u89 under the full cable length sounded like it lost a little low end / low mids on my speakers ? i might just be imagining it though from a small volume difference.. all things considered really impressive..
Yes, there the highs do roll off, I think the 2400 meter was like 6db down at 15k
The test is so-so, only you know what you are hearing. Connect oscilloscope and generator, then you can compare. Besides, it's a symmetrical transmission… what you expected. Probably muted the HF a bit.
For the general public I posted a simple fun test that lets people hear the basic reality that you can run long cables with phantom in a pinch and they will work.
I did another test of various lengths up to 6 miles with Smaart phase and response curves for the various lengths that I posted on the member side of my youtube channel. I will make the free and public at some point as well.
@@DaveRat OKAY. You're right. But I wonder how much is lost in the frequency response.
@@andyk9685 above 1.5 miles its starts to drop highs quite a bit. Below 500 meters it is audible but gets hard to hear
@belly tripper oh my! Are you really so curious that you are yelling at me to post information? Here I am, devoting a significant amount of time to offer free and interesting info and have spent many years helping people in the industry learn and sharing knowledge I have accumulated over the past 40 years working in live sound and you want me to post more info right now, so you decide to text shout at me?
Good stuff, tell ya what, let me know something you have done recently or do on a regular basis to help someone out or help out people in general, purely to assist others.
And
I will post Smaart curves and graphs for you of the freq and phase responses of the various cable lengths.
Sound good?
@@DaveRat Love ya Dave keep up the great work for all you do man! too bad some of these guys dont know who you are or the experience you bring to the game! thier loss and huge gains for the rest of us! again thank you for sharing the wealth of knowledge
super !
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Have you thought about using hdmi cables to run 10 analog audio channels?
Hmm, due to cost and lack of availability of flexible HDMI, I have not. Though we do bundle 3 cat cables and create 12 channel snakes that are flexible and available to build in long legths with inexpensive locking connectors.
Very informative! Would love to see a video testing the link between X/M32 consoles and stage boxes with your various SuperCAT cables. Specifically with regards to the ESD issue they're known for, various cable lengths, roll cases over the cable to see if you lose sync, etc.
Interesting, will ponder that
Aes72 for the win! QTP is amazing stuff.
Very cool. Yeah, this cable here is cat5e. The violet and the black are s-utp and the blue is u-stp.
soundtools.com/cables.html
@@DaveRat QTP is a catch all term for all quad twisted pairs. www.rj45.audio
@@Likeaudio ahhh, very cool and thank you!
What is funny thoo, is that in the recording of the video, there is a DC offset :) when i FFWD or REV, it Ticks :)
Interesting, not sure where the offset came from, will take a look at the waveforms of the original audio, the rendered audio pre upload and a downloaded version of the vid and see if I can locate it and where it shows up in the process
Hello man, a job well done and excellent, and it is good to have a young man or two with you to learn the profession from you. Yes, well.
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Would crosstalk be worse as you increase distance? Like if you blasted line level pink noise on the other 3 lines of the cat5e would you hear it?
Since cat5e is designed for 100Mhz which is 5000 x higher than the 20KHZ we strive for in audio, and these long lengths are rolling off the hf, which is the most susceptible to crosstalk, I don't see crosstalk and a significant concern. That said, will write it down as a potential test to do.
Maybe you can do amplifier load tests and see how much power they actually do at different impedances, one channel and bridged. I bet you'd get alot of views, maybe speakers wire lengths gauges..
I could do some amp tests
Kool. Maybe lab to powersoft to crown to whatever list of amps you have. Or even a knock off to the real brand. Sweet thanks
Hey Dave! Great stuff as always. I would really like to see some kind of demonstration of interference between audio and power cables.
Ive been on some horror show gigs as a blow in and had to chase down some serious problems with general audio/power cable management (rats nest behind amps/single distro for everything etc etc).
Maybe it could be an interesting video to explore?
Cheers lad!
I will ponder that
You tested just one analog line, do you think there could be variance with 3 to 4 analog lines simultaneously through the same CAT5 cable?
I did anotger video thatvis on the paid member side where I ran the signal down the cables then back and then down and then back for a total of 6 miles.also I show screen shots of smaart freq and kphase resp for the various lengths.
I also, though not posted, ran smart curves of 2400 meters of 1 channel vs 2400 m of supercat vs 2400 m of supercat sound cable using all 4 lines.
Length has an impact, # of channels shows no real differrences
@@DaveRat very cool, thanks for sharing!
Awesome! Never would have guessed
The cable did get duller at long lengths but usable for vocals and such
neat! on your trailer music--what was the lowest freq you went to?
20 hz
Dave Rat uses Behringer mixers!? what!?
I try and use cheap gear for tests rather than expensive stuff that many people dont have.
