Pre-wire in wall...

[Coppertop]

I'm setting up and remodeling my basement for a theater. I am in the process of adding speaker wires in the walls. I was planning on getting Altona speaker wall plates which can also accept bannana plugs as well as hard wiring. However, the placement for my stereo/component system will reside off to another area. I know that for the front left/right, rear left/right I only need a +/- connector. This being new to me is the subwoofer. What or how many connectors should I pre-wire for a subwoofer? I was guessing that I would only need 2 being the + and - connectors. However, I see that some options also include RCA jack?

So the question is should I pre-wire just one RCA cable for the subwoofer as well as the + and - terminals?

Appreciate any comments and or suggestions. Thanks in advanced.

 

[MDS]

It depends on how you want to hook up the subwoofer. Normally you would use its low-level inputs and thus need a single cable terminated with RCA jacks. If the sub is powered and you are using an AV receiver, this is the best way to connect the sub.

You'd only need to run speaker wire to the sub location if you intend to hook up the sub using its high-level inputs.

 

[Coppertop]

Both?

Okay, just to be on the safe side... it wouldn't hurt to pre-wire both a + and - wire terminal as well as 1 RCA cable right?

 

[jonnythan]

Can't hurt, obviously, but a single speaker wire pair won't get you anything with a sub. You'd need two pairs of speaker wires to hook it up to high-level inputs - and two more to output the high-level inputs back to the speakers.

 

[ParadigmDawg]

All you need is the one cable terminated by RCA.

 

[Coppertop]

Okay it seems easy enough that I would just like to put in an RCA cable. However, the subwoofer I'd like to get in a package is the BIC Acoustech Home Theater System. I cannot seem to get any more information as to what the H100 powered sub uses for connection from here. So how can I be sure I will get a subwoofer that will only need RCA cable? Or is it VERY common that powered subs generally use just RCA cable for home theater purposes.

 

[annunaki]

Very often, many inexpensive subwoofer use RCA connections only. The only need I could see for speaker wire run for a sub would be with an outboard amplifier powering a passive subwoofer. Other than that a piece or two of RG-6 or RG-6 Quad terminated with RCA would be perfect.