I thought I had this problem licked. Or at least, I thought I'd found a satisfactory solution. I've posted before about a product I'd purchased to get sound to my rear speakers.

My living room is the worst environment for wiring my rear speakers. It's simply not possible to go around the left or right side, and the floor is wood laminate over concrete. I think it would be possible to go up and over, but that's going to be costly and probably require painting the ceiling (which is a very large ceiling).

The problem I'm having with the Rocketfish (which transmits at 2.4GHz) is that I finally found out that it has been the cause of my WiFi issues. For a while now, I've been unable to use my Eye-Fi card, as it would refuse to connect to my router. I'd also get generally flaky connections from my phone or a laptop. I tried turning the Rocketfish off and everything worked perfectly. Of course, neither of the desktops in my home that are on the 5GHz band have had problems.

So now I'm worried that I'm back to square one. I don't know of any products that can get sound to my rear speakers. Any ideas?

If the ceiling joists run in the same direction as the wires need to go, then the wiring can be inserted into the ceiling at the cost of two small hand-sized holes, one at each side of the room. This would not require any significant amount of re-plastering or re-painting.

So first figure out which way the joists run. If the direction is correct, then any electrician can fish the wiring through for you. Or if you know of a "handy" person, then buy them a $10 "fish tape" and get them to do it for you.

Cheers

The other way to do it, is to run the wiring around the perimeter of the room at floor level, behind the baseboard mouldings. Open doorways might nix that idea, though.

Wouldn't it look pretty bad? I definitely couldn't do the whole wall or ceiling, as those are huge areas to paint. I also worry about matching the current yellow wall color

But yes, I'm pretty sure the joists run the right way. The ceiling is about 25' long, and 12' wide, and I'm trying to go the width.


I'd thought about that, but it's just not possible. To the left is a staircase that breaks up the baseboard, followed by a single door frame and then a double door frame. To the right is even worse, with far more distance including three door frames and a kitchen.

What's underneath that room?

How about some retro knob and tube wiring?

Nothing. Our unit is on the ground floor, and I'm almost positive that my father in law, who installed the wood laminate flooring, had said that it was concrete underneath.


Not sure if the wife would go for that

Are you open to installing cornice/crown moulding?

We actually have it, but it's just as broken up as the baseboard, and I'd have wires coming down from the ceiling at both ends...

Not if somebody competent does the job.
Small holes are easy to patch and paint match.

As for the wire drops from ceiling to equipment at each end: The surround speakers could be wall mounted, up high. Or the wire drops could be inserted into the walls in the same fashion as the ceiling, or surface-run and covered by neat channel trim.

It really all depends upon how fussy versus how practical you want to be, and whether you hire a pro (electrician) or find a competent pal to do it.

Cheers

Personally, I won't settle for anything but wired speakers, regardless of how difficult or time consuming it is to run the wire. A wall is easy to plaster and paint. If you paint the entire wall you don't have to worry about matching a spot or strip. If the paint on the walls is more than a year old you probably will not be able to properly match a spot or strip, even if you use paint from the same original lot/gallon. A smooth ceiling is equally easy. A stippled/popcorn (sprayed plaster) ceiling isn't, so it's preferable to keep holes to originally smooth surfaces.

Thanks for the input folks. Due to the cost of running the wires, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I'll have to do without for the time being. Maybe in the next place.

For now, if we're watching a movie or something I'll turn the Rocketfish on and live with the satisfactory surround experience...

Mark speaks truth. You'd be amazed at what you can do with a fish tape. And a competent professional should be able to patch your drywall so that you'd never know there was a hole. Plus, future homeowners will sing your praises

How wide are the crown moldings?

You might be able to do a hybrid solution. Run behind the moldings and where there is a gap, punch up, go across, and drop down. If the moldings are wide enough they will cover the damage.

Matt, if I lived around the corner I'd do this for you. I'm helping a neighbor with some network and audio wiring this Friday actually. His place has an unfinished ceiling in the basement and we can also get into an attic on the second floor when needed. Fish tape takes care of the rest through walls this time around.

It's not going to be as back breaking as the deck he's helping me build over the next few weeks.

When I had to do this, I went behind the baseboards, and when I hit doorways, I just pulled up the transition strip in the doorway and ran the wire underneath it. If you don't have any such transition strips in your doorways, you could always add a short one just to cover your speaker wire. When I got to the area below where the speaker is, I just did the fish tape thing from the speaker to a hole behind the baseboard. I had no previous fish tape experience, but there isn't all that much too it -- just persistence.

