SoundTools CAT Box Snake & SuperCAT CAT5e Review

** EDIT - I absolutely made a mistake in stating that the more expensive SuperCAT Sound cable was required to use the CatTails - while the individual shielding simply allows it to be terminated to individual tails if needed. Thanks to Chris Rettger for catching my mistake! **
03-30-18 - In this video, we look at the SoundTools Cat Box snake system and their custom SuperCAT CAT5e cable designed specifically for use in production environments.
CAT Box FX - Female XLR stage box - amzn.to/2V0JLDO
CAT Box MX - Male XLR stage box - amzn.to/2Gu7skK
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[@AntonioRockGP]

Exactly! The 3 send/ 1 return configuration is what I need! For my keyboard player. LR keys + mic + return for monitor. I imagine this configuration is very common

[@--AP--]

I took one of the versions with the pigtails and exchanged the XLR connectors on both ends to give me a 3/1

[@dazzer1730]

Our four piece band has been using these for a couple of years now. We each have one on stage and then there are four in the rack which connect to our digital mixer. We esch use them for mics, DI and IEM returns to us. Excellent set up and would never go back to the set up before.

[@dfncinc]

I have used ours for a line array setup at a school and we have just left the cat 6 cable in the roof and then when we go back for the next show all of the speaker runs are already ran. Super easy. I added a safety cable by removing one screw and then making a bracket for the cable to mount the cable to. Gaff tape works well too in a pinch.

[@Spectre361]

How does that work Donald ? 4 Channel sound tools snake working to carry up to 4 zones of audio to your array?

[@dfncinc]

Shawn Thomas We do channel 1for right side ch2 for left and then we feed 2 monitors we ch3&4.

[@RileyBurgessaudioengineering]

I absolutely swear by the CAT Snake! It's been keeping my tour pack lightweight and cleaning my cable runs when we play in tight spaces. The band loves the look of them too! There truly are many different uses with these. I've been making my own male-male and female-female XLR turn around cables when I use them in festival mode and want to hook a DXR12 or K12 right up to it. If you need an 8 banger you could easily get that flexible weaved nylon conduit shit at a computer parts place to put two shielded CAT 5/6/7 cables in it. Make some shorties and BOOM! You have a rugged drum snake with easy disconnects. Add velcro to make them stay together, place them left/right of the drum riser, or stick 'em on hardware. So many possibilities. Am I affiliated with Sound Tools? Nope, I'm just a regular freelancer guy who loves all the sound tools.

[@conorm2524]

Some cool ideas.

[@DcSoundOp]

** EDIT - I absolutely made a mistake in stating that the more expensive SuperCAT Sound cable was required to use the CatTails - while the individual shielding simply allows it to be terminated to individual tails if needed. Thanks to Chris Rettger for catching my mistake! **

[@robmcculley6835]

I work for a company that specializes in A/V for corporate events. We very frequently deploy small systems for breakout meetings and this unit could save lots of time for those types of events. Thank you for sharing this product and I guarantee that the rest of my team will be all over this!!!

[@wellend89]

I recently had the opportunity to work with a small-ish conference venue rebuilding their whole AV infrastructure. Ended up going with tons of shielded twisted pair drops (with Ethercon Cat6A sockets) all over the venue (augmented by some coax in key points) and a central patchbay. The beauty of this is that you can get pretty much anything to or from anywhere in the venue without needing to run long temporary cables, using the appropriate converters (analog/digital audio, HDMI, VGA, networking, DMX etc.), makes it super flexible. The only caveat being needing to make damn sure your patching is correct before turning anything on for obvious reasons :)

[@wellend89]

Made some tails with ConvertCon XLR's to solve the needs outlined in the video.

[@VoyageOne1]

I've got my eye on this to use with my Behringer X32 compact

[@ronsheehan]

I bought a similar product from Lyxpro. Love it so far. I use it as a breakout snake to send my three acoustic instruments and vocal mic to trunk line.

[@DcSoundOp]

Thanks for the message Ron!

