finish touch

[steelie]

Hi everyone,

This sort of fits in with architectural. I've run speaker cables through my walls for my surrounds and now I want to put the finishing touches by adding wall plates with some posts that I can access with banana plugs. That would give the walls a nice, clean look instead of having the wire come directly out the wall and to the back of the surrounds.

I was wondering what folks thought about most of the stuff available and whether there were any concerns about sound degredation or wattage limitations. Are there accessories anyone would reccomend or things I should stay away from?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[damonrpayne]

I'm not sure I understand your setup. Are you saying you will put wall plates in the wall with speaker binding posts, then run a short length of wire with plugs on either end from the wall to the speakers? I've never known of anyone to do that.

[DrWho]

Just take a quick trip to Radio Shack and purchase a wall plate, the banana plugs you'll need and you'll be all set. I take it that you're going to cut off a piece of wire from the cable you've already run?

There will be some that might tell you of the awful degredation in sound, but they'll be the same people that spend hundreds of dollars per foot of wire (i don't mean to offend anyone with an exageration here...) Anyways, as long as you maintain the same guage of wire, you should be just fine.

One thing you might consider is to use a level and draw lines where you want your plate to be and predrill all the holes you'll be making...it's actually quite difficult to get small things like this perfectly level and i feel it looks akward at a first glance when it's not. And since you can't really undo the operation without repairing the wall, it couldn't hurt to be extra careful.

Lastly, if you've got soldering capabilites, I would suggest soldering all your joints (the speaker wire to the back of the wall plate and then the wire between the two banana clips).

[meuge]

The key is to keep your electrical connections as close to being equal as possible, while also keeping conductivity as high as possible.

Rule of thumb that has worked for me (based on my own measurements) is that each mechanical connection will usually add ~0.1 ohm of resistance (24k/24k Au). On the other hand, a good silver solder-joined connection will add <0.25 ohms of resistance. (These measurements used a 22-gauge stranded OFC wire).

However, it is much easier to get an excellent mechanical connection (by using crimping) than a good solder connection, which I find particularly difficult when it comes to large gauge stranded wire, such as speaker wire.

So it is up to you whether you want to foray into soldering. Regardless, you should be consistent in your method as well as your procedure to minimize negative effects of additional connections.