Need help asap!

[Mulley2472]

They are about to start dry walling my basement and I need some advice. I have a 5.1 surround system wired in wall. The runs are about 22 feet long for each rear speaker. I am running audioquest flx 14/2 wiring. I have the speaker running about 4-5 inches above in spots and also to the side of the electrical power wiring. I am unsure if this is okay or not. I can't test it yet however I have received differing advice some say it's fine and some say to run the speaker wire zig zagging over the electrical power wire to break any fields that may be created by the wires being that close to each other. I'm unsure how to run this speaker wire any better considering the power electrical wiring for the lighting seems to be everywhere. Maybe I am over thinking this but I just want to be safe. Please help! Thank you

 

[TLS Guy]

They are about to start dry walling my basement and I need some advice. I have a 5.1 surround system wired in wall. The runs are about 22 feet long for each rear speaker. I am running audioquest flx 14/2 wiring. I have the speaker running about 4-5 inches above in spots and also to the side of the electrical power wiring. I am unsure if this is okay or not. I can't test it yet however I have received differing advice some say it's fine and some say to run the speaker wire zig zagging over the electrical power wire to break any fields that may be created by the wires being that close to each other. I'm unsure how to run this speaker wire any better considering the power electrical wiring for the lighting seems to be everywhere. Maybe I am over thinking this but I just want to be safe. Please help! Thank you

The basic piece of advice is that you run all wires in conduit, so you can replace them in case of failure and above all to allow for change in technology. Not to use conduit is a basic fundamental error.

 

[Mulley2472]

I am new at this please clarify. So I should buy flexible conduit? Any special type and run my two speaker wires in that and then drill a larger hole in my floor joists to run the conduit with speaker wires inside to my receiver?

 

[TLS Guy]

I am new at this please clarify. So I should buy flexible conduit? Any special type and run my two speaker wires in that and then drill a larger hole in my floor joists to run the conduit with speaker wires inside to my receiver?

Just make sure the conduit is big enough to pass a snake down to pull wires. If there are curves you need bigger bore than you might think, otherwise you damage the wires pulling them though.

 

[Mulley2472]

Will conduit prevent interference from the electrical wiring? What kind of conduit would you recommend?

 

[highfigh]

I am new at this please clarify. So I should buy flexible conduit? Any special type and run my two speaker wires in that and then drill a larger hole in my floor joists to run the conduit with speaker wires inside to my receiver?

Flexible conduit is fine, as long as you use the correct type for the cabling inside. Low voltage cabling isn't allowed, by code, to occupy the same conduit or junction box, unless it's in a separate non-conductive/non flammable jacket or the box has a divider inside. If you think you know how many cables you will need, forget that and plan for more. If you want to be relatively safe, add a couple of Cat6 cables to the mix and you should be OK for quite a while, in theory.

The common guide for filling conduit- no more than 60%. Pulling cable around curves causes added resistance and you DO NOT want to pull on cables that are tight. Use some kind of lubricant- could be Windex, could be silicone spray, could be wire lube from an electrical contractor- use it.

List the cables you plan to run- Home Depot sells blue flexible conduit up to 1" but electrical parts suppliers Grainger, etc have orange flexible conduit with 1-1/4", 1-1/2", 1-5/8", 1-3/4" and 2" diameter. The fittings for this can be orange, but it's not absolutely necessary that you stay with that color- the gray parts work just as well and if you find that you need to use a large junction box, these fit the hole knockouts.

 

[highfigh]

Will conduit prevent interference from the electrical wiring? What kind of conduit would you recommend?

You can use metal conduit and it may help with interference, but the best method of avoiding RF and EMI is to maintain distance of more than 12" if they run parallel to power wiring. Don't ever bundle low voltage (audio/video/network/any communications) cabling with high voltage (120/240V supply wiring) and if the two must cross paths, do it at a right angle and keep them apart. Never pass your cabling near motors, transformers, breaker panels, etc.

If you use metallic conduit, ground the end closest to the breaker panel.

 

[TLS Guy]

You can use any type you want. Although grounded metal conduit is best for for cables other than speaker cable. If there are no AC lines in proximity this is not usually an issue. The only exception is dimmers which radiate RF, and gounded metal has a distinct advantage, even for speaker cables as RF can get rectified in the high gain stages through negative feed back.

As I have a lot of dimmers, I used metal conduit.

 

[Mulley2472]

I can't thank you for you taking the time to respond. I understand keeping parallel running speaker wire and electrical wire 12" apart but I'm not entirely sure how to accomplish that when the electrical wire covers the majority of the floor joists. I was hoping that running a conduit would assist with any potential interference problems.

 

[Eric Crowder]

Why choose Audioquest? It seems expensive for relatively small gauge wire. On monoprice.com you can get CL2 rated 12/2 or better yet 12/4 for substantially less than Audioquest and long runs should have much better sound because of lower resistance. I personally recommend using 4 conductors, you can either bi-wire to double the wire gauge, or for redundancy in cause a wire has an open circuit you can use another wire already in jacket.

-Eric