Un-Shielded Ethernet + Speaker Wire = No-No?

[TimL]

Hey Gurus,

How big of a no-no is running speaker wire from an amp to speaker alongside (ie. touching) un-shielded ethernet cable?

Situation: I have those skirting boards where you can tuck cables inside them, currently my ethernet cable runs in there to a network switch. (TV, Roku, Xbox + Laptop in the room under the TV).

If I was to run speaker wire back out from the amp under the TV (where the ethernet comes in) to where I have the Back Left and Back Right wall mounted rear speakers.

How bad would this be?

[TimL]

This is on the speaker wire roll I have:

[sc302 Veteran]

You should be fine.  

[Daedroth]

I wouldn't have thought it would cause a problem as the amp isn't going to be high voltage, so leakage is going to be minimal. Then again, I'm no electrical expert.

[+BudMan MVC]

Im with sc302 I don't think that would be much of an issue.  But then again if your worried the cost of shielded ethernet is pretty cheap - how long of a run are you talking?

 

Here is 100ft STP cat 5e for under $20

http://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=6992

 

I can tell you the cables that go into my av cabinet that has speaker cable running along side of it to go to my surround sound speakers run together up into the attic and have not noticed any issues.

[TimL]

Wasnt even cost it was just because:
  - its what I had lying around (ie. I had a 50m roll of unshielded ethernet which I can terminate myself)
  - the LAN cable was already run and didnt feel like cutting and pulling it all up again

I'd been running the front 3.1 since I moved in and finally got around to wiring up the rears.

[The Evil Overlord]

You should be fine, speaker cables for general stereo or home theatre amps don't run very high voltage, unless you're talking Rotel or even higher end, (then you might need better wiring)

[Gerowen]

You shouldn't have much of a problem, however unshielded ethernet cables can produce small amounts of RF interference that normally aren't detected by most of the devices in your house, but might get picked up by your speakers if you run your speaker wires right beside the ethernet cable.  Worst case scenario just give it a try and see what happens.  One thing you could do is twist your speaker wires in a spiral fashion to try and create an RF choke and mimic the twisting inside the ethernet cable and help reduce cross-talk.

 

It took me a few days to track down the issue, but here's what I hear on 2 or 3 channels of my base station CB radio that comes out of my unshielded networking cables.

 

[The Evil Overlord]

3 minutes ago, Gerowen said:

You shouldn't have much of a problem, however unshielded ethernet cables can produce small amounts of RF interference that normally aren't detected by most of the devices in your house, but might get picked up by your speakers if you run your speaker wires right beside the ethernet cable.  Worst case scenario just give it a try and see what happens.  One thing you could do is twist your speaker wires in a spiral fashion to try and create an RF choke and mimic the twisting inside the ethernet cable and help reduce cross-talk.

 

It took me a few days to track down the issue, but here's what I hear on 2 or 3 channels of my base station CB radio that comes out of my unshielded networking cables.

 

Good catch, but isn't that rf related? I admit it can happen but I haven't personally experienced interference in forever, (Just thought cable shielding had improved over the decades)

[Gerowen]

1 hour ago, The Evil Overlord said:

Good catch, but isn't that rf related? I admit it can happen but I haven't personally experienced interference in forever, (Just thought cable shielding had improved over the decades)

Yeah shielded ethernet cables eliminate it altogether, but since the OP was talking about unshielded cables and speaker wire (analog/non-digital signal) I thought I would bring it up in case he heard something similar through his speakers.