[@fcarlyle1]

Thanks for the response! That's exactly what I'm looking for, except I wanted the box to be wall mounted (so the RJ45 cables would be connected within the wall.

[@DcSoundOp]

Hmm... I've used wall mount rack ears before for things like this & have seen them in other studios as well - amzn.to/3JUWAIH - if that's not workable, a few of the wallCAT 8 units might be a better fit? soundtools.com/audio-over-cat5-systems-page-wallcat8.html

[@dude3640]

@@DcSoundOp Except out of stock... for awhile.

[@MrMercho4416]

I purchased the radial system last year and it works very well. I would much rather give the rat man my money next time

[@framelessfilms]

Be aware that there is no pin out standard, and that you can’t mix systems.

[@imark7777777]

I started down the audio over Cat5 cable with some studiohub breakouts. conveniently they no longer sort of exist? and now there's a big market for these things. The guy who came up with them was in the middle of a multi-month / week Studio install when the IT guy showed up installed all the networking and left in one day, he asked how did you do it? And said there's got to be a better way, and started realizing that Bell Labs? came up with a pretty decent cable system for balanced telephone lines that were then repurposed for data. The only thing was StudioHub is that they are 2-channel only because they're more meant for radio station type patching around. But I was able to drop a 50-foot cable from side of stage mix position to two mics on stage for a wedding with one thin black unobtrusive cable, I was able to do a mic for the guitar and a mic for speaking / singing. Yes I use them a lot I also used another run from the mixer 25 feet up to the amplifier mounted practically on the 15-foot ceiling at the venue. I just recently used it to grab two wireless mics from the receiver in a closet at a hotel to run out to my mix and Camera position on one cable and I only had to run one cable back to their mixer in the same position to feed the house system. this allowed me to mix wirelessly and sub out feeds for live streaming and drops for at least one person to take me up on the offer. I feel like I'm the only one who knows about Press Box drops in my area such a foreign concept.

[@pieterfun100]

it may not be so ez to swap 2xlrs to male of vice verca because pin 2 and 1 are turned. but great vid love your content!!

[@kenoir]

Nice video. Could it be an issue of crosstalk if you make modification of the 2 in 2 out setup on same cat cable with line level output and mic level input?

[@thomasrutter1360]

LECTERN!!!! he used the correct terminology. how many gigs have i been on where i had a lectern on one side of the stage and a podium on the other side, with a riser upstage for good measure.

[@chrisewers]

Have a pair of these, they're great.

[@Wizerslapski]

Ive been looking at this setup for a while. I did just buy the Hosa 8x0 50 footer which is a great budget snake but this would also come in handy in lots of ways as well.

[@michaelbriggs7328]

Have you had a chance to check out and compare the Catapult yet?

[@WiKiTWoNKa]

Okay so I thought this was basically a snake box that runs through a CAT5 cable and that there was some way they figured out how to run more than four channels so I go on there and I checked the Amazon website and there's nothing there like that I'm hoping that one day that there would be able to have a 16-channel analog type snake box with a CAT5 cable that would be a whole lot cheaper than say the PreSonus StudioLive III 16R 24R or 32R rack mixer (which I have the 32R and love it) and it definitely can be used in that manner as a snakebox/stagebox/audiointerface and be connected to the PreSonus StudioLive III 32S console mixer and can be Daisy changed to have more than one mixer/stagebox/audiointerface connected to say the PreSonus StudioLive III 64S so that way you can have two 32R's Daisy changed it together and ran from the rack on stage and connected to the 64S via CAT5 or CAT6 AND STILL HAVE ALL 32 OR 64 CHANNELS. But that is digitally and this company does not do it that way this is basically an analog snake and it cannot be done with more than four inputs and outputs in between the two so if I was to want to have for example a seven piece drum mic set connected to my rack mixer I would have to have two of these boxes the female ends running to the drum booth and then I can run the CAT5 cables with a pigtail at the other end to plug directly into my rack mixer so it's still usable it's just instead of for an example a 16 channel snake that weighs 150 lb it's a four channel snake that may only way a pound or two but you have to buy more than one you would have to buy four of these and four cat five cables with four sets of pigtails if I want to have 16 channels which would end up running more than what an old school snake box would cost 🤷

[@NahNoThankYou]

AES72 for the win!

