Page 3 - Steve Bowman

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a musician or a roadie, an audio engineer or a record producer – or whether you mix sound in a church, club, or stadium: When the faders come up, you want dependable, true sound reproduction.

ShowMeCables might be best known for computer connectivity products, from Ethernet to fiber optic to low-loss coax cables. But through the years we have also built up a huge variety of professional audio cables. To save you time as you shop, below we summarize each of our nine types of pro audio products – what it is, how it’s used, and unique product features.

1. XLR Audio Cables

• Connector Type: XLR connectors are known for their three-pin design, typically featuring male (plug) and female (socket) connectors.
• Common Uses: XLR audio cables are widely used in professional audio settings. They are primarily employed for connecting microphones to audio interfaces, mixers, and other audio equipment. They are also used for balanced audio connections, ensuring low noise and

Low-loss coaxial cable is designed to minimize signal loss when transmitting high-frequency electrical signals, particularly radio frequency (RF) signals. It is commonly used in applications where signal integrity is critical, such as in telecommunications, broadcasting, wireless communication, and high-frequency data transmission.

Below we discuss some of the main benefits and uses of low-loss coax and the differences among five popular types, from LMR-100 to LMR-600. We conclude with some unique features of ShowMeCables’ huge selection of these problem-solving products.

Low-Loss Coaxial Cable Benefits and Uses

Here are some key characteristics, benefits, and uses of low-loss coaxial cable:

• Low Signal Loss: Low-loss coaxial cables are designed with special materials and construction techniques to minimize signal attenuation (loss) over long distances. This is crucial for high-frequency applications where signal degradation can lead to poor performance.
• High Frequency Range: These cables

We have written before about the benefits of buying your cable in bulk lengths rather than in shorter pre-made cable assemblies. Bulk cable allows you to cut custom lengths to perfectly fit your installation, it costs less, and with less excess slack in your network it is easier to perform maintenance.

However, in past blog posts we have centered mostly on our wide selection of bulk Ethernet cable, from Cat5e up to Cat8. This time we are highlighting 6 of the 11 other types of bulk cable we offer.

Bulk Savings

At ShowMeCables, buying bulk cable means buying by the foot or by the spool, with a spool typically measuring 500 or 1,000 feet. The general rule is that the more feet or more spools you buy, the less you pay per foot.

The savings can be considerable. For instance, for some types of coaxial cable, our price for 1,000 feet is 20% to 30% less per foot than if you buy up to 49 feet of coax. With other types of cable the bulk savings is in the 13% to 18% range.

Below we list and link

If masses of tangled cables seem to be taking over your data center or IT closet, don’t despair. ShowMeCables has you covered. We’ve been in the cable business since 1995 and we know a few things about cable management.

But before you browse our 150+ cable management solutions, you might read on to see our summary of those products. We’ve broken everything into 10 simple categories, with links so you can go straight to whatever type of product you’re looking for.

So, let’s get ready to get organized . . .

Wire Mesh Cable Trays and Accessories

Wire mesh cable trays look so simple but they do so much. They route and protect network cable, communications wiring, and electrical wire throughout offices and many other types of commercial and industrial buildings. The rugged but light cable trays are mounted on walls, ceilings or under raised floors to provide an orderly path of connectivity for hundreds and even thousands of cables.

Wire mesh cable trays help you solve a lot of challenges. They

Perhaps no device does so much work for so little money than a patch panel. With its array of ports on one labeled, easy-to-see panel, this wonder component centralizes and organizes network connections. It simplifies maintenance and future upgrades and even lets you connect one network to another.

This blog post lists seven ways you can benefit by using patch panels. We conclude with brief information about four Cat6a patch panels we recently added to our extensive line of patch panels, patch panel accessories, and other cable management devices.

7 Benefits of Patch Panels

Ethernet patch panels offer several benefits in network infrastructure management. Here are some key advantages:

• Cable organization: Patch panels provide a centralized location for terminating and managing Ethernet cables. They typically have multiple ports where cables can be connected and labeled. This organization reduces cable clutter, simplifies troubleshooting, and makes it easier to identify and trace specific

Office space isn’t exactly cheap these days. Organizations are looking for ways to get the most from their square footage, especially in cramped IT rooms and closets.

