Need an experts opinion

[janjansen]

Morning!
Hope you guys can help me. Bought a house with a build-in system in the basement. There are 6 speakers on the walls and this (see photos) is coming from the walls.
I guess the 3 x 4 wires should be the speaker wires? Should I just connect those to an amplifier? And what about the hole in the wall. Should I connect those wires as well??
Thanks so much for your thoughts on this, appreciate it!
Jan

 

[TLS Guy]

Who knows what that mess is? Where does the mess go? Usually these are systems done by builders wrong.

 

[highfigh]

Morning!
Hope you guys can help me. Bought a house with a build-in system in the basement. There are 6 speakers on the walls and this (see photos) is coming from the walls.
I guess the 3 x 4 wires should be the speaker wires? Should I just connect those to an amplifier? And what about the hole in the wall. Should I connect those wires as well??
Thanks so much for your thoughts on this, appreciate it!
Jan
View attachment 64624View attachment 64623

The plate and terminations you have need one binding post per wire, not one hole per cable.

You need to find out which speakers are connected to each set of wires. The easy way involves using something like this- I searched for 'signal tracer and wand' and this one sells for less than $17 on Amazon. For the price, it's worth having, even if you only use it one time.

Connect the alligator clips to each wire in a pair, turn it on and listen for a warbling sound- once you ID the speaker, label the wires and move on to the others.

If you don't hear anything when the leads are connected, slide the switch to 'CONT', which means 'Continuity'- it shows shorted wires.

That leaves you with the question of "How do you want to connect the speaker wires and control the speakers. If you want to use the speakers for background audio, you could use a speaker selector with volume controls but watch out if the speakers are in pairs and both make sound when only two wires have been connected to the alligator clips- if the original installation called for a volume control in each room and they only ran one two conductor cable, you'll need to operate the system in Mono, which is fine, but stereo receivers don't usually have a mono switch or setting unless they're a bit above the bottom of the line. However, stereo output can be connected to a single speaker, but it requires a special device or circuit.

Looking at the top photo- I'm assuming the junction box had a blank wall plate- am I correct? Does the room/area have two speakers?

If yes to either/both questions, you need to pull the other wires out of the box and identify where they go and come from.

I see three crimp caps outside of the box and more inside- did someone splice short wires onto the ones that came from the far end? They tells me the drywalllers killed them when they cut the hole for the box and it looks like they used a chainsaw. That's very sloppy work. They also located a drywall joint next to the box and that's a really bad idea.

If the wires inside of the box are extremely short, it's not a case of 'All is lost!", though. A hacksaw blade holder can be used to cut the metal tab used to fasten the junction box to the stud and once the wiring has been corrected, you can use an 'old work box' or a low voltage ring- Arlington is one company that makes these- their part number is LV-1 and it denotes 'Low Voltage, single gang'. If you ever need a double gang low voltage ring, it's called 'LV-2'. The orange ring is from Carlon and I don't like using them because they don't leave enough room to work and can crowd the opening.

BTW- unless you're in Chicago and a few other places, low voltage, which includes audio, video and most communication cabling, you don't need junction boxes. Code also forbids using low and high voltage in the same junction box unless a divider is added or if the molded box separates them, like the one in the photo. Again, I use Arlington parts, but they're available from other companies.

 

[WaynePflughaupt]

The plate and terminations you have need one binding post per wire, not one hole per cable.

I’m going to hazard a guess that the wiring came out of the wall straight to the amplifier or speaker switch – hence no wall-mounted binding posts. Personally, straight-to-amp (or switch) is the method I've always used. Wall-plate binding posts are pretty, but it's just one more connection point that has be be dealt with. Besides, if the installation is done right, the cables should be coming out of the wall behind the equipment rack, so on one's going to see the binding post plate anyway.

OP, highfigh already pointed you in the right direction, especially where the signal tracer. You won’t be able to do this without one.

But to add a little clarification, there is a standard for wiring four-conductor speaker cable that professional installers typically follow:

Speaker 1: red (+), black (-)
Speaker 2: white (+), green (-)

Hopefully whoever did this wiring used this protocol. If not, your job’s going to be a lot harder.

However, looking at the wires in the junction box, it appears that green is being used for (+). This is assuming the other protocol, for zip-cord speaker wire, where the gold wire is (+) and the silver wire is (-).

Once you sort out which wires go to which speakers, you still have to figure out connections to the amplifier(s). Six speakers is to many for direct connection to a single amplifier. A speaker selector switch will have to be used. or a six-channel amplifier.

As you can see, this can be difficult to advise long distance. It best requires a knowledgeable person on site. Thus, if you are unable to figure all this out, you should hire professional audio installation company.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[highfigh]

I’m going to hazard a guess that the wiring came out of the wall straight to the amplifier or speaker switch – hence no wall-mounted binding posts. Personally, straight-to-amp (or switch) is the method I've always used. Wall-plate binding posts are pretty, but it's just one more connection point that has be be dealt with. Besides, if the installation is done right, the cables should be coming out of the wall behind the equipment rack, so on one's going to see the binding post plate anyway.