[@colehaaf4425]

I like the new intro

[@DcSoundOp]

Cole Haaf Thanks Cole, I’m trying to tighten things up and get to the info quicker.

[@dennisondenatalie]

Hopefully these aren’t expensive. I need a few of these. Lol. Thanks for sharing.

[@DcSoundOp]

They're surprisingly affordable for the quality! Thanks for watching!

[@AndrewMurphy8383]

how can u plut the aoundtools cat box snake in to a mixer

[@tdcrenshaw]

Check out the Whirlwind catdusa; it has a male and female for each channel on each end for more flexibility.

[@DcSoundOp]

Thanks Tyler, the Whirlwind units are on my list for a future review for sure... just got to get a demo unit lined up. Thanks for the message!

[@raggaroaringsound]

Will they work as a splitter? For instance, if I send signal into the box and out say ch4, and connect to the parallel output to another box? Or does that redirect the signal flow? Thanks

[@DcSoundOp]

Yea absolutely, using them as a splitter is one of the things they were designed for!

[@thenamestudio]

Great Video. In terms of quality do you think this may work in a studio ?

[@DcSoundOp]

Absolutely, lots of folks use them in studios already & the wall plates are designed just for installed situations like studios. Thanks for the message!

[@thenamestudio]

DcSoundOp thanks a lot !!

[@ikerpk]

If i have understand right... its just a 4 balanced signals box with just one cable with 8 conductors and 1 ground right? with the issue of use a thin CAT 5 cable to carry the signal... i would still prefer the clasic 4 ch snake for this pourpose...

[@AndersBibowOlsen]

This may be a stupid question; Is it possible to run phantom power through this system? (for condensor mic's)

[@AndersBibowOlsen]

so, after doing some reading; yes it is :P

[@SafeTVDigital]

YES YOU CAN

[@dubdaddysound]

It's probably mention in this section, but what is the maximum length of the Ethernet cable in this sort of setup?

[@DcSoundOp]

You should think of these functionally the same as running standard XLR. Driving longer lines will require the same approach as it would normally depending on what your sending (analog audio, AES, DMX or COMMs) - but functionally it’s as capable as traditional XLR.

[@daltonrandall4348]

I'm a little confused about the two types of Cat5 cable they make... can you go into more detail about the differences for an audio noob? Thanks.

[@DcSoundOp]

Dave has a great video on his channel if you search for Dave Rat - he does deep into the differences 👍🏼

[@daltonrandall4348]

DcSoundOp I found one where he goes into super detail on the "sound" cable, but barely touches on the "light" and doesn't really provide much comparison between the two.

[@todds5956]

I use a 16+4 old school snake and use them all. I would need to run 6 cables? If so that wouldn’t be much different than now. I do like the thought of it though

[@DcSoundOp]

For a situation like yours it would make more sense to add as sub snakes to your 16ch main snake. Anywhere you could use 4 channels together on-stage you can drop one of these and patch a single cat-5 cable back to your snake. They’re great for keyboard players, a pair left and right side of a drum kit for 8 channels etc. Thanks for the message & thanks for watching Todd!

[@todds5956]

@@DcSoundOp I wouldn’t be able to individually adjust them though,the 4 sub snakes? My drummer don’t care lol.

[@todds5956]

@@DcSoundOp I do have a Soundcraft UI24 and just run one line to the laptop. But it fried in Aug and I might not get it back from them until April due to no parts so I have to go back to what I used prior. Thanks for the replies!

[@KLRCAT]

Can this be run through a network switch or does it need to be a straight AB connection? Ideally I would like to avoid sending multiple network cables to one area, if I can avoid it.

