@lancelock Good plan! I'd do something similar if I wasn't on 100 year old hardwood floors.
Interconnects under floor?
I’ve moved house and now I have an issue that I’m sure isn’t uncommon: in order to have my rack out of firing range of (one of) my speakers, I need to move it to a location in the room that doesn’t allow for me to run interconnects discretely. I’m currently running 12’ balanced ICs to monoblocks that are near the speakers and those are connected with shorter speaker cables. From all I’ve read, longer IC and shorter speaker cables is great but to move my rack to a hood location I’d have to get even longer ICs and run them across the living room and across a major walkway. I thought about running up a wall and across and back down, concealing the cables with some sort of conduit that matches the wall colors, but... has anyone ever run cables in to the wall, under the house through conduit from rack to amps? Is that ridiculous? I’d obviously try to run them nowhere near other electrical wiring.
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I have my gear in my loft and the speakers in the living room below. I pulled up the carpet used a router and made a channel across the plywood floor. I ran speaker wire under the carpet, down the wall and behind the drywall. 45’ of Audioquest type 4 speaker wire for each channel, not the most expensive cable but the sound is great. |
What is this word, "discretely"?@millercarbon BWAHAHA! |
I do have mice. They are bastards. Been waking up to lots of poop pellets, they basically have a rodent scat party institute the middle of the night... but exterminator comes this week. I did sheath the cables with garden flex tubing (p[roper conduit was just too difficult in the right space) and for the receptacles I didn't use the typical open back boxes like for digital/coax but regular blue 2 gang boxes on which I drilled 1" entry hole. |
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@tvad There we go, thank you! I knew I’d seen them somewhere, albeit not at my local store. This should do the trick and hopefully not allow any mice in. Was trying to accomplish without buying new cables, so I might need to remove my XLR and Fischer terminations temporarily to fish the cables through. Thanks for the tips! Happy holiday! |
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@tvad What did you use for for wall plates? Did you use XLR connector plates or did you have some kind of opening that allows the cables to run directly in/out of your receptacles? I’ve used XLR plates in recording studios but curious if adding 2 more connections in the signal path will degrade things. Something like this: https://www.showmecables.com/15-100-017%20ss/ I’m using 5m OCC copper cables with braided copper shielded. I could run that under the house and get another 1m on both ends to run from wall plate to components, but I assume point to point would be best? Thx for your advice! |
Long speaker Wires. Then, if still needed, down, thru crawl space without conduit. Over the years, many locations, I've had very long speaker wires successfully. I've drilled holes against the walls down to my crawl space in many locations, for cable tv, coax, ethernet, signal, speakers, sub, rear surround, outdoor speakers, shop speakers. All without conduit, never an issue. Make sure you don't have mice. Test: start with inexpensive heavy gauge lamp cord (1 strand marked). After that, you will be pleasantly surprised, then, if you must, upgrade those speaker wires in the future. Once I made 50' long pairs out of solid core strands from electrical supply house, twisted them, they sounded as good as prior and later cables. It's by trying stuff that you learn many 'inadvisable' solutions work well. |
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I need to move it to a location in the room that doesn’t allow for me to run interconnects discretely. What is this word, "discretely"? https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 |