Radial Catapult MINI RX Cat 5 Audio Snake

Well, I bought the cheapo version of these, and broke my own rule about always buying high quality stuff The cheapos were about 20% of the price of the Radial version here. They’re totally passive - so no components, just wire and connectors in a metal box. Outwardly the cheapos looked decent. Solder joints, cable, connectors all looked to be of reasonable quality. So I bought 6 of them.However, every single one of the inexpensive ones had a noisy channel right out of the box. You could just plug them into an input with nothing else attached and they would make crackling noise from one of the 4 available channels. Not ground hum, just crackling noise.I have an advanced electronics background - after reworking, resoldering, cleaning contacts, testing and scratching my head on ALL SIX of the cheapos, I came to the conclusion that, despite the visual inspection and tests to determine they passed signal, they’re just unusable crap.After spending hours troubleshooting and trying to understand what was wrong, I finally gave up and threw them away and bought these Radial boxes.No noise at all. All channels work. Since there’s nothing to really fail other than a solder joint, I assume they’re going to be reliable.I totally don’t understand what the problem is with the cheap ones, but they’re totally worthless, and it’s insulting they’re even on the market. How many other people are out there right now, pulling their hair out trying to understand why those things don’t work?Anyway, If you want to use a system running CAT cable for your multichannel audio needs, just buy these. Radial always has the best quality product offerings - just go for the good stuff. If I experience any failure or noise with these, I will immediately update my review. Until then, these are the best you can buy, and they work.

No setup needed and it work perfectly out of the box.

Top tier quality.

Very useful for send and return to video village on a film set. Used Muxlab for years but this has the more robust Neutrik barrel connector

TIME SAVER BABY ON STAGE PACKING UP!!

I purchased this and the companion piece for the other end of the snake, and they work great. Good quality construction, does what it claims (so far). I haven't had a chance to try it with existing cabling in the walls. I have my reservations on if this will work if you have to go through a switcher or router (not that it is claiming to do that), but that feature may require some research. But I ran the audio over 200 ft using a cat 5 cable and it performed as it should. Just be aware, that if you want to use Phantom Power, you need shielded cat 5 cable. That is not made super clear in other places. So long as you don't need Phantom, any cat 5 cable should work.