Cat 5 cable for local desksets?

[Equinox]

May be a goofy question, but I have never seen anyone use Cat5 cable for local remotes. The typical multi cable I have seen and used usually has 1 or 2 seperately shielded wires for audio hookup. Cat5 does not. I have a customer that has 24 Moto remotes (mainly C200 I believe, with 3 brand new Gai-Tronics versions of the same) tied to 3 Comtegra units with Cat5, and it seems pretty much all of them are buzzing pretty good. Doing things with the drain wire in the Cat5 , as well as all manner of ground/no ground tricks seems to yield no difference.

[randymince]

I deal with MC2000 remotes and use cat5 from premise wiring to remote all the time. In lot's of instances the path to the remote is going through phone pach panels which use cat5, so I have never had a problem. Is the buzzing sound greater on some of the remotes than others? How far of a cable run is it? I have never worked with installing remotes in parallel off of a comtegra, but I know that in general on remotes, if they are like the MC2000 you can select impedance in the software and adjust them accordingly. This might be between the comtegra software and the remote software. You may have to do something like that, because if you don't you will hear slight buzzing, low audio on the remotes .

[MassFD]

I think the OP is talking about Local Remotes not Tone Remotes. While it is true that Tone remotes can use just about anything as a path to the radio (including some realy bad Telco circuits) it is not so for Local remotes. Passing Mike audio and RX audio to a local remote via cat.5 could cause noise.

What does the manfacturer recomend for cable?, I would be using that not Cat.5.

[cablemonkey]

We use cat5 with Vega desksets all the time. Works great.

[nmfire10]

What he is talking about is, oversimplified, really long mic and speaker wires. You can't just use any old wire for that which is why the ones you've seen are "special". I'm sure for some short hookups, it would work fine.

[chartofmaryland]

YOU NEED SHIELDED CABLE

Local remotes will pick up the world, from florescent lights to the power supplies feeding the GAY-tronics control boxes.(Junk)

What was the reasoning behind local and what was keeping you from doing this with tone?

24 remotes is really stretching local control which is meant in most cases for 1-4 remotes within a certain distance of the radio.

Just wondering,

CoM

[bernie]

My two bits worth:
I have seen this before:
Starts with one, then two etc.
It is CHEAPER!!
Local control desk sets do not generally use 600Z balanced circuits as good engineering would indicate for a multi remote system.
Because you can get away with one or two using cat 5 or any other scheme does not mean that you can parallel 24 sets.
Just think of all that capacitive coupling of those unterminated circuits all over the premises. How would you not have hum?
Apparently you do not have a near by AM radio station.

Cat5 is excellent for 600Z applications, such as tone remotes, 4 wire circuits, E&M signaling, Not to mention Ethernet and T1. just not extended unbalanced audio circuits.

Perhaps the answer is several tone Remotes with some of the "Gutless Wonders" slaved to them.