[LAD] Playing Audio Over CAT5

[Stephen Sinclair]

>       I checked out netjack, but i dont think i want that, as i said i want
> the audio from the router directly to the speaker through CAT5 and balun
> assembly. Wat i am confused about is after the decoding how, wud i send it
> over the ethernet and how wud analog signals travel over ethernet.

Hello Tosif,

I think what you are confused about is the definition of "Ethernet".
Ethernet is a standard for sending digital bits of information through
a wire.  Quite often we use CAT5 cables for this purpose, and it has
become the standard to do so.

Sometimes audio/video equipment also can make use of CAT5 cable,
because it is a good twisted-pair standard with certain properties
that make it attractive for sending signals with low noise.

However, the fact that Ethernet and A/V equipment both use CAT5 cables
does not mean that they are related in any way.  Your WRT is an
Ethernet device, which knows how to encode and decode IP traffic for
networking purposes.  However it has absolutely no analog connection
to the CAT5 cable.

So, I'm afraid to say, your idea of sending analog audio signals over
CAT5 from your WRT will simply not work.  However, as suggested, using
a good streaming program like netjack, you might be able to encode a
digital audio signal and send it somewhere to a device that can decode
it to analog.  But sending an audio signal along CAT5 straight from
the WRT to the speaker is out of the question.

I suggest looking into other solutions.

Funny, this reminds me of the time when I was young and I tried to put
a Commodore 64 digital tape into my living room tape player.  It
sounded awful.  :)


cheers,
Steve