Introduction, quick question on in-wall wiring for subwoofers

[diskreet]

Hi everyone, lurked for a few months as I plan out my first nice home theater setup. Dabbled in car audio for a long time, never got further than 3.1 HTIB in my home (sorry!).

TL;DR: Need help deciding if I should run trigger cables, and if so, are there CL2 rated cable available?

Now I'm planning my first true home theater to install after a home reno. I'll have the walls out so I'm going to wire everything in wall for a 5.2.4 layout. No room for rear surrounds as the back of the room is open to stairs up and down for the rest of the split-level house. I plan on running a few extra sub signal runs to the potential locations I could place it, then I'll experiment with the sub crawl and REW to finalize placement.

As far as subs, is it worth wiring the trigger cables? Every sub has such low power standby modes, and I haven't had any luck finding CL2 rated 1/4" mono cables. The signal cables are CL2 rated, as is everything else going in wall (e.g. 12AWG CL2 rated wire for all speakers). I have electricians in the family helping and I can do it all myself, so I've also planned a separate power circuit for just the audio equipment. This is the last thing I need guidance on.

Thanks, and looking forward to participating more than just donating to Gene's GoFundMe.

 

[TLS Guy]

Hi everyone, lurked for a few months as I plan out my first nice home theater setup. Dabbled in car audio for a long time, never got further than 3.1 HTIB in my home (sorry!).

TL;DR: Need help deciding if I should run trigger cables, and if so, are there CL2 rated cable available?

Now I'm planning my first true home theater to install after a home reno. I'll have the walls out so I'm going to wire everything in wall for a 5.2.4 layout. No room for rear surrounds as the back of the room is open to stairs up and down for the rest of the split-level house. I plan on running a few extra sub signal runs to the potential locations I could place it, then I'll experiment with the sub crawl and REW to finalize placement.

As far as subs, is it worth wiring the trigger cables? Every sub has such low power standby modes, and I haven't had any luck finding CL2 rated 1/4" mono cables. The signal cables are CL2 rated, as is everything else going in wall (e.g. 12AWG CL2 rated wire for all speakers). I have electricians in the family helping and I can do it all myself, so I've also planned a separate power circuit for just the audio equipment. This is the last thing I need guidance on.

Thanks, and looking forward to participating more than just donating to Gene's GoFundMe.

Well you can use any wire you want. Just make sure that any wire you do put in walls is in conduit. This is crucial. It is an absolute rule that you never put an AV cable behind sheet rock that is not in conduit EVER.

Technology changes, cables fail. You must be able to pull cables without opening walls.

 

[diskreet]

Agreed. Plan is 1.5" rigid conduit between tv and receiver (short run straight up between studs, no holes/notches), and flexible conduit for sub cables and speaker wire. I have full access to the attic over the room, so I'm only concerned with the wires in the walls.

 

[TLS Guy]

Agreed. Plan is 1.5" rigid conduit between tv and receiver (short run straight up between studs, no holes/notches), and flexible conduit for sub cables and speaker wire. I have full access to the attic over the room, so I'm only concerned with the wires in the walls.

I will still use conduit even in the attic. I did. Wild life can get into attics now and again and they love plastic cable for some reason. But even more the conduit protects cables and makes it really easy to change them. You can certainly use tech tubes, that are cheap and easy to run. Then changing a wire is just pulling a string. I bet one day you will be glad you did.

Another thing for the ceiling speakers make sure you use back boxes.

These are tech tubes.

I prefer grounded steel cable for the speaker wires though. You might think that strange, but speaker cable is a source of hum and buzz,, as it can feed LED and SCR buzz etc, back to the high gain stages via the negative feedback in the power amps.

Ceiling speaker back boxes.

Allow generous sized conduits for HDMI cables. They are very fragile and need pulling very gently.

The other two issues, are the ground plane with avoidance of ground loops and equipment protection.

Ground planes are a whole subject alone and also minimizing buzz and hum from RF interference from LED bulbs, and SCR dimmers etc. It is a real bummer to do a lot of hard work and end up with a noisy humming buzzing system. Without careful planning that happens all too easily. The more channels you add the more obsessional you have to be. Tying in the grounding of cable and Internet systems properly is crucial to avoiding hum and buzz. Good Internet patch bays and hubs are a good plan. Just about everything in the system needs an Internet connection now. Those connections should be wired. Don't rely on wireless. It is a good idea if possible to make your AV system the heart of the Internet system of your house and the same for cable.

Protection starts with whole house surge protection right at your panel. After that if you want further protection then UPS units should be considered, especially these days when electrical storms are more common and violent.

Time spent on very careful planning pays dividends. These are not simple systems now, and there a bear traps aplenty for the unwary.

When it is all done though it gives the whole family a lot of joy.

 

[Mark E. Long]

I will still use conduit even in the attic. I did. Wild life can get into attics now and again and they love plastic cable for some reason. But even more the conduit protects cables and makes it really easy to change them. You can certainly use tech tubes, that are cheap and easy to run. Then changing a wire is just pulling a string. I bet one day you will be glad you did.

Another thing for the ceiling speakers make sure you use back boxes.

These are tech tubes.

