Wiring Question - Planning HT in new home

[doublehamm]

I will be building a home this spring. I will have a room approximately 20'x13.5', and the home builder will allow me to come in myself to do any low voltage wiring.

My questions are:

1. What is the BEST in-wall speaker wire out there? Price shuold not be a huge issue. Should I go with the "4" wire type in case I might need it in the future, or is the "2" wire type just fine and should not need to worry?

2. Should I use wall plate connectors by the receiver, and at the wall near the speakers, or is that a huge "no-no" because it adds more needless interference? I could go either route, though using wall plates would "tidy" it up a bit and might help some wiring confusion. I don't have a problem labeling wires either and just threading them straight from receiver to speaker.

My current plans are for an Integra preamp/amp, and Golden Ear TritonCinema2 speakers. Will probably wire the room for 9.1 since I will have the system to do so - although I have never seen a diagram on how that works. The projector will be a 4k (probably Sony) as I will be doing video work with the Red Epic and that is capable of 6k footage. If any part of that setup seems to not make any sense I am open to suggestions! Anything else I might need to worry about?

Thanks in advance for any replies!

 

[bikdav]

The "2" wire speker cable might offer a little less confusion during the wiring process. As far as using plate connectors at the receiver, I'd go that route to make things easier. Wall plate connectors won't cause any problems, unless you buy some of the rather rare crappy units [most are plenty good enough].

 

[doublehamm]

Any suggestions on the best in wall wire to use? This will be for professional use as I do video work, so I am hoping to get about the best there is out there considering it is a permanent installation.

 

[r_malvia]

I just built a place recently and went with Monoprice.com. I ordered all the wall plates, speaker connectors, in-wall speaker bulk cabling and bulk Cat6e. Good quality at a decent price.

 

[Bryce_H]

Here is a dissertation I wrote about 6 years ago (wow - its been awhile).

I started this quest about 2 years ago. We were building a new house and got an unfinished basement so I could design and build the dedicated HT myself. I started by subscribing to a bunch of magazines and cruising through old issues I already had. Frankly most were not helpful, maybe once every six months they would have an article about home theater that was NOT product related. These typically dealt with lighting or acoustic treatments, or maybe once and a blue moon something about actual construction. One magazine that was very helpful was Home Theater Builder magazine. I ordered all the back issues and got a 2 year subscription. The magazine is struggling and I believe has gone quarterly, but I would still order the back issues. just google them. I then found this amazing sight called Audioholics The people here have been great in answering questions and providing advice. Another great resource is this thread over at Home Theater Forums

I would read this thread front to back. It helped to prevent a LOT of problems. Basically the thread is a series of responses of things people wish they had done or things they are glad they did do. It raised a lot of things I never would of thought of, but of course would have realized later.

I can't stress enough the importance of good room design and dimensions. It will prevent an enormous amount of potential problems. Failure to properly design a room will result in very poor sound, requiring lots of effort (and cash) to rectify. Room acoustics are the name of the game.

After I did all my research and drew my schematics for the room I hired a HT designer and installer for a couple of hours ($75 an hour) to come the house and have me walk through everything I had. This was mostly just a sanity check to make sure I wasn't missing something drastic.

www.hometheaterbuilder.com - Home Theater Builder Magazine - I would order all the back issues (I did) and get a subscription. They may soon be going under, but the content of their magazine is second to none. This is the only magazine that actually focuses on planning, designing, and building home theaters. All the others talk about product reviews. I have/had subscriptions to Home Theater Magazine (my #2 magazine), Sound and Vision, Ultimate A/V, Electronic House, and a couple of others that I can't remember.

I did all the electrical work for my home theater. Here is what I did just for my HT. I have 2" conduit running to all the 7 speaker locations. I also have an insane amount of low-watt wiring terminating in my component closet. Here is the breakdown

- 4 coax in from the main structured wiring panel
- 4 Cat 5e in from the main structured wiring panel
- 4 coax out to potential sub locations (L/R main, right wall 1/3 way back, left wall 2/3 way back)
- 2 coax out to the front screen wall
- 2 Cat 5e out to the front screen wall
- 2 4-conductor shielded 22ga wire out to front screen wall for IR and other future control needs (drop down screen??)
- 2 coax out to front of second row riser
- 2 cat 5e out to front of second row riser
- 2 4-conductor shielded 22ga wire to front of second row riser
- 2 4-conductor shielded 22ga wire to main light switch box

The coax can be used for sub, cable, or sat systems. Cat5e is for networking or control needs. The 22ga shielded is strickly for control needs.

