Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Speaker cable extension...?

Ok so let me set this up. My dad is updating his TV to a HDTV this weekend, and now that the TV won't be a 4:3 projection on top of a large speaker cabinet, there is room to move the components under the tv in some sort of stand. The receiver is in a built in cabinet in the home theater about 5' off the ground with all the speaker wire run through the wall right behind it.

He wants to move the receiver down, but we don't know if the speaker wire will permit that, and there is certainly no way to re-run longer wire.

Does anyone know of a good solution? I've come down to 3 options A) I don't know if there is a good connector to attach more cable to lengthen it.
B) Although it is pretty tight in there, would some sort of IR blaster or extender work? I've never used one so I don't really know what the idea is behind it

or

C) No hope just leave it there and buy longer cables for other components.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

p.s. my M22's, V100, and QS8's shipped today! I can't wait and am grateful for another project to keep me busy for the weekend.

Any good at soldering? That's probably your best bet; solder+electrical tape. Not a great bet, but it should be fine for that short of a distance.

You COULD install wall plates on the wall for the speakers, then use longer cables from the wall plate to the AVR...hopefully I am not misunderstanding the situation.

Splice+solder.

Get a soldering iron from radio shack for $15. You can figure out how to do it in 15 minutes.


I like the wall plate Idea better, but prolly requires more work.

The wall plate would certainly be more attractive.

Hutzal, that's not a bad idea actually...the hole is pretty far recessed into the cabinet, but that might work. I've never tried soldering, but i can't imagine that would be too involved, putting two wires together wouldn't be very difficult.
If i went with the wall plate I may even not worry about mounting it on the wall as it has banana-type connectors on either end. Just buy a load of banana plugs to make sure none of the wires touch and call it good.

This is certainly an option. Installing a wall plate is VERY easy. You can easily buy a low voltage j-box and insert it into the drywall (using post drywall j-box) and your done. THe hardest part would be cutting out the square for the low voltage j-box.

Something like this is what I have used in the past for exactly this purpose (for a speaker wall plate)

I modded my xbox 1 with no soldering experience. I bought a soldering iron and spent an afternoon soldering on an older mother board... next day I cracked open my xbox and soldered several pins and one wire to install the mod chip... This was fairly tough soldering since The wire had to be soldered into a SUPER TINY hole without getting excess solder on the motherboard.

Soldering two wires together is a piece of cake though. Just clean the wires with an alcohol swab first b/c solder does not like grease/grime/ect.

Anyway, supporting Hutzal's Idea I would just use a keyhole saw like this to cut the hole:

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=90294-51834-8052&lpage=none

So having no soldering experience...do I need to get special solder in order to solder cables? is there any quality loss to fear there?

There is an environmental quality.
Go lead free.
And don't inhale the puff of smoke.

If your wires are somewhat hidden in a cabinet or out of sight, why not use some electrical wire nuts. They are used all the time in house wiring. If you want to solder the connections later on, that is always an option.

yeah I got to the hardware store and explained that I wanted electrical solder and the dude brought those up. I totally forgot about them. The wires are now re-run and ready to go! thanks all for the great ideas!

hmm... Didn't even think of that. Good call!

Sometimes the easiest solution turns out to be the "best" solution. LOL!!!

I agree that lengthening your cables is the easiest and cheapest solution but just to let you know, your second option was feasable as well but it requires greater costs.

If I ever get time to finish my new HT room, it has been wired so that all the AV equipment will stay on their existing shelf in the adjoining room. I will be using an IR blaster (that I already owned) to allow me to access everything from the HT room via one single URC 300 remote. I choose to go this way because my new room is long and skinny which makes for a nice theater feeling but left little room for an AV rack. 3 Walls are foundation walls so a recessed closet would protrude into my old room anyways. Also, I will have no noise or heat from the AV gear effecting the movie experience. I'm using wall plates similar to what you saw earlier in the thread and the old rack is already in a naturally recessed area so it looks quiet nice.

My PS3 for Bluray movies poses a challenge because of it using Bluetooth only for it's remote/controller. I haven't decided yet if I will move it into the new HT room or play with some of the mods and solutions out there to get around it.

For you, unless it makes sense for you like it did for me, splicing the wire is definitely the moste economical. There are some solid connectors that don't require soldering as well but you just can't beat the self satisfaction of melting metal.

And yes, please don't breath the fumes. It effects brain functions and you might go out and buy a BOSE 123 system or something.