Cat 5/6 multicore sources ?

A

andrew gissing

Sophomore
Jan 11, 2011
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Perth Western Australia
www.stylusra.com.au
Hi,

This thread http://soundforums.net/varsity/5747-analog-digital-return-snake-print.html was about cat 5 and some aes pairs; there are also some references to power bundled with the cable.

I'm looking for 3 or 4 cat 5's in the one outer jacket. I'm hoping to keep the outer diameter as small as possible; keep weight down (well, they are all probably about the same), and be flexible for rolling up gig after gig.

I plan on making 2 cables one 100m (300ft ?) and the other 50m (150ft?) - use the shorter one for most gigs, longer for those that need it.

I was also going to go to an electrical friend of mine and get 300m of the standard blue cable and make a backup cable - tape the cores together. This isn't going to look good and isn't going to be road ready but i'll keep it in the truck in case of emergency.

Anyway, so for multicore cat 5 i've found the gepco product (probably the one in the other thread) - Gepco® Brand -- Audio and Video Cable Products --

I believe that the following companies also make this product but I can't find it on their websites:

Belden
Mogami
Sommer
Link
Whirlwind

Has anyone got any links to product data or any other manufacturers I should check out ? The next part will be trying to source it in Oz or buy direct from US/Europe

I'm also partial to a cable already pre-terminated with neutrik ethercon connectors.


Andrew
 
Re: Cat 5/6 multicore sources ?

Andrew, I got some of the Gepco power/signal cable a few months back. I'm very happy with the quality of it.
The one I'm looking at now is the PA2c, 1x power/2x cat5/2xshielded balanced pair. This would give me power, ethernet, ethersound, dmx and comms in one cable.
I got mine from Melbourne, I thought the shipping was reasonable to Adelaide.
FWIW, don't even consider using Percon!

Cheers,
Darren
 
Re: Cat 5/6 multicore sources ?

andrew gissing said:
I plan on making 2 cables one 100m (300ft ?) and the other 50m (150ft?) - use the shorter one for most gigs, longer for those that need it.
Click to expand...

100m is too long if you're running Ethernet. Ethernet only allows for 100m *total*, so I'd suggest dropping down to 90m or so to allow for the length of patch cables in your racks.
 
Re: Cat 5/6 multicore sources ?

Hi,

it's for AES50 and 100m ok - will be from IO box to console. But thanks for the thought.

Darren - thanks, i've made contact and got a price in AUD.

Chris, TMB have made contact and I hope to hear from them by morning (evening down here..)

Daniel - thanks, I think i'll contact Sommer; their spec sheet is a little hard to read.

I've also found van-damme but damn! (pun intended) expensive !


Andrew
 
Re: Cat 5/6 multicore sources ?

I've got a price in pounds; i'm hoping to get a USD price on this product - should be cheaper and also, oz dollar fares better on the USD than pound.

The AES50 spec is basically 24ch at 96 K in both directions per cable. However that doesn't mean you can get 48ch in one direction. I've also discovered that midas spread the control information across multiple cables. At a recent gig I only needed 22ch from stage and 9 outputs so I ran one cable and everything was working.. except.. mic pre levels would not change. Dial it on the console but nothing changed at all. Audio was still passing though.

Install second cable and hey presto, works.

That was just a further prompt for me to get a multicore cable.

- forgot to add: AES50 at 48K for behringer means 48ch in each direction; I don't know about control info though...

andrew
 
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