Also don't forget to run some wires to a potential front projector location (electrical and video).

When we had the house built we had structured wiring put in every room (but no audio). Every room has a 4 jack plate with 2 RG6 F-connectors and 2 Cat5e jacks. The office actually has 2 of these. I also got the living room pre-wired for a 5.1 in-ceiling to set up as a second system for casual viewing in the future. Just some ideas of what I have done.

Good luck and keep asking questions.

 

[r_malvia]

Like Bryce_H, when I built my place last year, I ran everything I can think of. Once the framing is complete, you can start running all the cables and wires. The entire home network is on CAT6 and the entire phone system is on CAT5. The conventional phone wiring is usually CAT2, but the price is pretty much identical between CAT2 and 5 nowadays. Go crazy with the CAT, as I wired up every room. I think I paid about $160 for 1000' of CAT6 on monoprice (CL2 rated). For the theatre room, I ran 3 HDMI's through the ceiling, just in case one of them fails. As well, if you can, leave some pull strings behind when you close up the walls. At least in the future, you can fish new wires through if needed.

 

[Crackerballer]

It would be interesting to see people run wires through conduit so when everything is sealed up you could really run any new wire you needed just by fishing an old one out, or like malvia said, run a few wires in and then it would be easier make new runs.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Unless you buy cheap speaker wire, you will be fine with any 14 gauge wiring in a room that size. If you want to go nuts, you can put in 12 gauge wiring.

Monoprice is your friend in these situations:
For only $146.01 each when QTY 50+ purchased - 250ft 12AWG CL2 Rated 4-Conductor Loud Speaker Cable (For In-Wall Installation) | 12AWG Loud Speaker Cables

By all means, go ahead and run 12/4 speaker cabling if it gives you some peace of mind. You can decide to bi-amp at a later date should you choose with zero headache.

I personally would NOT run conduit to the speaker locations, but if you choose to do so, then 1.25" orange flex-conduit is appropriate...
ASIHome - Carlon SCG4X1C-100 - 1-1/4" Resi-Gard Conduit w/ Tape

Resi-gard from Carlon is what you want and you can buy it from .75" up to 2" in diameter. 1.25" is appropriate if you ever intend to put HDMI into the conduit (or need to!).

Your projector location should be wired with 3 or 4 cat cables and at least one HDMI cable and conduit. If you do those 3 things, then you should be good forever.

A piece of cat cabling or two at the screen is good for potential items that may need to go up there. Wii sensor bar, X360 Kinect, or other unknowns. Once again, if you run conduit there, you have a future solution for the unexpected.

Of course, if you have a chance to truly wire your home pre-drywall, I always suggest that it is the proper time to wire the heck out of your entire home as if you actually inted to live there for the rest of your life. Speakers in all rooms you consider important, perhaps a home run system to a centralized equipment closet (if you can do it) and with your theater, perhaps wiring to a location outside of the theater itself so that light, heat, and noise from your equipment doesn't affect the viewing environment.

Also a good time to consider locating the projector outside the room as well to bring the noise floor down within the room.

These are all things worth considering in new home and one of the reasons why a dedicated A/V specialist company could be of immense value to you if you want it all taken care of properly.

 

[WaynePflughaupt]

Don’t forget electrical. Have your electrician put in a dedicated circuit for the home theater electronics only. If you’re going hog-wild with a bunch of outboard power amps, you might have a second or third circuit put in as well. If you use more than one circuit, make sure they are on the same service leg. Make sure you have an electrical outlet and audio signal cable installed at every location where you could potentially put a powered subwoofer. That’ll look much nicer than having audio and power cables draped across the floor from the sub to the closest outlet. Have a separate electrical circuit(s) installed for the lights and any peripheral wall outlets around the room.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt