Audio over Cat5 ???

Shouldn't really be a problem unless you are pumping lots of watts ... there will always be some loss due to the resistance of the cable. However, for that short a run, at speaker level and impedance (8 ohms), the loss will be very small. You could double up pairs, i.e. 2 pairs for each speaker, to even have less loss.

snipped-for-privacy@atfar.com (Ray) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@anonymous.poster:

Easiest solution would be to run line level audio via Cat 5. Have a second amp on the other end of the run to power the speakers.

I heard you could get upto 5 - 10W via Cat 5 with proprietary Cat5 audio systems, but I don't know if it's safe for regular home equipment to do so.

Art Todesco wrote in news:svKdneprTut8Jf snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

True, but don't amplifers pump out 100W per channel these days? So if someone cranks up the amp by accident... it might fry the wires (or the amp!).

A SS amp's power capability is limited by resistance in the speaker wiring -- more resistance, less power. You might wind up with less volume than you wanted, but I don't think there'd be any other problem. Since the OP said he was going to put a volume control in those wires, he's already adding more resistance than the wires are likely to have.

Isaac

A 100 W amp is running at about 3W for basic listening, and maybe 25W peak for some pretty loud stuff. Of course, turning it up all the way is going to cause trouble, but for a basic system Cat5 would be "OK" for speakers. I think Art is right. Even then, you could double up on the Cat 5, and give four conductors for ground and signal for both L and R. (you have lots of extra UTP, right?)

As for line-level, A-Bus does that for unspecified distances. I dug around a lot of places looking for details about this, including here, and best I can tell is that line-level audio is good for 50-100 feet on UTP Cat5. Any longer than that and you really need to convert the signal to balanced with baluns. Then, you can go a thousand feet or more.

-John O