RE: Re: Speaker wire specification

["Hawes,Timothy Edward (GEG)" <haweste@xxxxxxx>]

Dave,

I've run 2x speaker, 3x coax & at least 2x Cat5 to 5 locations in my
lounge. I figured this would give me enough flexibility. I've probably not
put in enough Cat5 but that's often par for the course here (mentioning no
names of course ;-)  )

You can make things simple by installing more cable. I took the approach
that whatever I tried to anticipate re: equipment locations, quantities
etc. would never be as it ended up so I'd put in more cable to more
locations to compensate. The cable is cheap, your time is not (unless
you're very lucky) and paying someone else to do the work is even more
expensive.

For your sub, if it's passive, you can use speaker cable, if it's active
you can use Cat5 cable and some of Keith's KAT5 modules, instead of trying
to embed phono cable into the walls at multiple locations. See: www.kat5.tv
for more info.

For your surround sound, you could take a similar approach and either use
speaker cable, or, as some have done, speaker cable for the front and KAT5
plus power amp for the rear channels, or just KAT5 & power amps all
round, depending on where your source equipment will be located. Others
have used ceiling speakers for a totally uncluttered look.

HTH,

Tim H.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: davemel2001
>
> THanks for the replies.  The rub is that I've made no decisions yet
> about the type of equipment I'm going to connect.  Part of this
> process should be to future proof my cabling investment.
>
> I've actually got 3 rooms in the house that would all be great for
> home cinema.  For party type environments, then the lounge is great -
>  I'd love to be able to show music videos instead of just having
> background music for example.  I'm also interested in keeping it
> flexible as to where in a room I put stereo speakers, obviously
> surround sound requires a spread of speakers.
>
> The subwoofer complicates things if it requires different cabling.
> I was hoping to just put a number of outlets around a room and then
> patch up which goes where at Node 0.
>
> Any ideas on how to make this simple?
>
> Cheers
> Dave

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