Re: Using CAT 6 for speakers in a patch panel

["John O" <johno@!noSPAM!heathkit.com>]

> I have wired my newly built house with cat 6 cable; several in each
> main room for AV and data. However, I was reading on one of these
> forums some months ago that cat5 or 6 could be used, fairly
> succesfully, as speaker wire - quality isn't too much of an issue, as
> long as it sounds ok. So, I decided to also mount Cat6 sockets on the
> walls ready to install speakers to. I've joined my cat cabling all to
> a central patch panel in my garage and would like to be able to have
> any device playing on speakers in any room.
>
> My Dilemma
>
> Now I'm trying to send a basic sound signal down them and I get no
> joy, (I've played about swapping wires). Am I doing something wrong,
> is there a wiring technique you should use for getting sound over
> cat5/6? Can sound run from one device to another via a patch panel? Is
> it just that I'm not kicking out enough power at one end?
>
> Can anyone help?

<that was a wierdly formatted message....Chinese Encoding? WTF? >

Anyway.
Wire is wire is wire, at some level. Speaker-level audio will go from place
to place on Cat 5 with no trouble as long as you don't need big sound.

On the other hand, the number of speakers you place on the output of an amp
IS a big deal, and you must know how you're doing that. I suspect you need
to look at basic series/parallel circuits, AKA Ohm's Law. Here's a great
place to start:
http://www.termpro.com/articles/spkrz.html

If that's interesting, then go here:
http://www.sea.siemens.com/step/default.html

Good Luck!

-John O