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Ethercon snakes

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checht:
At a show yesterday a friend was running a SBD feed back to where we had our stands, using a 200' cat6 cable and xlr breakout boxes on each end. He used Lyx boxes, seems like there's quite a few manufacturers though.

What's the consensus on this type of system compared to running a traditional snake?

If the quality is there, the weight advantage seems pretty awesome...

TIA

H₂O:
I don't think these setups will work with use standard Ethernet cat6 RJ45 cables as there is no ground in the cable or on the connector.   


You would need to use cat6 shielded connectors/cable and possible ethercon connectors and/or ethercon spec'd cable.


I would think professionally installed sound systems would us Ethercon for audio snakes tough

Gutbucket:
Joining discussion.  I've been curious about these for a while. A number of years ago I stopped by Jon of Naiant Studio's place when he was living in Kill Devil Hills on the NC outer banks, and at the time he was building a production run of the balun boxes needed at each end for another audio manufacturer.  It reduced the need for four separate mic cables down to one thin, compact, lightweight wire.

Not sure about the CAT 5/6 ground issue.  It may uses one (or several) of the conductors as ground, but even if that works, use of shielded Ethercon would be preferable.

Among others, I know Dave Rat's company sells them (not who Jon was building them for AFAIK).  Was looking at the web page for them last year, but went no further than that. 

A few more questions for the thread:
Seems like each cable carries 4 balanced lines.  Is that the max channel count for one connection?  Would 8 channels require two cables?

What about transmission of unbalanced signals?  If that works can channel count per cable be increased?  If so by how much?

Colin Liston:
Just marking this thread as well. But these boxes look pretty cool. Seems awfully convenient.

https://www.lyxpro.com/products/lyxpro-4-channel-xlr-male-and-female-to-rj45-ethercon

Ronmac:
I would recommend CAT 6A or CAT 7 for this application, especially if used for phantom supplied mic lines, as it has shielded pairs as well as an overall shielded jacket. Because of the extra shielding these types are a bit stiffer and harder to terminate, so buying terminated cable off the rack is best, unless you have a good set of tools for the job.

For audio work we don't need to be concerned about higher bandwidth specs, but proper shielding and grounding are extremely important.

Good site here for specs and construction materials: https://www.truecable.com/blogs/cable-academy/know-your-cable-cat7-ethernet#:~:text=Cat7%20and%20Cat8%20cable%20are,is%20foil%20shielded%20as%20well.

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