What are these wires?

I'd guess four speaker cables and one line-level cable with an RCA plug for a subwoofer. As to where, who knows... There may be a panel someplace or they may sticking out of some other hole, somewhere... Can you ask the previous owner?

Are there speakers in the walls or ceiling of the room (or some room(s) )?

Perhaps there is a closet where the equipment may have been?
Contact the previous owner and ask?
Ceiling speakers? In wall speakers someplace?

There was likely a audio system right in front of or nearby to these wires, and as Don says they lead to four speakers, possibly in wall or on ceiling if you can't find where they lead out to, and probably a powered subwoofer for the RCA cable.

If you have no clue as to having speakers installed or not, you can start with the RCA connector. If you have an ohmmeter, see if you can measure a small resistance between the ends on the RCA connector. Somewhere around 4-8 Ohm, give or take. If you detect a resistance, there is something connected and need to locate it. Connect this to a source, and you may hear low frequencies from somewhere in your room/house. You can further try this using pairs of the Cat5/6 cables, but there’s no telling what these may be for. Hopefully they are not connected to a POE router or switch somewhere in the attic or patch panel.


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I forgot to thank you all for your input on this. (so thanks!) I ended up purchasing a line toner device and tracing the wires through the walls. The wires definitely go up to the four corners of the ceiling. It's really difficult to pinpoint exactly where they end (maybe a higher-quality toning device would help). So I'm not comfortable cutting holes without having a better grasp of the location. The fact that the ceiling in this room is vaulted makes this an even more dubious proposition for a novice like myself. I'll probably have a professional A/V installer come put them in as soon as this whole global pandemic thing is over. I already got the subwoofer connected and it works great.

Thanks again, friends.

Meeks said:

The wires definitely go up to the four corners of the ceiling. It's really difficult to pinpoint exactly where they end (maybe a higher-quality toning device would help). So I'm not comfortable cutting holes without having a better grasp of the location.

Click to expand...

a useful way to USUALLY find wires more easily is to do your rough location, then reduce either the sender power or receiver sensitivity ... or both ... until you can identify a smaller spot.

Doesn't always work, but worth a shot. Try it with some wire on your floor or whatever.

If you are going to the expense of professional speaker installation, do yourself a favor and do it right. Shoving speakers into 4 corners is not a good approach, if good sound is your goal. Better to just ignore those wires and set up your system separately, placing the speakers properly. The Dolby site has diagrams of multiple speaker configurations. Once you have selected your goal, follow the recommendations as best you can. Then, you will at least have a fighting chance of enjoying your system.