You can also hide the wires behind the casing around the doorway if your door has it. Just be careful not to pierce it with any finish nails when putting he casing back on.

Have you thought about going infrared? That should leave the wifi alone.

Do you have links to any products?

I had a set of IR speakers. The ones I had really were not up to the task of providing home theater quality sound. YMMV.

Where mine were mounted, there were times of the day where sunlight swamped the receivers. This makes me worry about using them in combination with a Plasma TV, as they pump out a lot of IR noise. Something to ask about.

I'm with Bruno on this one. It's really not very difficult.

Is there living space above that room or an attic or what? If there's an attic, it should be trivial. If not, it'll only be slightly harder unless the floor joists are running the wrong way.

And you really shouldn't need to worry about patching and painting at all. Just put in a low-voltage work box and put in a wall plate with some banana plugs.

Joining in here... we had an electrician add a bunch of downlights to our ceiling. They use a small handsaw to cut a few holes to help them run the wires. For a job like this, the holes can be small enough that you could just put blank wallplates on them. Or, any good professional painter can take the drywall cut-outs, tape them back in place, and cover it over such that you'd never know.

For what it's worth, all the ceilings in our house are white. Going back to repaint later is relatively painless. Just make sure that everything that might get dripped on is covered.

Well, of course I'd do that at the bottom of the wall, but I'm not going to put a wall plate with banana plugs up by the ceiling Even a blank plate would look odd...

I'll think about this, guys. I know a handyman and I'll see how much he'd charge for something like this...

Why not? You have to get the wires out of the wall somehow. Were you planning to just have bare wires sticking out of the wall?

Monoprice - wall plates with banana jacks along with a few sets of banana plugs to connect to them. You'll need FOUR banana plugs for each channel if you're using a wall plate with female connectors. The other option is a wall plate that passes a cable, then you only need two plugs that will go directly into the speakers. Or I suppose none if your speaker has only clamp/spring connectors on it.

I was planning on having NO wires sticking out of the wall if it's up near the ceiling. I think you're assuming that my rear speakers are wall mounted, and they aren't. So my concern is patching the wall or ceiling where the wire needs to be fished through, down to the base of the wall where I always intended to install wall plates with banana plugs if I went the wired route.


4 for each channel? So I need 8 plugs total for my two rear speakers? I don't think I'm understanding you correctly. I just assumed four jacks.

I got the wall plates for my mom's home from Monoprice. It's the only place I would go I'll probably get the speaker wire from there too, if I don't have enough left over from when I ran wire at her place.

Her home was much easier because I had a utility room I could easily route the cable through. I don't have anything like that (no attic or anything).

Sorry, you're right, I made a mistake. It's actually SIX for each channel (speaker). That's because the banana-sporting wall-plates are female on both sides, so you need plugs for the inside and outside of the plate. Plus two more for the speaker itself, so 6 plugs per speaker. That's why I used plates where I can have the wires coming out of the wall instead of having to use so many connectors.

If the speakers are in-walls, then you'll save yourself a bundle by not using plugs, jacks and plates.

Also, if you're thinking about actually paying someone to patch up the drywall then you might consider just calling someone that does cable routing for a living to do the whole install. I have no idea how much that would cost, plus I believe it's pretty regional, so even if I knew the cost here it might not help you that much.

I think what Bruno is trying to say is that one female banana jack has two sides and for each side, you'll want to cap the wire with a banana plug. Luckily, all the relevant parts are very cheap.

It's not that expensive, but it's a lot of terminations and it does add up if you want to do both ends the same way... That means another 6 plugs per speaker at the amp side. Then when you multiply that over 7 channels (in my case) you've got 84 banana plugs (42 pairs). Plus the wall plates of course.

If it weren't from Monoprice, it would definitely hurt.

Some ideas:

Fairly clean component area. There are channels up the wall to the speaker (and then through the coving); also 2 channels down for cat5 and mains:




Speakers are high up the wall. There's some copper tube in the plaster to prevent rubbing.





Behind the components are the sockets for power, speakers and cat5:

All those parts have binding posts (both on the inside and the outside) that accept either banana plugs or bare wires. For a semi-permanent installation, there's no need to use any banana plugs.

Peter