OP, highfigh already pointed you in the right direction, especially where the signal tracer. You won’t be able to do this without one.

But to add a little clarification, there is a standard for wiring four-conductor speaker cable that professional installers typically follow:

Speaker 1: red (+), black (-)
Speaker 2: white (+), green (-)

Hopefully whoever did this wiring used this protocol. If not, your job’s going to be a lot harder.

However, looking at the wires in the junction box, it appears that green is being used for (+). This is assuming the other protocol, for zip-cord speaker wire, where the gold wire is (+) and the silver wire is (-).

Once you sort out which wires go to which speakers, you still have to figure out connections to the amplifier(s). Six speakers is to many for direct connection to a single amplifier. A speaker selector switch will have to be used. or a six-channel amplifier.

As you can see, this can be difficult to advise long distance. It best requires a knowledgeable person on site. Thus, if you are unable to figure all this out, you should hire professional audio installation company.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Those Decora plates are a handy way to pass the cable through without terminating or having a bundle of random cables coming out of a hole that's too large when someone doesn't know about the many inserts that close the hole around the cables, like brush inserts.

As far as the toner, a AA battery would work as long as another person is available to listen for the sound and make notes/tell the person at the head end which speakers the wires go to.

In this business, going into a house and making sense of the wiring is common and sometimes, we need to be very creative with our solutions because a lot of contractors pay people to do work they have no business being involved with. I worked on a house that was wired for sound by an alarm guy and he didn't even run a second wire for the speakers in the front of the house or the patio and it was too late to change it to stereo because we went in on the day the realtor was listing it for sale (the guy used zip cord in walls and ceilings, which is a code violation). Ceiling speaker wires came out of the trayed ceiling at the creases, the wall over the fireplace didn't have studs or furring strips, the drywall was just nailed across the top and bottom of the available area over the mantle with 1/2" of depth for the cables AND electrical wiring, so the electrician knocked a hole in one of the concrete blocks so he could mount a junction box.

 

[BMXTRIX]

So here's what I'm guessing...

You have 3 rooms with 2 sets of speakers in each room.
Each room has a wall plate in it. This wall plate is at normal 'switch' height. So, 40 inches or so off the floor. Perfect location for a VOLUME CONTROL! But, there is no volume control installed at any location. Instead, there is ONE white cable with 4 conductors in it. Red, black, white, and green. There are also two other wires in that box with two conductors each. They appear to have some color to them. Legally, they are supposed to be in a jacket, but it doesn't look like that is the case. Anyway, those wires go out to the speakers in the room. Silver for positive (red/white) gold for negative (black/green). The left speaker is typically wired to white and green. The right speaker is typically wired to red and black in a normal 4 conductor audio cabling setup.

So, this is something you can at least verify in every room. You can pull off the wall plate and just check to ensure that one of the two conductor cables is tied into red and black, and that the other wire is tied into white and green. From the photo you provided, it does appear that things are wired this way. But, it is good to check in all the rooms.

In the basement, you have the other end of those wires coming out of the wall directly, this is called your head end. I'm not sure how much length, or how organized those wires are. Sometimes there are labels on them for where they go, other times there are not. If I had done this, I would have put in a double gang low voltage box, and put in binding posts instead of just pulling the raw wires out of the wall. Then I would have labeled the binding posts for where they go and which is 'left' and white is 'right'.

These are the wall plates I'm talking about, and I'd get one with 8 binding posts (8 wires = 4 speakers total), and one with 4 binding posts...

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=3326

But, those wires, are the distribution point for your audio. You have a TON of ways to now send audio from that head end location out to the various rooms. Since the rooms don't have volume controls in them, you need to figure out what and how you would want to listen to audio in those rooms. You also need to realize that a single stereo amplifier isn't designed to handle 3 speakers per channel. So, that needs to be addressed up front.

The simplest way is to get a stereo amplifier, and a speaker selector. Since the rooms have no volume controls, you can get a speaker selector/volume control unit. This will allow you to connect any source you would like (perhaps a Bluetooth receiver, or a Sonos Port, or a Wiim (mini or pro)). You can even plug your phone directly into the amplifier to get audio playback if you would like.

If you would like more control over each room, then there are options for that which will cost a bit more. Maybe a lot more. Depends on what you want to listen to.

But, at a basic level, you need an amp like this....

Sonance SONAMP 260 MKII Home Theater Power Amplifier | eBay

We Provide FAST and EASY Resolution!

www.ebay.com

A speaker selector/volume control like this...

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=38159

And a source like this....

Amazon.com

You would need some speaker wire to go from the amp to the speaker selector, and some RCA cables to go from the source to the amplifier as well.

All in, you can make this happen for about $300, for single source audio playback to the three different sets of speakers.

If you just want all three pairs of speakers to play back audio at the same volume, you should still use a speaker selector with impedance matching to ensure that it doesn't damage the amplifier. Something like this if you want to be as inexpensive as possible...

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=9995

Likewise, you could skip the source and just plug your phone in or an old CD player. If you go cheap, you can get the cost down to just about $100.