Hi

I need to make a mini to mini cable and as I have quite a lot of CAT 5 ethernet cable lying arround I thought about using it to make a short one.

I thought of using the outer two pairs for the signal and the inner two for ground, would that be the best way ?

Does anyone know if cat 5 makes an OK mini to mini ?

Thanks

Pat

It should be fine.

Splendid.

At last a use for the ones with duff connectors that I never get round to fixing !

Pat

Does it work? Yes. Does it sound good? No, not in my case. I'm not too sure what the problem was but the set I made didn't sound too good. It was sort of muffled and flat. Using just plain old 26AWG hookup wire sounded better. But go ahead and try it, you got nothing to lose... If it sounds great then you just got yourself a new IC! Have fun...

Quote:



Cat 5 cable is twisted pair, and as such it is meant to be driven by a differential signal (mirror image signals, that is). Connecting it as you mentioned would pretty much take all the advantage away of twisted pair - it's excellent common mode rejection - and leave you with something worse than... than... well, I can't think of anything worse?! At the very least, connect it so that signal and "ground" are on each pair, not signal-signal and ground-ground. Actually, if the load is a pair of headphones, this should work fairly well. From source to amp, though, I'd think not because the ground is linked at both ends, meaning that varying, and unpredictable, amounts of current will flow on one twisted pair's ground or the other.

edited a grammar mistake

Hmm I can see why that would be a bad thing. Perhaps stripping the cable and just taking three of the wires and braiding them would be better ?

Pat

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Nope; possibly worse, actually. Cat5 is great for homebrewing USB cables, but I'd not use it for anything audio related except, perhaps, as a cheap source of small gauge hookup wire. Besides, it would take an awful lot of labor to strip the jacket, untwist the pairs, then twist them back up as a triple. Why put yourself through that kind of grief when the results are sure to be disappointing??

OK any suggestions on what type of wire to use for a cheap but OK mini to mini.
I have the jacks allready. This is not for a high end solution its just for a PCDP with a CMOY, needs to be something I can just buy in a town without a RadioShack (Tandy here in the UK).

If I get round to building a CMOY eventually I will make some better cables but for now I dont want to mailorder cable costing £20 per foot

Thanks

Pat

I made a mini-mini cable with a generic type mic cable. That's what they call it here in the Philippines anyway. It's basically a pair of insulated the middle and out shield of bare copper. Pure copper. Used the outer shield as ground. Used Radioshack gold mini stereo jacks.

www.pbase.com/truck/portable


Sounds good with my PX200 and HD497 driven by a Cmoy. Dunno how it will sound with much more revealing cans like the HD600.