Whirlwind Catdusa CT-M

The Whirlwind Catdusa CT-M is a passive breakout box that takes one Cat5e etherCON run and splits it into four male XLR outputs. Its job in a rig is simple and specific: replace a heavy copper multicore snake for short analog distribution runs — IEM transmitter feeds, playback outputs to a stage box, or a small broadcast split drop. At 0.7 kg and $163, it sits at the affordable, lightweight end of what Whirlwind's Catdusa line does, and it asks nothing of your power distribution because it draws exactly zero watts.

The dual etherCON IN/THRU jacks are the feature that makes this genuinely useful at load-in. You can daisy-chain multiple CT-M units down a single Cat5e home run, dropping four channels wherever you need them without running separate cables to each position. Shielded Cat cable carries phantom power through the box, so condenser mics and active DI boxes on the XLR tails will work as expected — just confirm you're using properly shielded Cat5e or Cat6, because the phantom pass-through depends on it. The 110-ohm wiring also means AES digital and DMX signals can share the same infrastructure if your system uses those alongside analog.

This box earns its place in IEM rigs and playback setups where you're already running etherCON infrastructure for analog distribution and want a clean, lightweight stage drop without coiling a multicore. If you need more than four channels at a drop point, you'll want a larger Catdusa variant or a proper stage box. It's also not a solution if your runs are long and unshielded — phantom reliability and noise rejection degrade quickly with the wrong cable. Engineers who've standardized on etherCON analog infrastructure will find the CT-M an obvious, inexpensive piece of that system; engineers still running copper multicore everywhere may not have enough Cat infrastructure in place yet to use it.