Cat5e wiring for whole house audio

donnieaudio

New Member
Hello, My house is completely hard wired with cat5e networking cable (1 port every room including basement and attic) all the wiring terminates at a hub in the basement. I do not use the hub or cat5e because of the wireless networking that I have.

I was wondering if I could use the cat5e wiring to install a whole house audio system and send digital audio to each room. I guess each room would need a volume control and an amplifier to send to the audio to the speakers.

I also would like to know if each room could play different music from other rooms.

It looks like there may be systems out there that do this but I am new to this and a bit lost. Any help in finding a system or even if this is possible would be a great help.

Thanks, Don
 
I was wondering if I could use the cat5e wiring to install a whole house audio system and send digital audio to each room.
First step would be to include it in your network. Think of it as another access point for your wireless.

II guess each room would need a volume control and an amplifier to send to the audio to the speakers..I also would like to know if each room could play different music from other rooms.
Because this is digital data, you cannot simply install an attenuator as you would with an analog speaker wire. No more than you can with your current wireless. You will need a digital player in each room in order to do that. It could be an inexpensive Raspberry Pi player, Sonos, Apple Play, etc. Finally, you will need to decide where to host the music itself whether stored locally on each player on an SD card or centrally located (as I do) on a computer attached to the network.
 
For what it's worth in the thought process....

You can 100% successfully send AES audio over twisted pair like Cat 5. I don't immediately know of a consumer product to help do this as economically as possible. But most don't know of this ability, so I thought I'd mention it.

You can also very successfully send balanced audio over Cat very well to. You can pick up balanced distribution amps for pretty cheap on eBay I'm sure and that would allow driving a single selected source to all wired up sends. Just know you need to use as balanced into the receive end to avoid problems.

Both ways can use your existing built in wiring structure. Now you just have to figure out what to do that's affordable.

EV3
 
I think it would be easier to have a server located at the cat5e hub location or run another cat5e from the server to the hub location and just send out analog audio to each desired location from there. All the point of use jacks can be switched out to standard RCA jacks with the 110 punchdown on the back. Then you'd have stereo analog audio ready to be amped through a local system.
 
Physically that'd work. Electrically not so good. Try and do that and it'll probably be a disaster.

Unbalanced audio will be very noisy and have big issues. Try and drive multiple locations through long lines with consumer equipment and it'll be heavily loaded.

Start with a plan that'll have a good chance of working.

EV3
 
Physically that'd work. Electrically not so good. Try and do that and it'll probably be a disaster.

Unbalanced audio will be very noisy and have big issues. Try and drive multiple locations through long lines with consumer equipment and it'll be heavily loaded.

Start with a plan that'll have a good chance of working.

EV3

Assuming you are referring to my post, I have to say that in my previous home (5500sq`) with an office / shop (2400sq`) which was 250+` from the house, I had a network set up exactly as I have described above, all run with cat5e supplying my: 1 theater/billiard room system, 2 family room system, 3 kitchen/dinning rm/garage system, 4 master bed/master bath system, 5 office system, 6 shop system. At each location I could play any component that I had at the time hooked up to that particular system and play off the main server through the aux input except my kitchen/dinning/garage zone which ran off a pa amp straight off the server and had volume controls at each of the 3 locations. Most always had every zone running 24-7 with multiple zones sucking off the server feed simultaneously and rarely ever had any issues. I lived there 14 years and the majority of the described system existed for at least 12 of those years.
 
I put in a few runs of Cat5 terminated with Keystone RCA jacks having 110 punchdowns. I only use them for subwoofer duty and they're OK. One run is a bit noisy and I don't use the sub much. In the future I'll try out some balanced line drivers to carry the signal over the Cat5. audiocontrol units usually show up pretty cheap on eBay.
 
Back in the old days we set up some line amplifiers, either tube or solid state with repeat coils at the hub and at the origination point to drive the hub and then send balanced 600 ohm line level signals via telco phone wire pairs to all the terminating transformers that fed various systems at different locations. If Ma Bell could give us a 40 to 16,000 loop with 65 db guaranteed signal to noise with less than .5 % distortion for distances all across town I imagine doing it in a home system confined to an acre was duck soup.

I did a system in Hobbs, NM that way in the late 60's. Another one using SS devices in 1970 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Another using buffer amps and no transformers in 1976 in San Miguel Allende, Mexico. In our area we installed a few systems using Mcintosh remote system with control panels and separate amps for each room.

The system in Honduras had a Mac system in each desired area with its own tuner/pre amp and separate amp in each remote area. There was a cassette player by Nakamichi for each system. The main system had two turntables, three reel to reels, and Nakamichi cassettes. Urei pre-preamps brought the TT signal to line level, and Urei LA-4's drove separate lines throughout the house, that fed the remote systems. Each area selected either its cassette or tuner and then either, turntable A, Reel to reel A, or the Master Cassette from main system. There was a Crown auto reversing reel to reel 1/4 trk 2trk/ 1/2 trk deck using a modified C-20 Mac preamp tape head inputs. Those were the fun days. Always a challenge. The big issue was noise free sound with out ground loops.

Today my system is a mess. A Home theatre system that can also be a dedicated Stereo system sharing amps, crossovers, and EQ's. Apple TV's feeding the display another feeding the hifi that can be linked to two different computers and tablets. A head phone system wired and wireless, and remote speakers connected to the hifi and home theatre systems. Each area of the remote system has its own amps, but no remote volume controls and no step down transformers.
 
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Understand the Cat5 is in place, but think it would be easier and probably cheaper to get wireless devices at each location such as Chromecast audio connected to powered speakers or passive speakers with separate amplification. The CC audio devices can be grouped to play together.
 
I, FWIW ran (5) non shielded Belden brand Media twist Cat 5+ lines to five rooms in my house for all my distribution of 1 analog stereo line level audio from my living room A/V rack.. (3) analog video signal sends(SVGA computer display, S-Video, RGB & 1 HDMI.. With the exception of the HDMI & SVGA each requiring active digital trickery ("black boxes") to feed their signals through a single Cat 5 cable, instead of 2 cables each with passive baluns.. All other video feeds and audio feeds use SIGNAL SPECIFIC passive RCA jacks to RJ 45 baluns at each end of the link.. "Energy Transformation Systems" for all my analog + (1) S/PDIF passive baluns.. And "Atlona" for my (2) video digital single Cat cable feeds active black box trickery.. All signal feeds work perfectly.. Zero audio hum/noise, and zero hum bars or other display anomalies on 5 different HD flat screen TVs. no matter the input selected No ground loops though all gear that their connected to is grounded at source and receiving ends.. Both companies IMHO/IME provide excellent products and solutions for all types of digital and analog Cat 5/6/7 cable signal feed and distribution.. It wasn`t inexpensive for feeding 5 rooms and a $ 25,000.00 Sony 4K projector, but all has worked flawlessly for almost 5 years and I`m very pleased with their performance.. I thought my experience might be helpful in regards to the OP`s quest.. Good luck with whatever method you choose donnieaudio. Regards, OKB
 
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