Go up or go down. Going through all the studs of the same floor is tedious and destructive. Depending on the floor you are speaking of, you should have either an attic above or a basement below. I did the same thing in a family room about 7 years ago and ran speaker and new power runs to a couple sconces this way.
The best way (IMHO) to go about this is to:
1) locate and drill as generous a hole at your speaker locations as possible. You're going to want to either run a fish wire down through this hole or pull a fish wire out through this hole later.
2) DIRECTLY below your speaker location, remove the quarter round molding, if hardwood floors, or pull back the carpet. As closely to the wall as you can, drill a small hole down through everything to your basement. This hole is only used for establishing a location directly under your speaker in the basement. I used a bit slightly larger than a wire hanger, than pushed a hanger thorugh the hole to easily identify the hole's location later.
3) From the basement you want to drill upwards again to go through the sole plate of the wall above. Add the thickness of molding, drywall and half the width of sole plate and drill a 1" hole up and through.
4) From here you should be able to run a fish wire upwards or downwards between your speaker location and the sole plate hole. It helps if you have two people doing this part, although it is doable by one - but not without a lot of four letter words - don't ask.
5) Do the same thing for the other end of the speaker wire runs.
Although I've never done it, you should be able to do the same thing up into an attic, though I'm thinking it might get pretty cramped.
Another method, if you dont mind changing the appearance of your room, is to run speaker wire behind crown molding. A hole at your speaker and another at the ceiling that can be concealed by molding should do ya. You may have to route out a bit of top plate for this method though.
The method mentioned above is a good one too, but if you want to continue to run the wire up behind the wall to an elevated surround, you're going to have to remove molding from dry wall to make a hole. To me, this seemed like more work than doing down, then back up. The drywall and molding will have to be repaired and painted. This method works best for floor standing speakers in a room with few doors.
One other thing to mention - choose interior walls if possible. Exterior walls contain insulation that is sometimes difficult to fish through. Not impossible, but again, lots of four letter words.
Hope some of this helps!
monsoon