[@DcSoundOp]

Hey, no these are point to point and need shielded (ideally with ethercon connectors) & stranded cat5e or better to work. They’re essentially a copper snake, taking advantage of some of the unique properties of network cables to create four twisted pair paths. You can choose to put analog down those paths, or digital in the form of AES or DMX Data etc, but it’s just going down copper as is, not being turned into network traffic.

[@KLRCAT]

@@DcSoundOp cheers, that clears things up

[@phillipreed4880]

I like the idea of these, but are they wired with the ground opened? A cat5 cable has 8 conductors, and using 2 conductors per XLR, is pin 1 on each connector still carried through the single cable?

[@DcSoundOp]

Here's the wiring from SoundTools website - soundtools.com/products/catfamily/images/etherCON%20wiring%20diagram.pdf - Pin 1 is tied to the shield.

[@phillipreed4880]

DcSoundOp sweet! I will definitely be picking a couple of these up.

[@conorm2524]

@@DcSoundOp Do you happen to know why the pairs are wired like that? Instead of in sequence? Is it to minimise crosstalk?

[@fabianvasquezjr8852]

Will this work in my PreSonus Studiolive 24 series III AVB network? Let's see $120 for the cat box plus $70 for 25' of ethercon cable that's $190 for four runs or two stereo, $600 for PreSonus AVB, NSB 8.8 with 8 xmax preamps and 8 XLR's returns for IEM's or floor monitors, that's a no brainer!!

[@DcSoundOp]

The CAT family of products from SoundTools are not networked audio (Audio over iP or AoIP) - they are simply a modular alternative to running traditional copper snakes. If your needs involve running analog audio or AES digital signals, these work great. They do not provide any functionality related to AVB networks or any other audio over IP solution. I hope this helps clear things up. Thanks for the question!

[@fabianvasquezjr8852]

I see,thanks for the imformation it's kinda new to me still.

[@remixchannelSega]

Can I use this with an x32 with no stage box, I only want 4 input channels and output channels away from the mixer

[@DcSoundOp]

You can, you would probably want a CAT box on each of the far end runs and the one each of the input and output cat tails to patch to the analog ins and outs on your console, then you'd be sorted. Let me know if I didn't understand the question correctly though. Thanks for watching!

[@collinjklein]

I'd love the shirt 😝

[@DcSoundOp]

It's yours, message me your info to [e-mail] !

[@fcarlyle1]

Can anyone recommend a WallCat hub to all ends, then from there patch to my mixer in the control room?

[@DcSoundOp]

Hey Frederick, I'm not sure I get what you're looking for. Would the CAT Rack be what you're describing? You'd connect the WallCATs to CATRacks in your control room and then patch XLR from there to your mixer - amzn.to/3KXPnsI - that's an affiliate link btw.

[@TheKingsOutlaw]

Thanks for the video! Do I need a male and female? My standard mic XLRs would obviously take the female box; but would the out run straight to my rack, or would I somehow need the male box to get the signal to my rack? Sorry if this is a stupid question.

[@DcSoundOp]

Thanks for the question Tim! You are right that you would want the female box to plug sources into, and then a male end for the output side. If you are connecting directly to rack gear, you might find the Cat Tails handy for the output side, as they will let you plug right into the gear you are using. Check them out @ soundtools.com/products/catfamily/cattails.php

[@TheKingsOutlaw]

@@DcSoundOp Thank you so much!

[@framelessfilms]

I notice that there are several companies making this type of Cat5/6 connection snake. Is there a standard connection protocol that they all use, or do different manufacturers each use different standards? In other words, can you mix SoundTools CAT boxes with Radial Catapult devices? I’m guessing that there is a standard protocol and that this is possible. Am I correct?

[@DcSoundOp]

That’s a great question. Unfortunately there is no standard & they are generally not compatible across brands. I’ve tried pushing the folks I know to talk and agree on one standard, but those things move slowly & we’re just a small voice asking for it. Thanks for watching!

