hello I'm Dave Rat and I want to show you something really cool if you're into
sound nerdy stuff and are curious about cables running long cables loss of
signal and long cables the difference in sound and running analog over data cables
using the Cat products from SoundTools we get questions about is it okay to run
analog over data cables data cables are designed for data and audio cables
design for audio is that going to have a negative ramification and logic would
say that data cables are designed to go up to 100 kilohertz megahertz 10
megahertz very high frequency reproduction audio cables are designed
for 20 to 20 K and when running extremely long lengths we start to reach
the limits and the capabilities of audio cables and that's where data cables
which are designed to carry much higher frequencies over long distances should
theoretically have some advantages I figured out a really cool way to
demonstrate this and not only so that we can see it electronically which we can
on analysis equipment but actually hear the difference between the two different
cable types and what I've done is I've built a little box actually then build
the box I modified a SoundTools CatBox and it's a it has an input here that is
being driven by this little Ivie pink noise generator and then the first two
XLRs one's an output which is driving into one of the twelve lines of this
whirlwind w1 multi-core audio standard audio snake that we use for our drive
snakes when we used more analog stuff for utilitarian purposes and channel one
returns from that same w1 cable into the second XLR of this little box
the third XLR this box is sending currently to channel one of this
CatTails which is in going into also 100 meters but this is a 4 channel SoundTools
Supercat cable and it's returning into channel 4 or the 4th XLR of this
now this is an a/b switcher where when this little toggle switches up it
selects the first pair and will let us listen to the w1 when the toggle switch is down
it selects the second pair and lets us listen to the Supercat cable now this
box has got an output on it as well and this output is driving into this
little mixing board which is hooked up to this speaker that you may or may not
be able to see in the video and it's an Infiniti home hi-fi speaker the
microphone is right here in front little stereo mic you should hear come out of
your left ear and the it's also running to a Y adapter which is hitting an
analyze over there which you can't see but I can see an indicator of the
frequency response and the way this box is wired is such that it monitors pin 2
of the send down the cable and also looks at pin 2 of the return coming back
from the cable so that pin 2 on the on the out and pin 2 on the return are
then run to this output connector so the output is basically looking before and
after and those are run pin 2's go to pin 2. pin 2 of the return is going to
pin three of the output not unlike if we were to put a meter across if we wanted
to measure the voltage drop of pin two of the XLR and I could have done pin 3
but pin 2 of the XLR we would put a meter probe on pin 2 of the send and
metered probe on pin 2 of the return and we could measure the voltage drop across
the cable same thing as if we measured the voltage drop across a resistor or
any other electrical electronic device and but instead of putting a meter
attached to the beginning and end of the cable on the same wire
I actually wired it in to the mixing board so we can hear and the meter will
be our ears it's going into this Lab Gruppen LA 48 here driving this
Infiniti speaker so we'll be able to listen to the voltage drop with the gain
turned up and hear what's lost in the cable so the first thing we'll do is I'm
going to turn down we're going to listen to pink noise as it's sent or not
no I don't have it run into there okay we're not going to listen to the pink noise
as it's sent we're only gonna listen to the voltage drop so with this up we'll
listen to the voltage drop in the W1 cable
now Oh in order to help us hear this I've got the high frequency turned up so
let me turn it back down to normal there's the pink noise now we're going to boost the highs a bit just to
accentuate what we're listening for, what we're boosting is the return
this is afterwards so it's gonna affect both signals identically at the w1 and
then when I switch here
that's the SuperCat now let's whip it back and forth we should be able to see
what I'm doing
down
now you should be able to hear it fit on the up position it's a little brighter
than the down position
and that's because we're listening to the loss and the high frequency loss in
the 100-meter w1 cable the audio cable is more and therefore hearing more high
frequency then there is high frequency loss in the SuperCat cable because
there's less high frequency loss it's designed to transport those higher
frequency signals now the w1 cable is a 24 gauge wire and
the SuperCat is a 26 gauge wire so we should actually be getting more loss in
the Supercat than we are in the audio cable and in the also notice the low
frequency is a little louder in the SuperCat but the loss is very flat and
even in the Supercat whereas the loss is tilted towards a high frequency in the
w1 which means that the w1 cable is rolling off the high frequency and the
Supercat is the loss is linear across the frequency range it's very easy to
add a dB on the input of whatever it's driving whereas it's difficult to
compensate for high frequency loss that changes with frequency so I'm gonna do
another test really quick to show something else I have a CAT7 cable here
that is thicker gauge wire and this is something down the line of what it's a
prototype cable for what SoundTools will be coming out with at some point in
the future and this is a 23 gauge conductor so here's a 23 gauge data
cable compared to a 24 gauge audio cable and we'll do that same test we'll start
with the audio cable which is
up
data
and as you can I'm sure hear through the audio here the data cable is not only
duller which means there's less high frequency loss but it's lower in volume
because of the thicker wire gauge meaning that this cable is superior in
every regard towards transporting analog audio even though it's a data cable
alright I thought there's a super cool really excited about this test box I'm
going to be testing a lot more stuff with it I've got a speaker cable version
as well that is equally exciting for hearing loss and speaker cables and yeah
that's just interesting stuff super exciting to be able to hear these things
rather than look at you know frequency response graphs and look at the data I
mean we can do all that but that's not usually what I do I'm more into this
practical audible reference points where we're using our ears to make
determinations of relevance rather than looking at numbers and spec sheets which
don't always tell us the full story cool cool I hope you find this interesting
and I'll do some more