Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners speaker wire runs in a new house

You can buy two and plug them together.

Two questions:

I'd rather not have two sub cables connected together in the wall, but if I have to what is the connector I need for that?

Does home depot have CL rated wire for in wall use? (I'll find this one out tomorrow, but would like a backup plan if the answer is no...Radio shack perhaps?)

Make that 3 questions...Do I need the wall plates now, or just put the cables in the electical boxes and add wall plates later with them hooked up to the plates?

I forgot you're running it in the wall. My concern there is two-fold: 1. finding sub cable that is CUL-approved for inside the wall and 2. what if you pull on it and end up disconnecting it? I ran my sub cable on the outside because I didn't want to fool around with terminating coax. It was easy enough because I hid it under the trim. You may want to do the same. I think it's more practical because you don't really know where the best place for the sub is until you try multiple locations.

I don't know about the US but Canada's HD does have CUL 12 gauge speaker cable.

You don't need wall plates now but make sure that the speaker cables are covered well so you don't get foreign matter in there.

I don't think I have ever seen a specific sub cable for in wall use and no you can't joint hem unless in an accessible junction box. I think you could just use RG - 6 coax cable for your sub cable and then termminate it at the box with an F type to RCA adapter in a wall plate.

Plates to come after drywall finished and painted.

I used wall plates that changed from cat5 into RCA plugs. Of course, my run is less than 6 feet, but that could work for you. They're kind of hard to find, but I got them at Home Depot. I think Leviton was the brand.

The sub is going in one of two corners of the room, so I could just run cables to both (and then I can do dual subs later if I want).

Maybe I'll tape up the end of the speaker wires or something to try to keep dust/dirt out.

I'm interested in the idea of using cat5 for long subwoofer runs. This has been a question in my head as I plan the future HT room I might actually someday get time and money to begin.

Since unlike regular speaker runs, it is low current, (although I never looked into exactly how low), the thin gauge of cat 5 should be fine while providing sufficient shielding interference.

Correct? or no?

Zarak,

I neglected to mention that you are setting your room up very nicely.

Murph,

You can buy shielded and unshielded cat 5. If your 500 is anything like my 600, I don't recommend the use of cat 5 cable. My 600 is extremely sensitive to noise and the plastic connectors on cat 5 don't provide shielding at that critical termination end. You may be fine of course depending on what your electro-magnetic environment is like but I see it as an unecessary risk.

The cable that I linked to originally is a 50 footer and is CL2 rated for in wall use.

Regarding the j-boxes. Make sure you get low voltage boxes, with open backs, they are much easier to work with (trust me, I know).

Edit: Zarack, you can get next day air from monoprice.com for $35...even at that price, the 50 footer is worth it. I would suggest getting a 6 footer of the same cable for when you get a wall plate up...you should look around the site and see if oyu need any other types of A/V cables and bundle it all into the same order.

Monoprice also has this statement on their main page "California Overnight Sunrise, delivered on the next business day before 2:00 PM Pacific Time for Only $7.50 Flat upto 10LBs, is available for CA, and Reno, Las Vegas, Pheonix, and Tucson in NV and AZ. Please consult the Service Area and ZIP Code Guide for additional information."