@SamiKankaristo

1 month ago

Technically those adapters are DB25 to RJ45, not DB25 to Cat.5. The connector is RJ45, and the cable you connect to it is either Cat.5, Cat.5e, Cat.6, etc. And Cat.5 (without the "e" at the end) is ancient, I'm not sure I could even buy one of those new anymore.

Cat.5e is still available, but Cat.6 isn't that much more expensive (if you know where to look), and they're a bit higher quality (and if you want to use them as network cables, they support higher speeds).

With analog audio there could be an advantage to using Cat cables with foiled twisted pairs (FTP), since it helps with cross-talk across the different pairs. Then again, there actually might be no difference, as long as the cable itself is shielded, since that would help reject any "outside" noise, and the signals are probably so weak and low-frequency (compared to network traffic) that there might not be any detectable cross-talk across the pairs to begin with. And since it's a balanced signal, even the cable's shield might make zero difference, since any noise should be rejected with a balanced signal anyway (but XLR cables have a shield, so...).

Glenn could definitely test this... Long Cat cables and some "noise generator" next to them (and noise in the other pairs in the same cable), and then do a null test with the different signals across different types of cables to see if there's any detectable difference (a null test would be objective, no ears necessary).

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