I use these for our gigs and at my rehearsal rooms. We have a 5 piece, so I run a 4 channel stage box to each musician. I can backhaul everything over 5 simple cables. Each musician only needs some short XLR cables to patch their audio in. Nice and slick.

We love to use them for DJs on festivals. Stereo Out into 2 channels. 1 channel for the Cue/Monitor Out from the Pioneer Desk itself and one with reversed adapter as output for the onstage monitor.

I have been using them on drum kits for several years with no issues. They are the bomb!

Thank you! Great video!

Love these. Used them on a number of gigs, where we've put a number of these at different points around the stage for musicians/vocalists to plug into. Saves having lots of cables running across the stage to a larger stage box. Keeps it clean and we can run the cat5 around the edge of the stage

Another nice thing is the four channels are isolated and don't have to be the same kind of signal. For example - you could send a couple of mic signals through it AND some DMX data. It all works fine. Agree that a nice variation would be 2x male and 2x female on each end.

12:40 A combo jack would be a good variation too. Or a modular system where the sockets can be swapped out individually with a female/male/combojacks. Indeed, it will be a very specific design that's not been done yet.

Good video and mention of needing audio to go the other direction. A xlr gender changer barrel does the job.

I used a similar setup in the living room once to run 5.1 surround while having the computer/console beside the couch. I installed a rj45 jack and ran cat5 through the wall into the ceiling into a breakout box rj45-rca(f). It worked very well and allowed a clean install as there were no visible cables or gear on the entertainment wall besides the TV.

I've just bought 3 of these for my music room (2 female & 1 male). I've spent hours today searching for whether the transmission between boxes truly is analogue or if it's digitzed first. So a massive thanks for clearing up that basic point! I intend to use mine initially for my pedal board. It has tuners & effects units on it for guitar and bass as well as a drum machine. It has a veritable rat's nest of XLRs and other audio cables emerging from it for connecting to the desk as well as for my own monitoring. I rarely take it gigging these days because of the hassle of disconnecting and reconnecting all the cables. I'm going to put the male on the pedalboard. This will allow me to get rid of a lot of the rat's nest and just carry a female unit (plus a decent network cable) when I go gigging. And with the transmission being purely analogue it also gives me the option of putting the drum machine elsewhere and using one of the ports to trigger it remotely using the footswitch on the pedalboard. Thanks again for clear explanation.

These come to the market on here about three years ago, and I got myself a quite good set of two boxes (4x XLR male/4x XLR female) for my little workshop, cause it was cheaper to buy than to build. Mine also have a second RJ45 on the other side, so you can daisychain these for a passiv split or for exampe using channel 1 and 2 on the first and channel 3 and 4 on the second box. But I still use Ethernet cables for a bunch of signal for more than ten years now. Serial stuff, power, sensors, and also audio. I built myself some of these with 1/4" TRS jacks more then ten years ago, cause it's a great way to run signals between my guitar corner and my workbench over a single ethernet cable. Also built a insert looper box some years ago which carry send, return, switching and status LED over on RJ45 connection. So I can switch from guitar corner or workbench and also seeing the state of the looper on both places. You also can use these boxes to run audio over existing CAT.5 runs in a building. All you need is a direct connection, which is usually easy to made with just a ethernet cable connecting two ports on a patch panel in the network room directly. I used it once in a building to run audio for some delay line to an second higher audience area where only power and Ethernet have been available. We just patched a ethernet port on the FOH area with one on the audience area and used the boxes to run the audio signal up there.

I’m using Cat7 analog connections with a Cranborne system in my home studio setup. The signal doesn’t have to travel far, but I am using the 50’ cables that came with the N8 bundle to carry two condenser mic sends carrying 48v phantom power and two audio return channels from my monitor station. I have to say beside eliminating 4 xlr cables, the superior shielding of the Cat7 cable cleaned up 60 cycle hums I had been plagued with when using xlr connections. I definitely intend to use more Cat7 connections in and around my studio and I am very pleased with using it in place of xlr cables where I can.

