how to wire for surround sound audio distribution?

Question

I am building a home and want to pre-wire for surround sound and run wiring for external speakers on the back deck. What do I need to buy for connections and wire. Thanks

Answer 1

If you are running in-wall wire, it needs to be CL3 UL rated cable. In general, the heavier the gauge, the better.

You may also want to look at getting wall plates for where the wires will begin and end at.

Speaker pins will also allow you to connect your speakers easily and cleanly.

Good luck!

Answer 2

For your home theater wiring you will want to run 12guage/2 conductor Inwall rated speaker cable to the 7 speaker locations (front left, center, right, side left, right, back left and right) you should run an RG59 coax and 12guage/2 conductor to your subwoofer locations. THX certified speaker cable would be preferred. All of these cables should be run back to the head end (where your surround sound processor will be located). You can either trim out the cables in the wall with a wall plate with 5 way binding posts or you can leave about 10 ft. of cable hanging out of the wall and run it directly to the receiver (this is not only cheaper, but less connections means less install time, less signal loss, less potential for a bad connection). For speaker locations, this is dependent on you sitting position and screen size. Check out the THX website.
http://www.thx.com/mod/products/speakermodes.html
For your distributed audio, you will want to run 14 guage/4 conductor speaker cable with a Cat5 data cable to each keypad/volume control location. Then run 14-guage/2 conductor to each speaker location. This gives you the option to use a standard volume control with a simple knob or a keypad that can control you source (cd player, sat receiver, tuner). Again all of these cables should be run back to the head end. This is the standard home audio prewire in the industry and will be compatible with most home audio music distribution systems such as the Niles Audio ZR4630 and the NUVO Essentia.
If you have any more questions feel free to IM me.
Good luck
rhurson

Answer 3

There are several ways to do this. You want o keep your stereo sound so you will need to run a Cat5 which has all the leads you will need rather than the standard home stereo wiring. It is more professional, but it cost more too. Cat 3 is your normal telephone wiring. Which ever you choose to use...it's your choice. If you use standard speaker wire you will need four runs from point A to point B from your source which is the TV or Stereo Unit which ever your going to use.
You will have to splice if your going to use two way audio connectors and the choice should be Stereo not mono.
It is very simple to hook up just run your leads from the source area and to the destination point and allow at least 6 ft coiled up in case you ever decide to move them to another destination you will have enough wire to do this instead of having to wire again.

If you are going to run speakers all over the house in different areas you will need a step up transformer to keep your current consistent to run all speakers. I hope this has Been helpful

Answer 4

Im doing the same thing. I ran inwall speaker wire from my receiver thru the ceiling, down into a single gang box. Afterwards Im going to install the wallplate; plug in the speakers and BOOM sound. You could run the wire from the receiver over and install inwall/ceiling speakers on the top of your deck.

Just a thought...

Answer 5

you want to envision an audio distribution equipment. actually that is an amplifier that takes your speaker outputs from the A/V receiver and splits them into 3, 4, or extra ouputs to be routed to different rooms. Google "multi-room audio" to locate extra advice.

Answer 6

Since you are bulding a home a would suggest you check your local or state buiding codes.
That would at least tell you what the mininum requirements are for your area.