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Ok, I am reorganizing my AV equipment with the addition of new Emotiva amp. The amp weighs so much I need to place it lower in my DIY AV rack so it does not break the shelfs.

Anyway when I wired my surrounds, stupid me did not allow for a lot of extra slack. The speaker wire will barely reach the amp, but with no slack.

Is there some type of extension I can add to get more distance without sacrificing sound transmission quality to my Qs8's?

I seemed to see some longer banana plugs once, which might work. I really don't want to twist another piece of speaker wire to the existing run if I don't have to...

Thanks, Randy

Randy what material are your shelves made from?

I placed two 40 lb. buckets of drywall mud (80lbs) on each of our extended shelves whenever we built them to test the strength of each shelf, ours is made from 3/4" MDF with heavy duty shelf rollers ... I bet we could have added another 50lbs without any problems.

Could you terminate the in-wall wires via a wall plate and use short runs of speaker wires with banana plugs on either end for the connects?

Edited to add...

This is how we did ours...

I second BrotherBob's suggestion about the wall plates. As I'm designing my media room, I found a 7.1 plate that's around $30, though I don't know if the 3-gang layout works for you or not:

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/pshowdetl...FTOKEN=88094781

So are those solder type, or do they have RCA jacks on the backside?

You can just go ahead and splice on some more wire with some crimps or better yet, solder. You shouldnt notice a difference, especially not with surrounds. Dont splice wire without mechanically and electrically making a good connection, like soldering. The "western union" is good for this application. You can see it being done here:

http://www.mmxpress.com/technical/connections.htm

Hey Rick,

I may have to build a new shelf unit. I have an old unit I built back in college out of oak. It is very sturdy, however all that is holding up the shelves are those gold colored shelf brackets like this:

They do fine with my Denon 2805, HTPC, CD player, and even my Emotiva Amp right now. However, once I add additional monblocks and 2-channel modules to the chassis it will get very heavy. Currently I'm at about 60lbs with only 2 mono's added. Total weight with 7 mono's is pushing 120lbs.

In regards to the wiring, I guess I was concerned about signal loss or quality loss by having more links in the chain. Right now I have bare wire connections from receiver to speakers.

I was thinking about some of those banana plugs that have a 45degree angle tothem, but I guess I should consider wall plates, and then just add enought cable to go from the wall plate to the amp or Denon.

Thanks for the help..

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In regards to the wiring, I guess I was concerned about signal loss or quality loss by having more links in the chain. Right now I have bare wire connections from receiver to speakers.

Worry less, listen more. I'd solder the connections and shrink-wrap them personally... twisting and wire nutting them is nearly as good though.

Bren R.

Randy the way we built our shelves was very easy, all the material was bought from Home Depot. I wanted a unit that would haul the mail because at the time I measured the top shelf for a 75 lb Rotel 5 ch amp that I was considering and I wanted the shelf strong enough to hold the weight in the extended position with strength to spare.

Also regarding the wall plates, I referred to several sources (including Alan) about signal loss and was assured that as long as there were good connections no signal loss would occur using the wall plate/plug setup ... after having my system going for over a year now I'll most certainly agree.

Anybody ever tested the resistance of solder in a wire splice? I have, the wire went from .1 ohms to .11, not a big difference, so solder away if you want to.

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Anybody ever tested the resistance of solder in a wire splice? I have, the wire went from .1 ohms to .11, not a big difference, so solder away if you want to.

In the 'data' world, braiding the wire together so that it retains as much symetrical contact as possible is the text book method. The sodder becomes more of an anchor and less required for the conductivity. Alternatively twisting the two wires together at a 90 degree angle to the wire run is considered a bad choice unless you are striclty just wanting electricity or you are hot wiring a car and don't have the time to do a nicer job.

I have no idea how much effect this really has on the travel of audio wavelengths or resistance. Could be just old school textbook rhetoric. I suppose I could test the resistance part......but I'm not gunna.

I can say though that I have seen circuits go down just because the tech didn't squeeze his crymper hard enough on a crymp style connector. The two wires were still definately touching but the difference in how well and how much they contacted was enough that the signal degraded beyond a useful level.

MOre useless facts....See sig.

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Anybody ever tested the resistance of solder in a wire splice? I have, the wire went from .1 ohms to .11, not a big difference, so solder away if you want to.

In the 'data' world, braiding the wire together so that it retains as much symetrical contact as possible is the text book method. The sodder becomes more of an anchor and less required for the conductivity. Alternatively twisting the two wires together at a 90 degree angle to the wire run is considered a bad choice unless you are striclty just wanting electricity or you are hot wiring a car and don't have the time to do a nicer job.