I am now in another church setting and bought a different brand of them via Amazon this week. I have opened them up and they use XLR connectors soldered directly onto the PCB. This makes swapping the connectors over much more difficult as the holes on the Female connector sit in a different location than the Male connector. So my advice is, if you are planning on doing a modification to these to switch one or more end points, go for the SSSnake ones, as otherwise you may find your can't do it easily if at all. I am sure the units I bought are fine if you just want a drop snake you don't want to mod. The ones I bought are these: Copkim 2 Pack 4 Channel 3 Pin Multi Network XLR Cable.

In a church setting I used these to send wired in-ears to singers and musicians worked a treat.

Important addition: another big reason (maybe the most important) to use shielded CAT cables: without the shield this system doesn't work at all. 😅 The shield is being used as (combined) ground wire for the 4 XLRs.

I built a couple of these audio over analog cat 5 cable distributors for my church setup. I think it would be useful to add a DIP switch or selector to the design that would allow the user to distribute on all four outputs and disable the other three. Vice versa, 4 input to one selected output. Like mixer or a splitter. I think it will still be a passive connection.

My brother uses these for wireless guitar rigs on tour. They have two in and two out for stereo guitar rigs.

I planned on building a snake with cat 5, but the boxes make more sense for adaptability. Plus I can make the boxes in my garage or basement with whatever plugs necessary for my rig. Splitting the signal for analog monitor mixes wouldn't be all that tough either. Cat 5 is cheaper and easier to replace than mic cables. I might see some signal loss on my 30 year old mixer, but not on my new one. The i/o sensitivity and modern filters on modern mixers make analog signal losses minimal.

I studied to become an Audio-Engineer in 2001 and we've used CAT5 and 6 cables for analog audio a lot. In high-end Studios, on sets, for experiments ... pretty much anywhere. The cables where much cheaper and readily available straight from a 50m or 100m roll. It never stroke me as "odd" to be honest... It's high quality cables with very little loss for what they are. We didn't have fancy XLR-RJ45 adapters back then though :) which to be honest strikes me at the only "weak point". directly into a solid good quality XLR feels better to me.

I haven’t set everything up yet, but in theory it should work: I am the percussion director for a marching band. In the marching arts it’s ubiquitous to have a front ensemble of marimbas, vibraphones, etc that are all mic’d. A common way to coordinate this for setting up in under 5 minutes, performing, and breaking down in 2 (as per the time limit regulations in Texas), is by running DB25 snakes from the board, to your center-most instruments, using a DB25-XLR breakout, sending 1 or 2 to that instrument, and running the extra XLRs down the frame of the instrument, and “daisy chaining,” so to speak, to the next instrument. This method requires either excess XLR that hangs off the end of an instrument so that it can reach the next instrument in the chain, or what I have done in the past, a 3rd intermediate bundle of XLRs in between the instruments. I’ve made XLR snakes with 6 channels in one cable. It’s nice to only have one cable in between, but that’s still up to 12 connections that must be made repeatedly day after day. My solution to that this coming up season is to put these XLR-CAT5 boxes on both ends of each instrument, and running a singular 5 foot ethercon cable between. It should be less stressful overall. Fingers crossed.

Radial Catapult and Whirlwind Catdusa have four male XLRs paralleled with four female XLRs in one box.

I built 4 of these with a male and female XLR on each channel. Basically they become a splitter when we've played festival situations.

Nice for live room use They handle 48 volt So the vox booths get one box for 2 mic positions and a headphone amp for talent to self adjust I’m surprised there are not more cat connectors on newer gear or patch bays yet I think Henery Engineering has a male/female xlr, trs and rca for EtherCON

I make my own boxes ...even a reel of cat5 using an old mains extension lead reel with XLRs mounted on it and a neutrik plug on the other end

Hello sir can i run a audio signal from mixer too powered speaker with that? like hte main output

I think you're wrong about the cable shielding. There can't be any interference in the XLR signal; the interference is canceled out in the sum of the signals. In fact, a shielded cable is necessary because it uses it as ground. If it's not shielded, only 3 pairs can be used; one will be used as GND.

I've used these with a SOLO/Duo acts on my stage... '4 channels' is Perfect for 2 vocals and 2 Acoustic guitars. I'm building a 3IN/1OUT for a friend....Guitar to Amp(wireless receiver on Pedal Board), Vox1/Vox2 to FOH, Monitor Return FROM FOH to Powered Monitor that 2 people share..... Drop some AC for Power and your good to go...

