Do wall plates decrease signal quality?

[mtvector]

I am getting ready to wire some rooms for home theater and other various A/V tasks and I'm trying to decide if I should use wall plates or not. For example, I will be running RCA interconnects from my CD player across the room (down through the wall and through the basement) to the other end of the room to my amp. If I put wall plates at each end and then connect to the actual equipment with short interconnects, how much and I degrading the signal? The other option is to just bring the terminated wires right out of the wall and plug them directly into the equipment. Please share your thoughts.

As a side note, this site is amazing. I am a long time audiophile and I can't put into words how helpful this site is to me. I am geting ready to do some major installs and the the amount of money I have saved myself by reading this site is mind boggling. I was ready to go out and probably spend thousands on high-end cables before I started reading this site. Now I plan on building most of my cables myself and getting the rest (like S-video) from BlueJean. I think I might even sell my expensive cables and buy myself a new soldering iron!

 

[BMXTRIX]

You could run into some small amount of signal loss through wall plates. But, I would still use them. Just make sure you have a solid connection point and good wires running behind the wall. This way you are minimizing the potential for signal noise.

If at some point you need to move your equipment or move out, then you really have no hassle. It's definitely the way to go.

 

[gregz]

I wouldn't be worried one bit about using wall plates, assuming they're solidly built and not connected by a thread. As BMX says, make sure you have solid connections and sufficient wire gauge for the lengths you're running.

 

[Leprkon]

Beamer, any special precautions for a video signal done the same way ? would he need to check for 75 ohm connectors and use shielded cables inside the wall ?

He doesn't specifically mention video, but just in case...

 

[mtvector]

Leprkon - good point. Yes, video could/would be handled this way as well. My biggest concern here is signal quality. The wall plates would be slick, but if there is going to be any noticeable decrease in signal quality, I will probably forgo the wall plates and just use straight wires.