|
New member Username: Blacknight582Tx Post Number: 1 Registered: Dec-04 | So I live in what is known as a rich brat town, and suffice to say alot of my friends live in huge houses that cost well more than 10 of mine put together. Where I'm going with this however is now we are adding onto our house (big family needs more room) and so we decided to indulge in putting a theater in our home. so in wiring I checked some of these huge houses that my friends have, and from the ground, the cabling coming out of these 1.4 million dollar homes looks like CAT-5e!?!?!?????? what?!?- I mean I'd heard of that before but I didn't know that it was really widely used; apparently. Doing some talking however to some of my audio friends, they say it's not a good idea because the guage of CAT-5 is well Not big at all, so thus it heats up under high-amp situations. and this Onkyo receiver pushes alot of amps.... The concept seems reasonable.. Cat-5 is a wide bandwidth twisted sheild cable, so I don't see how you'd lose any signal and since I have over 1000 ft. of it I'd like to utilize it if I can. Unless it would be overly worth my money and effort to re-run all my cables ( not THAT hard but still a pain) and put in monster?- It's not what would be better, I don't guess but my question is is there any danger in that? or correct me if I'm wrong about signal degregation. Thx |
|
Lester Unregistered guest | Cat 5e in a whole house audio system is used for keypads and IR control. It's not used for speaker feeds. For speakers, use speaker wire. |
|
New member Username: Blacknight582Tx Post Number: 4 Registered: Dec-04 | no no no no... I read the post, go over to his house, and look. They were going into klipsche speakers hanging about 20 feet over head, with 3 twisted pair wrapped around wire hanging out.. and 1 twisted pair (making 4 twisted pair ie. CAT-5) going into the speaker itself.. I mean it sounds amazing.. but i just wanna know if it's worth my effort, or if it's dangerous or if it's my imagination, but I don't know of any other 4 twisted pair wiring (apart from Cat-6 which would still be "data") than data wire. |
|
Lester Unregistered guest | So the speakers are being fed with one pair of 24AWG data wire? Not even using all four pairs? Let me assure you... this is NOT the way it's done. My gues is, who ever wired the house was not an audio guy. Probably an electrician running the phone lines and was asked to put in some speaker runs while he was there. So he has plenty of Cat-5. And instead of getting the correct type of wire, he runs what he's got. Bottom line... the wiring guy didn't know any better. That being said... Will it work? Apparently. Will there be signal loss? Yes Is it dangerous? I don't know. It may affect the amp in some way. If you're wiring for speakers, why not run the proper wire. If you have to use Cat-5, at least use all four pairs. |
|
Gold Member Username: Project6Post Number: 2184 Registered: Dec-03 | check this regarding CAT 5 cables http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/setup/interconnects/DIYSpeakerCablesp1.html |