SoundTools CAT Box Snake & SuperCAT CAT5e Review 

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

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.

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

** 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! **

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!!!

Have a pair of these, they're great.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

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?

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!!

I like the new intro

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

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.

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

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

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

I'd love the shirt 😝

Hi, will these work with Behringer x32 mixer?

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...

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 🤷

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

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?

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.

Have you seen or tried the Catdusa?

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

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

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.

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

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!!

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?

Have you used it with The Studiolive 16R ?

Nice. Can I run phantom thru it?

Is this compatible with Dante?

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

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

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.