Whirlwind Catdusa CT-F

The Catdusa CT-F is the stage end of Whirlwind's Catdusa system — a passive, four-channel analog fan that takes four XLR sources and routes them down a single Cat5e run to the CT-M at the far end. There's no power supply, no DSP, no rack unit to account for; it's pure copper, passive, and dumb in exactly the right way. The job it does is simple: replace a four-channel analog snake loom with a single Cat5e cable you can pull from almost any venue's spare bin or buy at a hardware store in a pinch.

Four female XLR tails collect your sources — vocals, instrument DIs, monitor reference lines, whatever the count calls for — and the etherCON Out carries all four down the run. The Thru jack is the part that earns its keep on larger stages: you can daisy-chain a second CT-F box onto the same cable path, doubling your channel count without running a second home run. Shielded Cat cable is required to pass phantom, and Whirlwind specifies 110-ohm wiring inside, so the same cable can carry AES-3 or DMX on other systems without crosstalk concerns. At 0.7 kg, it goes in a pouch, tapes to a mic stand base, or sits in a drum riser pocket without drama.

This belongs in any rig where you're tired of rolling heavy copper or where venue infrastructure only gives you Cat runs between stage and rack. It's a natural fit for IEM rigs that need a few monitor reference feeds sent back from stage, or for lean playback setups that need a couple of instrument inputs without a dedicated analog snake. What it isn't: a solution for eight or more channels without chaining multiple boxes, and it won't work with unshielded Cat if your sources need phantom. If your whole console workflow depends on a dense analog split, a proper analog snake still makes more sense, but for four channels and a long pull, the Catdusa system is hard to argue with at this price.