AES over Cat5e?

[scott wurcer]

Originally posted by janneman
Hi,

I'm working on a new project that involves sending power, control and AES audio over cabling.
I was wondering if I could use Cat5e cable for that? I'd be looking at max 10m (30ft).
The characteristic impedance is 100 ohms, which could be padded for AES. The cable has very low xtalk and loss anyway, so presumably jitter wouldn't be that bad either.

Does anybody have any experience with that?

Thanks for your inputs,

Jan Didden

Jan, people are doing HDMI over 30m of Cat5

[eclectic2k]

I'd imagine AES over cat5 would not be much issue at all even without a matching series termination or "padding, it would probably make it 10m.

as for power - ethernet (PoE) can shove almost 30watts down two pairs these days.
http://www.poweroverethernet.com/art...article_id=463

you do need to account for loss, but the wires can handle it. The old 802.3af spec is 15.4w at the delivery end, for max 13w at the receiving end of 100m of cable. voltage is ~48v.

best bet is to shove higher voltage at lower current - and so less IR drop. IIRC, - don't quote me though - anything below 60v is considered low voltage & non-lethal... (I'm not touching it though)

the IEEE geeks fight over this stuff tooth and nail - power guys, cable guys, and ethernet guys. The spec is such that cable heating from the IR drop won't significantly impact cable performance even when bundled in a large batch of cat5 cables...

[eclectic2k]

Originally posted by scott wurcer

Jan, people are doing HDMI over 30m of Cat5

yeah, and it's amazing that HDMI works at all

[janneman]

Originally posted by HK26147
This might be appropriate to your scenario:
http://www.hescs.com/katalogen/91.htm

BTW: I have enjoyed your many contribution to audio, especially in the pages of AA, & more recently AudioXpress

Syd

OK, thanks, thanks and thanks everyone

I think I'll build a small box with XLR-to-Cat5 and vice versa and give it a listen.

Jan Didden