in wall speaker wire for fronts?

[scottdrummer]

Hi
My home is under construction and im having the electrician prewire the rears, I was going to ask him to put some in wall wire to wall plates for the front L and R. Is there any disadvantage to doing this over having cables direct from speaker to amp resting on the floor?

 

[MDS]

Hi
My home is under construction and im having the electrician prewire the rears, I was going to ask him to put some in wall wire to wall plates for the front L and R. Is there any disadvantage to doing this over having cables direct from speaker to amp resting on the floor?

My opinion is that it is a waste of time and money to have wall plates for the front speakers. My house was originally wired that way and I immediately changed it and ran new wire to the sides of the room for side surrounds and used those wall plates for the surrounds.

You need 3 wall plates really. One 4 post to connect the receiver front left and right speaker outputs to and then two 2 post for the left and right speakers. So basically you get to hide maybe 6 feet of wire behind the wall, but you still have to connect wire from those wall plates to the actual speakers and that wire will be visible on the floor.

Better to just connect straight from the receiver to the speakers and hide the wire along the baseboard or tucked under the AV stand.

 

[AVRat]

Not really.

 

[k_lewis]

Hi
My home is under construction and im having the electrician prewire the rears, I was going to ask him to put some in wall wire to wall plates for the front L and R. Is there any disadvantage to doing this over having cables direct from speaker to amp resting on the floor?

Probably the only advantage is aesthetics- plus you'll never have to worry about someone kicking the wire. My front speaker wires looked like two pythons laying on the floor (Synergistic Alpha Quads) so I pulled them in-wall, looks neater.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Probably the only advantage is aesthetics- plus you'll never have to worry about someone kicking the wire. My front speaker wires looked like two pythons laying on the floor (Synergistic Alpha Quads) so I pulled them in-wall, looks neater.

But those cables will suffocate in wall.

 

[highfigh]

Hi
My home is under construction and im having the electrician prewire the rears, I was going to ask him to put some in wall wire to wall plates for the front L and R. Is there any disadvantage to doing this over having cables direct from speaker to amp resting on the floor?

So you're letting the electrician, who probably doesn't give a rat's butt about sound quality and proper installation technique for audio/video cabling, do the job? Having worked around many, many electricians, I can say that they receive little to no training WRT noise induction, future-proofing an installation and proper terminations. The only ones who know/care already do low voltage installations and/or came from the low voltage field. The other ones have an interest in A/V, so they checked into this beforehand but most electricians have no idea that passing high voltage wiring near low voltage cables can cause all kinds of improper operation and weird problems, especially if they're run parallel in close proximity.

A good custom integrator will be faster, do it better/more reliably and if you need to change cable types later, you shouldn't have a problem as long as they run smurf tube or conduit. It may cost a little more but it will work out better in the long run.