I prefer grounded steel cable for the speaker wires though. You might think that strange, but speaker cable is a source of hum and buzz,, as it can feed LED and SCR buzz etc, back to the high gain stages via the negative feedback in the power amps.

Ceiling speaker back boxes.

Allow generous sized conduits for HDMI cables. They are very fragile and need pulling very gently.

The other two issues, are the ground plane with avoidance of ground loops and equipment protection.

Ground planes are a whole subject alone and also minimizing buzz and hum from RF interference from LED bulbs, and SCR dimmers etc. It is a real bummer to do a lot of hard work and end up with a noisy humming buzzing system. Without careful planning that happens all too easily. The more channels you add the more obsessional you have to be. Tying in the grounding of cable and Internet systems properly is crucial to avoiding hum and buzz. Good Internet patch bays and hubs are a good plan. Just about everything in the system needs an Internet connection now. Those connections should be wired. Don't rely on wireless. It is a good idea if possible to make your AV system the heart of the Internet system of your house and the same for cable.

Protection starts with whole house surge protection right at your panel. After that if you want further protection then UPS units should be considered, especially these days when electrical storms are more common and violent.

Time spent on very careful planning pays dividends. These are not simple systems now, and there a bear traps aplenty for the unwary.

When it is all done though it gives the whole family a lot of joy.

That is an incredible room very well done !

 

[diskreet]

Awesome advice, thank you! And very impressive work. Love it.

I can easily use conduit for the ceiling, too. Ethernet will be run in conduit and everything will be wired for sure. I'll figure out how crazy I want to go later but at a minimum I'll do QoS on the streaming device(s) and some network segmentation.

I have some foam speaker backers that I plan to use for back boxes since I won't pull that ceiling drywall off. I'll have R30 or R38 insulation between rafters, with another layer of R30 on top, so there will be tons of insulation around the speakers.

1 speaker will be in an exterior wall with insulation, but the right surround is in an internal wall. Should I insulate above/below that speaker to control noise or is that not helpful?

 

[BMXTRIX]

If you are a DiY type of person, then you can just use cat5/6 cabling for trigger wire if that's what you would like to do. I never pull conduit to speaker or subwoofer locations. I just put in the coax or speaker wire as appropriate. Speakers haven't used 'different' wiring in the last 50 years really, so proper wire will last the life of your home pretty much. Pulling a cat-5/6 wire to any location is cheap and gives you some flexibility for the future at a very reasonable price. Conduit can be quite painful to get into locations, but that's up to you. I stick with conduit between the equipment location and the displays exclusively.

 

[Kingnoob]

Well you can use any wire you want. Just make sure that any wire you do put in walls is in conduit. This is crucial. It is an absolute rule that you never put an AV cable behind sheet rock that is not in conduit EVER.

Technology changes, cables fail. You must be able to pull cables without opening walls.

What’s a trigger cable ?
Op if you plan on living there a long time get most durable cable stuff you can get .
Sheet Rocks?
Yeah In wall is definitely too hard for me Zzz


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[diskreet]

Thanks for all the advice.

Apart from any real hardcore electrical engineering, I can do it all myself. I'm rusty, but my EE courses are still in here somewhere.

On the ground loop issues, I plan on running the receiver (Denon X3600H), LCR amp (monolith 3x), and subs on a new power circuit. New wire, new breaker. The TV, Xbox, network switch, and Nvidia Shield will be on the existing circuit. Need to see with walls open if that's shared with the lights/dimmer.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Lights a dimmers are typically on a different circuit than wall plugs from what I've seen in recent years. I know my last house was definitely that way. I haven't mapped all my current circuits to be that sure. Definitely, if you are DiY friendly, then category cable (cat5/6) is your friend. It's important NOT to go crazy with conduit if there is no need to do so. I mean, you can if you want, but as I said, speaker wiring hasn't changed in decades. The speakers my dad bought before I was born (over 50 years ago) uses the exact same cable that we use today. Kind of like how they don't run conduit to every power outlet. Electrical isn't looking to change standards in the lifetime of your home.

On the other hand, TV locations to equipment locations have got to have conduit (ideally). It's also not horrible to have a central location in your home where low voltage enters the home, or a central location. This will allow you to add/swap wiring in the future should you need to. Not like cat5 wiring WAS a standard in use 30+ years ago, now it's so important to have network wiring at your equipment location. Who knows what we will wish we had wired for in a decade or two, and only conduit gives you that flexibility.

Back on point to your trigger wire. Most people don't use a trigger for their subwoofers that I know of as most subs automatically power on/off when they sense a signal. So, just run a decent piece of coax cable to the subwoofer location and call it a day would be the general recommendation.

 

[diskreet]

Good points. I definitely want conduit in the attic and crawl space in case a mouse gets in. Between studs it's probably not as big a deal, but if I have the walls out anywhere I can reasonably do it, I will.

In-wall coax is monoprice cl2 rated. In wall speaker wire is monoprice 12awg cl2 rated. Splurged on some Blue Jeans Cables for LCR and RCAs, but don't have enough budget left to do all the receiver/amp to wall speaker wires from them yet. I'll make my own and upgrade later.