[stuartlee]

Hi Guys and Gals,

My new house (built last year) has Legrand Nuvo for music distribution to six zones. One P3100 three zone player with three P100 players, all with banana-type jacks. 20W per channel and everything seems to work fine.

Currently, the banana jacks at the back of the Nuvo players are directly connected to the speaker wires that run throughout the house.

Now I'm thinking of:

1) putting all the Nuvo stuff inside a network cabinet rack on casters.
2) making an audio input panel using a 24 jack patch panel with banana jack keystones installed inside an enclosure or mounted on a stud. The patch panel would be connected to the speaker wires going to the speakers in various zones.
3) inside the rack, I would use speaker cables from the Nuvo equipment to the banana jack patch panel:

Nuvo->speaker cable->patch panel->in-wall speaker cables->speakers
(Currently: Nuvo->speaker cable->speakers in 6 zones)

Reason for doing it is that the speaker cables may be too short (I suppose I could lengthen it) to go into the network cabinet or if the network cabinet is rolled to the side by the HVAC guy, it might stress the thin speaker cables (although there are cat6 cables, too, connecting the cabinet to the enclosure).

But the Nuvo players output 20W per channel (all zones are just L&R) and I am concerned about:

1) Will the addition of jacks and plugs increase resistance to the extent that the sound quality (volume?) go down?
2) Will all the keystone jacks with banana jacks in one patch panel create interference?

I'm an audio noob, so please go easy!

Thanks in advance.

 

[stuartlee]

I know that a wall plate with audio jacks are used all the time. But my experience with that stuff in my previous home involved shorter runs in one room, where the home AV receiver is in the same room where the speakers are located. Just wanted to know if there are any additional considerations where the speaker cable runs are much longer (e.g., from basement furnace room to the second floor master bedroom speakers).

 

[Worf]

If you're sending speaker level audio around, interference is much less of an issue as they are high level signals. If you're not getting interference now, you likely won't get extra interference by adding extra jacks.

You will want to invest in good quality jacks and plugs because you want them to make good connection and not corrode which will impact sound quality.