50' of audio cable with rca adapters... cheapest avenue?

[fjorner]

Hey folks

what's the cheapest way for me to come about 50' of audio cable with red/white RCA jacks on both ends?

I do buy 50' of cable and do the adapters myself? Is that possible?

Can someone hit me with a place online to get what I need cheap?

What about headphone-stereo jack to RCA outputs? thoughts?

 

[zephyrprime]

Try www.partsexpress.com. Search for rca cables.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

You like your distortion loud and clear, eh.

What on earth do you need to run fifty feet of analog audio for?

- M4H

 

[fjorner]

touche!

I want to run audio cable from my computer, through the attic, to my receiver.

My other (more expensive option) is to get some optical cable, some kind of splitter to connect both it and my DVD player to the only optical audio input in my receiver. then buy 50' of optical cable, and get that USB external audio card with a digital out.

riiiight...

so, what is your suggestion to run sound from my computer to my receiver 50' away?

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: fjorner
touche!

I want to run audio cable from my computer, through the attic, to my receiver.

My other (more expensive option) is to get some optical cable, some kind of splitter to connect both it and my DVD player to the only optical audio input in my receiver. then buy 50' of optical cable, and get that USB external audio card with a digital out.

riiiight...

so, what is your suggestion to run sound from my computer to my receiver 50' away?

Move your computer or stereo? There's a reason most analog cables come in 25 feet as a "maximum", and I can't imagine running it through the attic will make it sound any better.

Grab an old Pentium box and set it up to play MP3s.

- M4H

 

[fjorner]

surely there must be a way to run audio over long distances.

is the issue the strength of my output on my computer?

 

[greenman100]

Just make sure the cable is high quality and shielded, and keep your computer's output high.

 

[Matthias99]

The issue is the impedance/resistance of a 50' long RCA cable, compared to the amount of power your sound card is capable of trying to push through it without frying whatever's on the other end when you use a normal-length cable.

It may work. You may get awful noise/distortion, though, because those sorts of cables are just not designed to go that far.

Optical, as you noted, would work. That'll run as far as you want. And (unless this is a laptop), a simple Audigy 2 soundcard is all you need (well, that and a 50' TOSLINK cable). However, it sounds like you're already using your receiver's digital in.

I'd suggest going wireless. Get yourself an FM radio broadcast card, and then you can just tune in your PC from the far side of the house. They work pretty well from what I've seen. I've also seen standalone boxes that will transmit audio/video signals over those sorts of distances.

 

[fjorner]

is there such thing as a optical splitter? that way i could have audio and dvd hooked up simultaneously

 

[zephyrprime]

Does youyr receiver support SPDIF?

And also, about the distortion that such a long cable is supposed to cause, I wonder if anyone can give a thorough explanation of this grounded in sound physics.

Is it a matter of inductance and capacitance limiting frequencies? Does mismatched impedence cause signal echo?

 

[Matthias99]

TOSLINK splitter/combiner For that warm, fuzzy, all-optical feeling you're missing.. I found numerous places with 50' and 100' cables (and repeaters) as well; just try Google.

It's not inductance so much as impedance/resistance and capacitance that become the limiting factor, unless there happens to be a lot of magnetic interference in the area, or many cables being run in parallel.

The longer a cable is, the harder it is to actually push electrons through it (that is, the resistance goes up). Also, the frequency response starts to become limited by capacitance. In an ideal cable, a signal would propogate instantly down the cable. But when capacitance starts getting too high, it begins to take longer and longer for the voltage at the far end to converge to what the input is. This muddles the signal, as high frequencies just sort of get blurred together by the delay.

A further problem is that long unshielded copper wires are sometimes better known as antennas. You're very likely to pick up any stray radio signals/noise with an unshielded cable that long (although it's hard to predict; this might not be a problem at all in your setup). This can make an already bad signal even worse.

In short, it's very unlikely that you'll get a good-quality signal out of an unshielded RCA cable more than 10-15' long.

 

[zephyrprime]

It's not inductance so much as impedance/resistance and capacitance that become the limiting factor, unless there happens to be a lot of magnetic interference in the area, or many cables being run in parallel.

The longer a cable is, the harder it is to actually push electrons through it (that is, the resistance goes up). Also, the frequency response starts to become limited by capacitance. In an ideal cable, a signal would propogate instantly down the cable. But when capacitance starts getting too high, it begins to take longer and longer for the voltage at the far end to converge to what the input is. This muddles the signal, as high frequencies just sort of get blurred together by the delay.

But complex Ohm's law states that Vout/Vin should increase with increasing capacitance and increasing frequency. Are you sure it's not inductance? Increasing inductance would cause higg frequency attenuation. However, increasing capacitance would cause the pulse blurring and phase distortion you describe.

And as far as plain resistance goes, wouldn't that only cause volume problems? I took a look at my own stereo and it has an adjustable input impedance so it should be able to handle the resitance problems posed by a long rca cable.

 

[RickH]

Just get a roll of RG-6 coax cable. Crimp on standard F connectors and use F-to-RCA adaprters. Don't waste $$ on exotic cables--if this doesn't work, they won't either. I have used this method to run video and audio between monitors and DVD players. I would not try to put standard RCA cables in the walls and attic. This method works fine for me. R

 

[thomsbrain]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
TOSLINK splitter/combiner For that warm, fuzzy, all-optical feeling you're missing.. I found numerous places with 50' and 100' cables (and repeaters) as well; just try Google.

It's not inductance so much as impedance/resistance and capacitance that become the limiting factor, unless there happens to be a lot of magnetic interference in the area, or many cables being run in parallel.

The longer a cable is, the harder it is to actually push electrons through it (that is, the resistance goes up). Also, the frequency response starts to become limited by capacitance. In an ideal cable, a signal would propogate instantly down the cable. But when capacitance starts getting too high, it begins to take longer and longer for the voltage at the far end to converge to what the input is. This muddles the signal, as high frequencies just sort of get blurred together by the delay.

A further problem is that long unshielded copper wires are sometimes better known as antennas. You're very likely to pick up any stray radio signals/noise with an unshielded cable that long (although it's hard to predict; this might not be a problem at all in your setup). This can make an already bad signal even worse.

In short, it's very unlikely that you'll get a good-quality signal out of an unshielded RCA cable more than 10-15' long.

right on about the capacitance. people often confuse this with resistance (which only matters for speaker cable).

the general rule of thumb is you lose about 1 db of signal strengh per ten feet. if you run 50 feet of cable, that's a HUGE tonal difference from 6 feet. as a guitarist, i can clearly hear the difference between 10 and 20 feet of cable. my live guitar rig uses about 60 feet total before the signal hits the power amp... ouch!

 

[thomsbrain]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime


And as far as plain resistance goes, wouldn't that only cause volume problems? I took a look at my own stereo and it has an adjustable input impedance so it should be able to handle the resitance problems posed by a long rca cable.

the reason resistance doesn't matter for line-level signals is because the difference in resistance between cables compared to the resistance of the input you're plugging into to is ming-boggingly vast. We're talking like 1 one-hundrendth of one percent difference here. but for speaker cables, it makes a big difference because the impedance of the speaker is so low.

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: RickH
Just get a roll of RG-6 coax cable. Crimp on standard F connectors and use F-to-RCA adaprters. Don't waste $$ on exotic cables--if this doesn't work, they won't either. I have used this method to run video and audio between monitors and DVD players. I would not try to put standard RCA cables in the walls and attic. This method works fine for me. R

Bingo. Select RG-6 that is fire rated for in-wall too.

These are the adapter types:
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Product_ID=2213&DID=7
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Product_ID=2274&DID=7