Most everybody has discovered that wall-mount rack enclosures are a great way to fit more IT gear in a room with no more available floor space. But there is another type of product that allows you to truly maximize what little space you might have left: vertical wall-mount enclosures.

Wall-Hugging Top-Loaders

A vertical rack is top-loading – it turns your 19-inch-wide components 90 degrees so that they face the ceiling. In such an orientation they do not stick out from a wall some 2 or 3 feet like horizontal racks do. A 2U vertical enclosure extends only about 5 inches and a 6U needs less than a foot. And yet they are tall enough, up to 35.4 inches inside in SMC’s line of verticals, to hold your deepest components.

SMC’s vertical enclosures have most of the features of our horizontals, such as:

• For cooling, air vents on

If your office feels a bit cramped but your company is not ready to take the plunge into a bigger floor plan, it might be time to further maximize the space you have. The thought of squeezing more usable square footage out of already-small confines such as server rooms, telecom closets, or retail spaces may seem daunting. But there’s a smart solution that’s relatively inexpensive: wall-mounted equipment cabinets.

This blog post describes two big benefits of wall-mounted cabinets and concludes with some details about ShowMeCables’ large selection of them.

Wall-mounted cabinets offer most of the benefits of floor cabinets – they’re rugged, secure, come in many sizes, and have pro features like built-in fans, locking front and side doors, and a front panel of tempered glass for monitoring rack components.

Freeing Up Floor Space

A few benefits make wall cabinets unique. First, they don’t hog floor space. Install one or two in place of a floor cabinet and you’ll marvel at how much bigger the

Floor-mounted rack or wall-mounted rack? It’s a key consideration when you shop for a rack for your IT networking equipment. The obvious benefit of wall-mounted models is that they don’t take up floor space in small rooms. But space isn’t everything.

Below we list six solid advantages of floor-mounted racks, also known as free-standing racks. We conclude with a summary of ShowMeCables’ floor-mounted offerings.

Advantages of Floor-Mounted Racks

• Increased Weight Capacity: Floor-mounted racks are typically designed to support heavier equipment and larger network setups. They can accommodate a higher weight capacity compared to wall-mounted racks, making them suitable for larger networks with multiple servers, switches, and other network devices.
• Enhanced Stability: Floor-mounted racks are more stable and less prone to movement or vibrations compared to wall-mounted racks. This stability is especially important for delicate or sensitive equipment that may be affected by excessive movement.

We have all known the frustration of being in a room that does not have enough electrical outlets. You have to either find a long extension cord to run outside the room or hunt down a power strip or an adapter plug that splits one receptacle in the outlet to two or more.

The problem is, plugging multiple devices into one outlet using a splitter adapter you bought at a hardware store might overload the outlet. You might trip a circuit breaker, damage your electrical equipment, or even cause a fire. Overloaded circuits and outlets cause more than 5,000 fires annually, says the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Power Splitter Cords to the Rescue

A smarter alternative – certainly cheaper than installing more outlets − is to buy some power splitter cords. A power splitter has one male end for plugging into an outlet and enough female ends to power either two or three components. They allow you to fully utilize rooms that don’t have enough outlets, as well as declutter rooms that already have

The popularity of Power over Ethernet (PoE) is growing. Since it was introduced in 2003 as a way to both transmit data and deliver power on a computer network, the PoE market has reached $2 billion. It is expected to hit $3.2 billion by 2030, according to market analysis firm Market Research Future.

Two key devices on a PoE network are splitters and injectors. A PoE splitter allows a PoE-enabled Ethernet cable to be split into separate power and data cables. A PoE injector injects electricity onto an Ethernet cable to supply power to PoE-enabled devices.

This blog post explains what splitters and injectors can do for your PoE deployment. It also covers some terms you will encounter while shopping for splitters and injectors − such as the difference between “mid-span” and “end-span” devices, and the significance of a few key standards that regulate the design of these products.

But first, in case you are new to the world of Power over Ethernet, let’s start with a summary of what it can