Cabling standards and ME

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This topic contains 5 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by Profile photo of ahjeff ahjeff 9 years, 7 months ago.

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  • #41378
    Profile photo of jb12string
    jb12string
    Participant

    In the manual, it says to use STP stranded cable for the connection to the ME-1’s(which is only mentioned in the manual, from what I’ve seen) Is this a requirement or a suggestion? In the church I volunteer at, we have been using an Aviom system for a number of years and we have used solid UTP with no ill results. Now, I rather like the idea of switching to stranded STP cable, because I anticipate it looking less crappy because it should be more like a cable than a wire, if that makes sense. However, the upgrade to ME’s is coming in a phased integration with the first rollout coming alongside an unplanned upgrade to an iLive. Because we got a better deal on the iLive than we were expecting, we were able to get some ME’s as well, but it is going to push the budget to the edge as it is, especially since we need to make some infrastructure changes as we are going analog to digital on the console. If we can hold out on the purchase of new cables for a little while, it will help reduce the stress on our bean counters, until we can liquidate some of our old equipment.

    #41393
    Profile photo of ahjeff
    ahjeff
    Moderator

    Hi jb12string

    I just answered a very similar question to yours here: https://community.allen-heath.com/forums/topic/cat5e-cable.

    Cheers

    – Jeff, A&H

    #41399
    Profile photo of jb12string
    jb12string
    Participant

    Thanks Jeff. DaveT112 may or may not be my brother who may or may not have posted his question in the time between when I started my post and when I came back to my computer and actually submitted the post. 🙂 1 follow up question, if the ME operates on ACE protocol, why isn’t it shielded cable required for iLive digital snake cable, or did I miss that somewhere?

    #41400
    Profile photo of ahjeff
    ahjeff
    Moderator

    Hi jb12string

    Strictly speaking, the ME-1 is dSnake based, but is able to automatically switch to a couple of other formats if that’s what you feed it with. There is a knowledge base article about cabling for iLive, and all the cables listed are shielded. We did used to have a non-shielded cable in the list, but it did not pass our emissions test, so we had to take it off.
    There is a slight difference with ME-1 in that it can use Power over Ethernet, but I can’t remember if this had an impact on cable shielding requirements (I don’t think that it did).

    Hope this helps

    – Jeff, A&H

    #41406
    Profile photo of GCumbee
    GCumbee
    Participant

    FWIW. I have several installations with long runs unshielded and they seem fine. Used existing cable already installed. I just installed a system with 6 ME’s and MEU with GLD80 waiting on QU32. At this point using existing prefab cables that are unshielded. Console to AR2412/MEU is unshielded. So far seems fine. True test is first service.

    I thought the concern was incoming interference. From your description Jeff it sounds like cable emission of the system is the concern?

    #41410
    Profile photo of ahjeff
    ahjeff
    Moderator

    From your description Jeff it sounds like cable emission of the system is the concern?

    Correct.

    – Jeff, A&H

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