First post in this forum, so please forgive my ignorance. :)

I'm not a audiophile or electrical engineer by any stretch, but my wife bought me a Bose (I can hear the groaning already) HT system last Christmas. For the money, and the fact that I installed it in a townhouse basement (odd dimensions, not planning on settling down in this house long term), it's working out great.

I installed the surround sound by pulling the basement baseboards and running some Monster in-wall copper speaker wire under the drywall and then putting the baseboards back on. Behind the television/system, I put the Bose in-wall Speaker adapter kit and ran all five wires to it. For the front speakers, I brought the wire right up and through the wall and mounted the speakers. Since Bose uses their freaky proprietary plugs, I found some bare wire to AC-2 plug adapters and screwed them right onto the speaker wire. These work pretty great, considering the kludge.

For the center channel and rear surrounds, I wanted to use the wire which came with the speakers which have the Bose plug on one end and RCA connectors on the other. I installed Leviton quickport plates at the walls but had a hell of a time finding base wire to RCA jacks to connect the wire in the walls to the plates.

Here's my solution, which isn't really working out. I found some QuickPort RCA connectors which were basically barrel couplers and snapped those into the wall plates. I then went to RatShack and found some "solderless RCA connectors" and cut the plastic shielding away and soldered the copper wall wire to those and plugged them into the back of the QuickPort jacks.

This has worked to a certain extent. However, the rears are sort of loose and I lose connection. (I've been putting in a new floor in the basement, so the speakers have been plugged and unplugged a few times.

I'd love to find a more secure solution. I've seen QuickPort RCA Compression connectors, but don't know if that's for coax or copper wire. Can't seem to find any guidance on it. Heck, I don't even know what a "compression" adapter is, except it sounds like it would suck to get your finger caught in one. :)

Long story short (too late) I'm looking for your advice on how to put more secure and less MacGuyver connections from my bare wire to RCA wall plates. (And don't get on me about the Bo$e system. It works for my needs. ;))

Thanks!

First, RCA seldom carries power signals, it's a line level signal connector. This may or may not have any bearing on your system.

Second, if I was faced with figuring out how to go from "bare wire terminals" to "RCA," I'd probably buy a Radio Shack RCA cable, and cut off the connectors at one end.

There's no inherent reason RCA ends won't work with speaker wire. In fact they'll work as fine as long as they're soldered properly. They're not commonly used for speaker connections, but they ARE used for it sometimies, especially with HTiBs and BOSE-type systems. RatShack does make some speaker cable that has an RCA at one end and is regular 2-strand speaker wire terminated with small spades at the other, but it's a very small guage; 24g, I think.

Yeah. And my wires are in the walls already. I JUST put the basebaords back on. I'd hate to have to pull them for a third time. I guess I just need to find some higher-quality RCA plugs to solder onto.

I'm not the best solder'er, but I guess it'll just take some practice.

You could buy a pre-made RCA cable, cut off one end, and twist/solder the copper to copper. Some people will tell you that this extra interconnect may degrade the sound, but I wouldn't believe them (and especially not for a system where the room hasn't had $50k in acoustic treatment). It's easier to solder wiring than connectors.

That was a thought I had. I mean, this is a Bose system set up on a corner bias with regular sheetrock walls with no consideration for acoustics. I'm not likely to notice a tiny bit of degradation. Just looking for a more secure connection.

Thanks for your time and advice, guys! I'll report back when I figure out what I'm going to do.