Long distance digital run (coax)

[eRiCdWoNg]

Im tryin to link my DJ system to my house system for a party I'm gonna throw. Anyway, I thought about a few ways including using the computer and the LAN and came up with this one Computer guys help needed- piping audio thru network.... . However after doing it and having a 8 second delay I realized this wasnt going to happen. I thought about running lines but then that would be an awefully long run for an unbalanced signal (the PA system is balanced, the home system is not). Not to mention the cost of running 2 line level cords that far. So.... I came up with this: what if I bought this:

http://www.radioshack.com/product.as...t%5Fid=15-1242

fed the signal from one room in digital form, thru coax cable (cheap) into another room, then have it DAC'd in the other room. It will run thru a coax to opti converter as well. So I shouldnt have ground loop issues. Before I go out and start doing this I'd like to hear any thoughts. This should be the highest quality, non delayed sound I can get (at the lowest price) if Im thinking right. Thanks.

[tiroth]

Should work fine. The ADC is hardly hifi but will likely be acceptable for the use. If your source is computer then much better would be to get a cheap soundcard that has a digital output and just use that directly.

I have had no problems in the past with 50' S/PDIF runs. YMMV.

[eRiCdWoNg]

Yea Im not expectin that ADC to be super hifi, but this party the average age of the people there is 18-22. Nobodys gonna even care, Im not sure why I'm goin thru all this effort but I'm 22 and its my party but I'm real picky about my audio

[officeboy]

It might not be hi-fi. But I had dancing and a dj station setup in my basement, and a lounge area upstairs by the bar. I wanted to have music upstairs, and down. Running a cable up the stairs and snaking around the floor didn't seem safe.

So I took some cat5 separated the color's and whites (like cat5 speaker wire but just a single cat5 wire). Soldered it up to some RCA jacks I had, (I only ran mono) then plugged the cat5 into my network patch panel in the basement, and jumpered that to the proper upstairs cat5 jack, had the same type connecter up there, plugged that into the input, and it actually sounded pretty good, much better then I would have expected with 100+ feet of unshielded RCA type signal.
One thing to watch out for, make sure you’re network wiring standard doesn’t switch from a crossover type to a straight through type.

[eRiCdWoNg]

Hmm... thats another idea, I might not even have to use coax cable. If I can find some spare cat5 or other cable layin around I might just put those to use. And the + with digital is only 1 wire is needed for stereo sound and interference hopefully wont be too much an issue....

[Da5id4Vz]

You could use the cat 5 cable to run balanced +4 from the PA to the home system. Use a couple split just use a one pair of the cable for each XLR. A 15 dB T-pad will drop the level enough to feed the unbalanced hi-fi inputs without overloading them.

If you’re worried about ground loops run over to Chuck Levens Music and pick up a pair of direct boxes with ground lift switches. If you don’t need think you’ll need them afterwards, return them.

Calculator for T and H pads:

http://www.csgnetwork.com/decibelattenuatecalc.html