I have no idea how much effect this really has on the travel of audio wavelengths or resistance. Could be just old school textbook rhetoric. I suppose I could test the resistance part......but I'm not gunna.

I can say though that I have seen circuits go down just because the tech didn't squeeze his crymper hard enough on a crymp style connector. The two wires were still definately touching but the difference in how well and how much they contacted was enough that the signal degraded beyond a useful level.

MOre useless facts....See sig.

But while the signal is still in the cable it is just voltage and isn't there a bunch of soldered joints with in your amps, receivers and crossovers? None of the solder in those items seems to cause a problem.

Solder is an excelent conductor. A properly soldered connection is considered 'electrically continuous', meaning that the conductivity loss it creates is negligable to almost all applications.

However, defects and poor techniques like adding too much solder can actually decrease the conductivity of stranded wires. Also, excess heat can change the chemical properties of the metals involved to the point where the solder and/or copper can become less conductive or even brittle to the point of easier breakage.

Therefore the less soldering you need to make a solid connection, the better.

Those items are for sure. Now here's something for debate. Passing voltage is one thing and and twisting wires together and black taping or soldering should have little effect if done tightly and properly.

but

passing analogue audio also concerns using the wire not just to pass the voltage but also to pass on the proper sine wave/frequency within that voltage to recreate the sound on the other end.

Now I believe that if you use the right guage for the application and use a continuous strand of the same cable all the way for the speaker run that all this hocus pocus about expensive (ie Monster) cables' weave patterns and so on is once again negligable to the sound quality of speaker wire.
but....
When you twist two wires together, does the big temporary bump in guage size and the loss of continuously aligned copper strands have any effect on the accuracy of the wave pattern (frequency) passing through it???? It has to have some effect but is it negligable to our audible application or can one of those 'trained ears' out there notice a difference.

This, I don't know. I could experiment with a scope at work here but I'd probably get a greivance because Im management and somebody would think I'm doing thier job or something.

Murph, joining different sizes of wire creates no audible problem; this isn't analogous to a multi-lane superhighway suddenly turning into an 8 foot wide dirt road. The signal that drives the speaker is actually carried in the electromagnetic wave that travels along the outside(not inside)of the wire at nearly the speed of light. The part of the wave energy that penetrates into the wire and latches on to the electrons to guide the wave along the wire is lost as heat(the amount depending on the resistance of the wire)and doesn't directly contribute toward the sound in the speaker. The electrons in the wire move very slowly and if this is what really carried the sound it would take an hour or so for it to reach the speaker.

A good explanation is found at pp.2-3 of a section of the materials which Dr. Lesurf originally prepared as an introduction for his students in electronics and physics at St. Andrews. Keeping the resistance of the length of wire low to minimize the amount of wave energy drawn into the wire and lost is desirable, but for example, joining a short length of 16ga wire to a 12ga wire might result in an overall net gauge of about 12.1, and isn't significant.

Excellent answer, the theory itself is exactly why I tried to word my question in such a way as to separate the idea of current verses the wave of the frequency. I was indeed wondering about the effect on the signal verses the current itself. I think this still answers it.

I often have to explain to customers why we add "ceiling current" (more voltage than is required to send the data signals) to certain types of data runs. It is is not to improve their signal quality whatsoever nor is it to keep them from tinkering with the cable (shock value) but because having voltage run through copper wire helps to keep it from deteriorating over time.

This explanation would also be handy to explain inductance, i.e. why signals interfere with one another when poorly shielded cables are run close together.

As a useless side point, not that it matters, we could get the electron flow to come very close to keeping up with the electromagnetic wave if we made speakers with a material like Uranium. If I remember correctly, radioactive materials can have electron flow movement at very close to the speed of light. I can see Monster trying to market this as a benefit in their new cables but I'm thinking it won't be very healthy.

P.S.
I had t reread the linked page a few times to 'get it'.
So far in coming to this forum I have benefited from
- Learning tons more about audio theory
- Rediscovered now unpleasant memories of the fashion habits of my old headbanger heroes. (Damn you BrenR)
- actually had to use the algebra I thought would be useless when I grew up.

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As a useless side point, not that it matters, we could get the electron flow to come very close to keeping up with the electromagnetic wave if we made speakers with a material like Uranium. If I remember correctly, radioactive materials can have electron flow movement at very close to the speed of light. I can see Monster trying to market this as a benefit in their new cables but I'm thinking it won't be very healthy

And the cables could have a nice glow to them, thus you wouldn't want to hide them.

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- Rediscovered now unpleasant memories of the fashion habits of my old headbanger heroes. (Damn you BrenR)

You're welcome.

Bren R.