[romanmar]

I'm doing renovations in my new home right now, and I have an option of running wires behind the sheetrock wall in my living room, I've already ran the cableTV wire behind it, so its hidden. I dont have the speaker system yet and I was wandering for a home theater speaker setup how I should prepeare:

how should I run the wires,

what wire I should buy,

what positions should it be in.

I also dont like to see speakers, what can I do about that, I can't really make holes for it, cause I dont have the system yet, maybe some other way to hide it.


My living room 12 feet by 20 feet, a little over 8 feet in height. Drawing of room attached.


Thanks for your advice

 

[9volt]

some suggestions:


-when you run ht wire, just attach it to the studs in the approximate location where your speakers will go. then just punch a hole in the wall when you need acces to the wires. presumably you will mount the speaker or have a wall plate where the hole was punched. take good notes and pics of the locations. use a tape measure + refrence point in your pics. put an empty electrical box behind the drywall at each speaker location.


-run conduit from behind the av system to the main speaker locations. you could then run your main speaker cables via the conduit. i use one length of cable,and just have a holein a blank wall plate to trim out where the wire enters the wall.


-run wire for two-three sets of rears. one above the window, and a pair in front of and behind the hallway. again secure the wire behind the wall, and you won't see any of it until you use it.


-run rg6 coax to two locations for subs. i would do one to each corner of the room by the a/v system.


-run cat5 ethernet to the a/v system. drop it into a closet somewhere, or where ever your computer will be.


-i used 16 gauge wire for my surrounds for cost reasons. stuff from home depot will work. i went the conduit route in front so i could feed fat cables through the wall.

 

[Ian Fleet]

Be careful about running speaker wires next to electrical wiring or else you might be disappointed when you hear the 60 hertz buzzzzzz. Keep the wiring at least a foot away. You can cross over electrical wiring but that's all.

 

[ntode]

Quote:

Originally posted by Ian Fleet Be careful about running speaker wires next to electrical wiring or else you might be disappointed when you hear the 60 hertz buzzzzzz. Keep the wiring at least a foot away. You can cross over electrical wiring but that's all.

I was told that this wasn't the case with speaker wire.


I don't know which to believe. I kept everything as far away from each other as possible, just to be safe.

 

[romanmar]

Thanks, this is exactly what I've done, I've ran both speaker and ethernet cables.