I do this for several reasons, one is I encorage people to diplicate tests whenever possible, also I want to show worst case and real world rather than shiny shit and rhen have people get worse resulta wjen using what they own
@@DaveRat that’s actually pretty smart... good call!
@@happypathway5418👍
@@happypathway5418 haha he is far from just a pretty face after all, 40+ years of professional experience you should see his resume!
@@JulienDeon I’ve known Dave Rats name for quite a while, definitely legendary status. Still like to poke fun at the giants when I can!!
awesome dave.., not sure if i 've missed an.episode, but are there any crosstalk or interference issues when running 2 or more signals in opposing directions down the same cat5se cable. i.e.. in a typical 2x2 send / return config.
Here is a vid I did on crosstalk on cat5e
ua-cam.com/video/gGgPDEz5sNU/v-deo.html
@@DaveRat thanks so much
My Dynaudio sub is going berserk on that sweep in the end. Lolz
Fun!
Lets not forget, not only 2.4km of cable, but also 50 XLR.
With no faults!
Yeah, all the interconnects
I was completely shocked at the fidelity. I thought it would be a nightmare at that length. Keep up the great content!
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Do you think than you will get the same result using regular mic cable?
I tested some audio snake cable and the results are similar.
@@DaveRat thx for the answer Dave love you vids!!
I'm new to the channel and just subbed. What is the test called at the end of the video. I was in my music studio and I was like wow.
Those are some tones that I put together for testing subwoofer systems at live concerts.
@@DaveRat Do you have a file for download?
Sounds pretty much like expected. The longer the cable run the more definition is lost. I'm wondering how much these lengths of cables reduced the phantom power voltage.
I wish I had measured. That said, the cable resistance is less than 300 ohms, maybe 200, and phantom power is run through 6800 ohm resistors when sent, so that vable resistance is less than 5% of the resistance ofbthe phantom circuit. Most resistors are +/- 10% or 5%, so the cable resistanve is less than the typical tolerance error
@@DaveRat Resistors in the phantom supply must be 1% or less to not worsen the CMRR of the input stages by impedance imbalance.
@@Sixta16 interesting, that could be something fun to test and see how much resistor precision impacts cmrr.
Thanks for doing this. Nice to also see a bit of the shop too.
Thank you Scott! The members only version of testing 6 miles of cable is now up!
@@DaveRat going to watch that one next.
Great video. What's the sweep at the end? Down to 20hz?
Yep
I freaking love your videos Dave! Thank you.
I do think a coiled wire has a better conductance or maybe even faster than a straight wire. The magnetic field created during the current flow it allows it to move faster (in this case) verses if we were actually in a show and the spools are empty. What do you think? And would it effect the current flow?
Hmmmm, not sure coils alter the speed. And the speed or electricity is so fast compared to the speed of sound, like over 800,000 times faster. So wire length is pretty much irrelevant regarding speed.
Electricity takes about 1 millionth of a second to travel down 1000 feet of wire.
@@DaveRat would the quality of sound be effected on a straight wire verses coiled? That’s what I meant. I had commented before I finished the video and then I heard you say “coiled cables tend to make things worse” which I think it’s not true.
Oh well only experimenting would define that. Thank Dave.
It depends. If the wires are separate, like power feeder, coils will make it much worse. If the there are well twisted pairs, the coils will make no real difference. If there are poorly twisted pairs, the coil can make it slightly worse. If there is no twisting, just pairs, and lots of coil, it can make it audibly worse
You are a true gift to the audio community!!
Thank you
Get to the point jfc
Japanese Fried Chicken?
@@DaveRat yes. I was waiting for tempura chicken.
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Great test - thank you for doing it.
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all the lengths sounded useable
For voice yes, for crisp he, not so much. I did another test up to 6 miles that I will post public at some point (currently is in the paid members side) that shows the freq roll off and phase response.
Simply brilliant 👏
Now I'll have to learn all about cat5e in audio.
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do I hear a high definition lost in 24 coils?
yes, at 2400 meters there is about 2.5 db of loss broadband, about 1.5 db down at 5K, and about 5 db down at 14K
Super flipping cool!
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NICE!!!
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Nice!
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I want to see the results of a frequency test. You have all the tools to do that.. you should also compare that to regular twisted pair snake cable.
I did another vid testing up to 6 miles of cable and show the smaart reap and phase curves. I have been posting the more tech versions ofbvids on the paid member side of my youtube channel.
The general public aeems to prefer the simple stuff and the $4.99 a month is a substantial enough of a hurdle that it filters out a lot of the internet noise
@@DaveRat I enjoy how you break it all down. One day when I can work again I will happily subscribe to your channel. Soon you will need to start growing your "Wizard beard" All the great mentors in our business have them.
@@bfordcole ha! Will pinder the beard
Great video. 🙂👍❤
Thank you Kevin!
You win!
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So fun!
Yay, playing with the toys we make!