[@framelessfilms]

@@DcSoundOp Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. I am trying to set up a simple setup where a single snake goes to both a PA and a recorder. The parallel RJ45 make that easy, except that I’m worried about dual sources of phantom power (the recorder and the mixer). I know that the recessed ground lift button will lift the ground on a single Cat Box. Let’s say I had a male Cat Box with the ground lifted and was using that to go to a recorder, and then a Cat Tail fanout going to the PA, would that only enable phantom power from one device? Or would I be better off going with the Radial Catapult with transformer outputs?

[@styxx0500]

Why wouldn't you just drill a hole in the black outer shell to attach a safety chain to it to fly them....

[@DcSoundOp]

You're saying to fly it by just dangling it from a safety??

[@styxx0500]

@@DcSoundOp if you're wanting to permanently mount it to a truss just drill a couple holes in the back plate, screw it to the truss and then reattach the module.... If you just want a temporary fix, zip tie it to the truss supports or drill keyholes in the back plate so you can mount it the same as the permanent mount but still be able to remove it since it is mounted with keyholes

[@styxx0500]

@@DcSoundOp hopefully all of that made sense, if not let me know.... The other option I liked was the rack mount 12 channel option that company offers

[@stanleynorman5888]

Hi, will these work with Behringer x32 mixer?

[@IntheDAW]

Can the cat 5 or 6 cable used pass phantom power for condenser mics?

[@DcSoundOp]

Here's a recent video from Dave on Phantom power using the SoundTools gear - kzbin.info/www/bejne/lWm4hXqZqqanmpI - but in short, yes phantom is no problem at all, assuming you've used shielded cable. Thanks for the great question.

[@DLR1976]

Have you used it with The Studiolive 16R ?

[@DcSoundOp]

I haven't as the 16R had to go back home to PreSonus before these arrived.

[@DLR1976]

DcSoundOp do you think it would work ?

[@DcSoundOp]

David Ramos Absolutely! The cable itself would also be a great option to look at for use with the AVB networking too in live environments.

[@todds5956]

I have a Presonus 16 studio live. Would I need a box right next to the mixer or 4 cat tails? Thanks

[@jamiebodie4604]

Have you seen or tried the Catdusa?

[@DcSoundOp]

Hey Jamie, I have not seem them in person. I've always been a big fan of Whirlwind products, I'm sure they're nice.

[@kosmikmusa]

Nice. Can I run phantom thru it?

[@DcSoundOp]

Yes, absolutely!

[@Jabskin]

@@DcSoundOp is the phantom power split individually between channel or is it on for all channels?

[@paul.l.haywood2421]

I've use gender changes on these without any issues.

[@DcSoundOp]

Hey, thanks for the message. What do you use these for most often in your work? It's always intersting to hear how they're being used. Thanks again Paul!

[@melechhaarayot9273]

Is this compatible with Dante?

[@DcSoundOp]

Dante is an AOIP (Audio over iP) or audio network solution, while these are simply a way to move signal that would typically be on an XLR cable via shielded network cable. Let me know if that makes sense or if I can explain more. All the best, thanks for the question!

[@melechhaarayot9273]

DcSoundOp That makes sense. Thank you!

[@QuicksilverSG]

These Cat5 breakout boxes have nothing to do with Ethernet. They are simply balanced analog audio connections running through the eight conductors in a Cat5 cable. What happens to the ground wires in each of the 3-pin XLR connectors, you may ask? They are all combined in the single Cat5 shield that surrounds the eight conductors. So not only are you relying on the fragile RJ45 connectors on the ends of the Cat5 cable, you are degrading the isolation of the previously separate ground wires of the four balanced XLR cables you plug into the inputs and outputs of the breakout box. If any interference or hum is present on any of those grounds, it will contaminate the grounds of the other three XLR cables as well. TL;DR: Don't waste your money and risk your reputation on garbage technology.

[@DcSoundOp]

SHIT! I better get on the phone and tell the guys to de-rig Coachella QUICK before the weekend!! So thankful you were able to set things straight for everyone before anyone's reputation was ruined.

[@QuicksilverSG]

@@DcSoundOp - Just throw Di's at anything that hums, right?