Surround Speaker Wiring
jmwest1970
Posts: 846
I have a dilema. My living room is not atypical, but it presents a problem for surround speakers in the home theater. The problem is that the equipment is located on an outside wall on the North end of the room. On the East side is the front door and a large opening for the kitchen. On the West side is the back door. Where the South wall meets the West wall is the hallway to the bedrooms. I have no good place to run speaker cables!
Currently I use the Accurian powerline sender and amplifier, but I'm picking up noise from the electrical system of the house and it drives me crazy! I've thought about installing plates on the North and South walls and running the cables through the attic, but this is a rental home. The landlord is cool with it, but I don't know if I can get to the top of the North wall, as it's an outside wall, to fish cable down to a plate. WAF prevents putting down a carpet and running the wires underneath. I've also thought about a wireless rear speaker system, but I don't know if they're any better than my current solution. Does any have any experience with the wireless stuff?
Attached is an drawing of my room for illustration.
Currently I use the Accurian powerline sender and amplifier, but I'm picking up noise from the electrical system of the house and it drives me crazy! I've thought about installing plates on the North and South walls and running the cables through the attic, but this is a rental home. The landlord is cool with it, but I don't know if I can get to the top of the North wall, as it's an outside wall, to fish cable down to a plate. WAF prevents putting down a carpet and running the wires underneath. I've also thought about a wireless rear speaker system, but I don't know if they're any better than my current solution. Does any have any experience with the wireless stuff?
Attached is an drawing of my room for illustration.
Post edited by jmwest1970 on
Comments
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Your right. You do have a dilemma. Some questions: 1. does the house have a basement, crawl space? 2. Is the door behind the loveseat REALLY required? 3. At what height are your fronts?I refuse to argue with idiots, because people can't tell the DIFFERENCE!
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Your right. You do have a dilemma. Some questions: 1. does the house have a basement, crawl space? 2. Is the door behind the loveseat REALLY required? 3. At what height are your fronts?
No basement. The ground is rocky in Arkansas and very few homes have one. The door behind the loveseat is the access to the back porch and yard so the wife says no wires across it. The RTi70s are just over 41 inches tall. -
Can you tuck the wires behind any door frames?
Also can you add some trim along the ceiling and tuck some behind that?
Or,re-do the furniture lay-out to work in your behalf.HT SYSTEM-
Sony 850c 4k
Pioneer elite vhx 21
Sony 4k BRP
SVS SB-2000
Polk Sig. 20's
Polk FX500 surrounds
Cables-
Acoustic zen Satori speaker cables
Acoustic zen Matrix 2 IC's
Wireworld eclipse 7 ic's
Audio metallurgy ga-o digital cable
Kitchen
Sonos zp90
Grant Fidelity tube dac
B&k 1420
lsi 9's -
Hiding the wire behind crown or base molding will be your best bet. Baseboards are the easiest, but the wire run will be much longer than putting up crown.
Also another damper on the exterior wall idea - depending on age of house many exterior walls (at least in our area (SC)) have lateral bracing between the studs in an exterior walls. So, it may be impossible to fish down without existing wall conduit since you would have to drill through the lateral 2x4 brace. -
No basement OR crawl space? The only other idea I had was placing the speakers either:
1. (Left)Above the desk side of the back door frame, (right) on the wall above the xmas tree? OR 2. placing the speakers above the rt70's and tweak time delay, distance and volume?
A 3rd option(Expensive) is stowing that rig and getting a sound bar?
good luckI refuse to argue with idiots, because people can't tell the DIFFERENCE! -
Also another damper on the exterior wall idea - depending on age of house many exterior walls (at least in our area (SC)) have lateral bracing between the studs in an exterior walls.
The house is only 12 years old. Our landlord built it and I've asked about the walls and fortunately there isn't lateral bracing. The primary thing I would have to deal with is making sure I keep any wire in the wall perpendicular to the electrical cable that runs horizontally in the wall. He can't remember if there's access to the top of that wall from the attic so I'll have to get up there and take a look. If there is access I'll just put the plates on either side of the room and run the speaker cable in the attic.No basement OR crawl space? The only other idea I had was placing the speakers either:
1. (Left)Above the desk side of the back door frame, (right) on the wall above the xmas tree? OR 2. placing the speakers above the rt70's and tweak time delay, distance and volume?
A 3rd option(Expensive) is stowing that rig and getting a sound bar?
good luck
WAF kills the placement ideas and I've listened to the Polk SurroundBar and didn't care for the sound. I'm really hoping I can get to the exterior wall in the attic, then I can replace the Monitor 4s with FXi50s to finish out the HT.
