How long can a phono cable be before sound quality is seriously effected?

[autopilot]

I want to run a cable from my PC in my home office to my mini system in the bedroom, so that i can run softsqueeze and control it with my PDA or PSP.

The cable would need to be 10-15 meters long. Would using a phono cable be a bad idea? If so, what would be a better solution? (and no, i can't afford another squeezebox!).

Cheers.

[funkstar]

you should be Ok with that, provided the cable isn't complete garbage to start with

here is a pretty decent video/show of how to make your own high quality AV cables:
http://revision3.com/systm/avcabling/

If it is a bedroom system, is fidelity that important? I know it isn't for me, i just listen to streamed radio as an alarm clock etc.

[autopilot]

Sound quality is important, is a fair good system (see sig).

What about those wireless things, like a wireless phono cable - any one use one of those or have a link to more info? I dont mind spending a bit of cash, but not a lot.

[tommypeters]

I don't think a 10-15 meter long cable would be a problem, if it's not too thin (would give too much resistance) and not made so it has unnecessary capacitance (usually because of bad design or bad use of materials).

[pfarrell]

autopilot wrote:
> I want to run a cable from my PC in my home office to my mini system in
> the bedroom, so that i can run softsqueeze and control it with my PDA
> or PSP.
>
> The cable would need to be 10-15 meters long. Would using a phono cable
> be a bad idea? If so, what would be a better solution? (and no, i can't
> afford another squeezebox!).

Depends how much you care about sound.

Or your definition of 'seriously effected'

Ten meters is a long way for an unbalanced conductor. You would be much
better off with balanced. You would, of course, need two devices to
convert unbalanced to balanced, and they would cost about the same as a
second SqueezeBox

Some folks have suggested it would be OK with quality wire, but even
reasonably priced wire, say the Kimber Cable PBJ, is about $50 a meter.
So depending on your defintions, a used SB2 would be much much cheaper
and better sounding.

So rather than arguing about the number of angels dancing on this pin,
just get some cable and try it. It only has to make you happy.

--
Pat
http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimse...msoftware.html

[Mark Lanctot]

What about those wireless things, like a wireless phono cable - any one use one of those or have a link to more info? I dont mind spending a bit of cash, but not a lot.

Personally I'm not one for expensive audio cables, but 10-15 m is not at all inconsiderable. My cheapie cables sound just fine, but the longest one (subwoofer cable) has picked up 60 Hz electrical hum in the past, which is audible. It's only ~2 m long. I had to play around with placement to make sure it was crossing all power cables at 90 degrees. At 10-15 m you run a really good chance of picking up EMI, be it from AC power or something else.

Those wireless audio senders are univerally noted for poor audio quality. You'd do much better even with poorly shielded phono cables.

They are working on digital wireless audio senders which should be immune to EMI but these are poorly available and initial versions use 2.4 GHz, which would interfere with your Squeezebox quite nicely. I remember seeing reference to 5 GHz future versions which may work well.

[aubuti]

Ten meters is a long way for an unbalanced conductor. You would be much better off with balanced. You would, of course, need two devices to convert unbalanced to balanced, and they would cost about the same as a second SqueezeBox

Pat, I take your point on the relative costs, but do you have any specific recommendations for balun devices? I'm thinking about using my existing cat5e wiring to get line-level audio to the other side of the house. A Google search turned up devices by ETS and Intelix that seem to fit the bill, for about US$70-80 each. Any opinions on these or other brands? Thanks.

[SuperQ]

I want to run a cable from my PC in my home office to my mini system in the bedroom, so that i can run softsqueeze and control it with my PDA or PSP.

The cable would need to be 10-15 meters long. Would using a phono cable be a bad idea? If so, what would be a better solution? (and no, i can't afford another squeezebox!).

Cheers.

If your mini system supported digital input, you could run a long RG-6 coax (cable TV) cable from the PC. This would be much better than running a long un-balanced audio cable.

[Patrick Dowling]

Just thinking out loud - Couldn't you get two rca Y cables to split the left and right channels to two outputs one to the local stereo and the other to a cat5e cable, wiring the appropriate rca connectors to both ends the cat5e cable. With exception of signal degradation i.e noise are there any other risks?

I did run into Gefen which sells products for doing this but by the time you do this you've almost purchased another SquuezeBox.

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=2301
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=2570

Pat


On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 08:02:46 -0700, aubuti <aubuti.2efuyb1158764701 (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com> wrote:
>
> Pat Farrell;136978 Wrote:
>> Ten meters is a long way for an unbalanced conductor. You would be much
>> better off with balanced. You would, of course, need two devices to
>> convert unbalanced to balanced, and they would cost about the same as a
>> second SqueezeBox
>>
> Pat, I take your point on the relative costs, but do you have any
> specific recommendations for balun devices? I'm thinking about using my
> existing cat5e wiring to get line-level audio to the other side of the
> house. A Google search turned up devices by ETS and Intelix that seem
> to fit the bill, for about US$70-80 each. Any opinions on these or
> other brands? Thanks.
>
>
> --
> aubuti
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

[badbob]

For those lengths, I would use digital audio. Can you send digital audio from one room to the other? (digital out source and DAC required)