Another day, another standard.... HDBaseT

I don't know if this one will catch on but I hope it does. I can wire Cat5e in my sleep...

Given that I'm ripping out the existing drywall as a first step in my Home Theater remodel anyway I figure I might as well pull cable for HDBaseT just in case.

My question is, Should I run an Ethernet cable to each speaker location? Will speakers ever conceivably use it or are they analog forever and always? I really hate ripping out drywall...

Speakers will only ever use digital connections if they have built-in amplifiers with D/A converters. The speakers's engine (the voice coil and magnet assembly) is an analog device. Unless somebody invents an entirely new way to push and pull air in a way that creates sound, I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Meridian did make digtial-to-the-speaker connections from their receivers. It used MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing), which then became the basis of the DVD-Audio format, and then was purchased by Dolby for the core of the TrueHD format.

But now with all the DRM encumbrances I don't imagine we'll be seeing another digital speaker connection. Not that it made a lot of sense back then either. Although I would like to see more "active" speakers with built in amps, active crossovers, and line-level connections.

Some Meridian speakers use Cat 5 to connect speakers. They also have other digital connection options.

http://www.meridian-audio.com/product-mo...oudspeaker.aspx

But, if you have money for those speakers then you are on the wrong board.

Whoa, deja vu. Simultaneous posts about the same thing.

Hah, beat you to it. But I didn't even bother to look if they still made such a thing (they do).

I've got a lottery ticket in my pocket so you never know...

Aww what the heck I'll have a 1000' foot spool of cable anyway. I think I'll just add a Cat5e to the speaker pulls.
(huh, I wonder what gauge cat5e is? Would it work for....)

Although to be fair if I was stepping things up to that level I'd probably have to rip out the drywall again anyway.

People have used two runs of Cat5 as speaker wire, with the 8 solids, and the 8 stripes combined from each run.

I tired it with one run, the 4 and 4, as pos and neg. I will say that's the first time I've heard wire make a difference in sound. Not a good difference mind you, the bass was gone.

Cat5, I think, is 24 gauge. Not large enough for much more than a 4-20 milliamp signal.

Future proofing is almost an impossibility. Wireless will probably be ready for prime time before too much longer, so you'll most likely need 110V for each speaker before you would net ethernet.

Each strand is 24 gauge, but if you braid them it makes it plausible but not reasonable.



I've been hearing that related to a number of applications since about the mid 80's.

The future is always 5 years away.