Whole House Audio Wiring

[blurvey]

I had a professional company wire my entire house for whole house audio using Cat 5 wiring, everything ending in my basement theater. The company has since went out of business and I can't make heads or tails of what he did. In my master bedroom there is a set of ceiling speakers that have 2 sets of speaker wire at the cutout. One dead ends at the back of the TV out of the wall, but one set dead ends into the double gang box on the wall where the CAT 5 wiring is. I am installing a set of Sonance Symphony S621TR in ceiling speakers to connect to my existing Denon reciever and paradigm fronts,center and bass. I am just really confused on the set of speaker wires that dead ends into my double gang box, is this for some sort of override system for the eventual whole house audio ? Do I just connect both sets of speaker wire into my speaker ? Any suggestions would be great, I'm thinking I'm going to have to get another audio/video installer to figure out the mess......

 

[MDS]

I would suspect that the wire that emerges from the wall behind the TV (where presumably the receiver lives too) is 16/4 - 16 gauge, 4 conductor wire and the other 2 wires that go to the ceiling are 16/2. Do all of those wires meet at the double gang box on the wall?

If so, the intent was to use the 16/4 to connect to the receiver and then to have a volume control at the double gang box. The speaker wires that go to the ceiling would then connect to the other end of the volume control. That approach seems to be pretty common with 'structured wiring' in new homes - at least that is how mine is run to the master bathroom and one other location in the living room.

A Tone and Probe generator can be used to trace the wires. Really good ones (very sensitive) are somewhat expensive, but I bought a simple kit ($40) at Home Depot called the LanTracker and it worked well enough to enable me to figure out which wire is which.

 

[BMXTRIX]

You really have to start toning out wiring and determining which wire is going to which location. Typically with whole house audio there is a central location (the head end) where everything runs back to with the speaker wire and with CAT-5 wiring.

The speaker wire, very often, goes from the ceiling speakers, to a volume control location on the wall (like you are describing) then to the head end. I personally ran cat-5 and speaker wire the same way in my home. Several rooms are prewired for in-ceiling speakers and have the wiring going from the head end to the wall by the doorway and then up to the speaker location in the ceiling.

But, if nothing is marked and you have no clue, then a toner/probe kit is what you need.

 

[blurvey]

Thanks for the advice on the toner/probe kit. My only problem with the volume control is that there is also a single gang box next to the double gang box, which I thought was for the volume control. I will look further into where the wires go with the toner/probe kit and if I still have questions, I will make sure to post those. Again, thanks for the advice....