Hello!! I don't understand the wiring diagram🙃🥲🥲🥲? Where is the shield/ground? on the chassis

Hi, I'm questionning about the feasability of sending audio from xlr to rj45, then pass it through 'prise cpl' (in french, I dont know the english trad), then go back to xlr on the other side. To you, is it possible ?

The shield is also the shared ground. They use the each pair in the cat5 cable for high, and low, while sharing ground on the sheild

Great info. So how does this differ from say a Behringer S16/S32 carrying multiple bi-directional signals over a single Cat5 cable?

Cranborne Audio makes a series of product you might find interesting (N8, N22, etc.) based on their C.A.S.T. system. They have boxes with both Ins and Outs.

If we have a digital io box on stage would these make sense to use to connect to that stage box even if they are analog? Trying to find a solution that doesn't require a bunch of mic cables running back to the io box.

Great video! I’ve got 2 questions: 1) Does it make sense to use these boxes in a 30m2 studio? 2) I use Canare cables in my studio. What brand for Cat5 cable should be used to keep the consistent signal quality?

Hi man, please show us how you re soldered and flipped them ?

Whirlwind has a 4 male /4 female on the same box configuration.

Can these be used with other brands?

A useful, informative video. Thank you (but I hate the side camera technique; it detracts from the narrative!). I've made my own, and instead of using XLRs, I've used stereo 1/4 inch. That way, each I/O is gender neutral, then I've provided a selection of tails - 1/4 inch to XLR male and female. That gives the best of all worlds.

Please cover the brand of shampoo you use.

I'm actively looking for a variant like the one you mentioned, where I can have two-way analog audio using one single cat5. 2+2 would be perfect, but I can't find any such variant of any brand. Are you sure there's no electrical reason for this? I have no use for these if I'm not certain that it will actually work after resoldering them.

Is phantom power carried by the shielding?

Is it possible to use with an Midas 18 rack mixer for monitoring? Those mixers have only 6 aux, so it would be really helpful to use that way.

13:10 Instead of soldering, if you look back on 8:26 it looks like each group of two XLR connectors are going to a single connector (two connectors total). No soldering required, just unplug one set and move to the other box. I could be wrong, but it looks like it's split to me.

Hi there my name is joe i have a presonus studiolive 24 4 2AI console how would i hook these up

Can these be used with an analog mixer to send signal direct to a ethernet port on my Mac/Logic Pro?

What software do these things use?

I truly am curious how much farther you can send the signal. I can understand 100m was always said when it came to data. But with cat5,6,7 with its much higher bandwidth I’d bet you could double it without much degradation. In a pinch. I wonder if anyone has done any scope testing on that.

One thing - phantom power ready? Ethernet cable is mighty thin to carry any sort of current so no real limitations on that. Ethernet does POE but the switch will protect against over current but mixers aren’t that smart.

CAT5,6 etc cable is meant for fixed installation and doesn’t take kindly to being packed and unpacked. Also RJ45 plugs are rather delicate and wouldn’t be reliable on the road. If it’s a fixed installation for a venue Studio then it would be ok. On the road it would be a disaster. The cable with hardwired XLR plugs would be a better option

I used mine for a simple drum snake. But I found out the phantom power did not work. So that was a bit of a drawback for that usage.

Can this be plugged into a network switch for Dante?

I want it in 15- 20 channels

Great video. I was reading through your comments and @Dave Rat just did a video using over 1-5 miles of Cat5e cable, test dynamic and condenser mics. There was very little difference on the volume dropping for the dynamics and just about 0 volume drop-age using condensers. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nJaefq5lmLXJkac.html

Hay where can I get them

My band Sutalkerah use one get from cab sims on bass guitar pedal guitar player pedal as don't use amps and backing vocals and thing getting more make cat 6 big stage box for my drum kit

How many channel does this analog stage box have ?

and CAT cables are much more affordable than audio cables.

VENOM-X Ethernet

CAT5e! PLEASE LEARN THE DIFFERENCE!!!!!! Cat5 will only get up to 100 Mbps up and down. It is CAT5e that will get you 1 Gbps which is 1 Gigabit (1000 Mbps) I constantly see AV people making this huge mistake.

Check out ‘Wallcats’ by Soundtools, been checking them for a while