So we had some water damage in the basement, and the remediators had to cut out the bottom 3 feet of the drywall. While this is a giant pain in the ass as I’ll be the one who has to rewall everything, it’s also a great opportunity to completely rewire the space for my speaker system!
But there’s a catch - while the space is ideal for setting up length-wise (it’s about 12’ x 20’), our sectional couch is 10’ wide and can’t be used in that configuration (the couch wasn’t purchased for that space, otherwise we’d have gotten a different one). So now I’ll just set it up the way it was before (lemme see if I can code it up…)
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Now, I have speaker wire that is rated to be run behind the wall - so that’s fine. So given an unlimited amount of wire, how would you wire it up so that a receiver could be placed at the top of that room with one of these?
You’d mount that plate on the wall behind the receiver and run wires to single(+/-) plates near each speaker location and one by the TV for the center channel.
Oh, and even though the speakers are different distances from the receiver, make sure the front wires are the same length as well as the rear wires. Even if that means leaving excess wire in the wall.
Yes, I know how to connect the wires to the connect plate. My question is - in what configuration could I possibly arrange my wires so that I could use it with the TV both where it is now, and where it would ideally be placed (at the top of the room)?
I’d make the center of the top wall the place for the main plate and run four identical lengths to the four corners. You could run a fifth length for the center channel to where the TV is now but it would be unused if you moved the TV to the top wall.
This configuration means your receiver would have to be near the main plate in either set up.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at - you want to be able to move the TV, but keep the speakers where they are? Or have 2 independent setups?
When we finished our basement a few years ago, I had a similar issue - we weren’t sure if the room would be laid out with the TV on a long wall or a short wall. I wound up installing 2 separate sets of speaker wires - one from each potential TV location to the 4 corresponding TV locations. I just put the plate in at each TV location, and left the unused wired in the ceiling at each unused speaker location (we have a suspended ceiling since it’s a basement). And then put a tasteful plant in front of the unused plate.
Basically have 2 independent setups. We’re planning on selling within the next year, and I’d like to have it set up in the most functional way possible. But since I’d also like to be able to use it in the meantime, I have to complicate things.
I was worried you were going to say that. If you’ve got one 2 ft wire, and one 100 ft wire, the difference in time between the signals reaching each other is approximately 133 nanoseconds. The speed of sound in air is approximately 340 meters/sec, so the difference in sound reaching your ears is equivalent to moving your head by .045 millimeters. about the diameter of a human hair. I don’t know about you, but I move my head around more than that while watching a movie.