Re: Audio Cable dilemma

[Nigel Orr <Nigel.Orr@xxxxxxx>]

At 15:26 14/06/00 +0100, you wrote:
>As you all know any form of cabling is not Wife-Friendly

The sort that isn't visible seems to be acceptable (phew!) :-)  But that's
trickier with modern houses, solid ground floors and
weetabix^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H chipboard upstairs floors

A couple of ideas:

How big is the expansion gap around the edge of the wooden floor?  I'm
assuming it's a 'floating floor', as you say it's on a solid base.  There
might be room there, as long as you leave 10mm or the minimum required for
floor movement.  I'm assuming it's a glued-together floor, if not, you
could lift a strip of it, make a slot in the concrete below, and run the
cable in conduit in the concrete.

Can you find a friend with a router?  you can route out a slot along the
bottom of the skirting board, and cover it with some type of filler (wood
filler if it's varnished, polyfilla otherwise!)

What are the walls made of?  If they're hollow, run it up, under the
upstairs floor, and down the wall to the speaker position.

Even if they're solid, as long as you have the right paint, it's fairly
easy to make a slot, put conduit in, and plaster and paint over it- ideally
in a hidden corner (eg a chimney alcove), as there will inevitably be some
difference in the finish.

RF would work if all else fails, but nothing can beat your own personal
electromagnetic field surrounding a bit of copper (IMHO) :-)  The RF ones
will still need a power supply cable, which might not be any prettier...

> option in terms of speaker cable? The output from the AMP is "DIN
Continuous
>Power Output (1kHz) in Surround Rear 80W per channel (8 ohm) (using 1
>channel)"

Use whatever cable fits in the hole, preferably bigger than figure-8 bell
wire!  I use 2.5mm T&E mains cable for all speaker wiring, but it's
well
over-rated for the job, particularly for surround speakers, which will
probably get hit with <5W for their entire life, and probably more like
1W
peak... but whatever cable you use, try it _before_ you install it!  And,
as ever, whatever you are installing, run 2-3 times as many cables (eg
co-ax, UTP etc) as you think you need- you won't want to do it twice!

Nigel


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