Home Theater? In A BOX?! (onkyo)

Improvolone

I think running wire is fun.

If you have attic access, you are fucking golden. In my last place I ran my speaker wire into the attic by tying it to the coax that was coming in. I tied a string to the coax too. I pulled the coax up, untied the wire, and pulled the string still by the floor to reset everything. I did it all myself, it was a pain in the ass but I did it and it was awesome.
Figure out where you wantt your speakers ahead of time. Install the mounts. Drill where you want the wire to come out of and shove something (unbent wire hangar was my choice) through it. Scurry back into the attic and RUN THAT WIRE!!!
The only thing I needed to patch after all this was a couple of small holes.
A fish tape will make things much easier. I hate metal ones, get a nylon one.

I got my wire at PartsExpress.com, it was the best price I could find for the length that I needed. Buy cl2/in wall rated wire. The wire won't start a fire (odds are), but non-cl2 rated wire will acts as a wick if there is a fire. That is bad.

Rigor Mortis

kpeezy wrote: »

I don't even see the need for a center speaker really. The image I get from my two fronts is very good. It would be cool to try one out, but I don't really feel like paying for the matching center (especially when I'm only using two channel currently).

I have Hales Concept Twos right now and got them for $700 ($500 + 200lbs of shipping o_O) on audiogon. They were a lot more than that new... it was a great deal.

In theory, you have two ears, so you only need two audio channels for perfect imaging. But then you take off the headphones and suddenly more speakers = better imaging. I doubt the center channel does anything you can't do with two fronts, but it does help overcome the acoustic properties of the room, reflection vs. direct, crosstalk, inaccuracies in downmixing from the original X.Y studio mix, etc.

That said, I still prefer stereo because $X spent on 2 speakers gets you better gear than $X spent on 5 speakers and a sub

Luq

Improvolone and Djeet, thanks for the tips. I will definitely make sure I get the CL2-rated. Djeet, I would definitely love to run the wire under the carpet or something. The problem is that then when I reach the correct point at the wall I have to run it up until it reaches a speaker mount point. The wife is not a fan. The speakers don't fit or even look right on top of end tables, and speaker stands are a no go. Maybe I'm overlooking something easy but I think I'm stuck running cable.

Improvolone

To get the wire from the floor to the speaker, tape it to the wall, spackle over it, and paint it. It should hardly be noticable.

ElJeffe

You can also very easily run the speaker through the wall, assuming there's not a fire break or horizontal stud running through the wall (which you can determine with a stud finder or a pair of knuckles). Punch a small hole where the speaker goes (just big enough for the wire) and drop it down to a point just above the floor. There, you can install a speaker wire outlet plate and connect the wires from the carpet using banana plugs. You'll only see a few inches of wire coming up from the ground, and that can be obscured with a plant or magazine rack or something.

The process takes about an hour per speaker. Alternately, you can run the wire through cable conduits that have adhesive to stick to the wall, which is fairly inconspicuous if the color matches, and takes about 5 minutes.