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speaker placement and wiring question (1 Viewer)

brankulo

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hi, i came across this thread. i am new to all this home theater systems and need little help. i recently built new house an want to purchase surround system. i like onkyo system suggestion in this thread, but would like to go for HT-S9100THX instead.
1) my living room is prewired for 5.1 system but this is 7.1 system. are the speakers wireless? if no how do i solve this so there are no cables visible on the floor or walls? i am not even sure if the satelite speaker outlets are in right locations. i can post my room layout here if it will help. thanks


 

Jason Charlton

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Well, the speaker placement is pretty good, and you're right - you definitely have the room geometry to support a 7.1 system.

Do you have attic access above? I can see that under carpet/behind baseboards won't work in this case.

That's an interesting ceiling effect, and potentially helpful. You could run speaker wire outside the walls, but tucked up in the corner where it won't be seen unless you're really looking for it (you could also paint the speaker wire so it really blends in).

You'd still need to drop the speaker wire to the speakers on the back wall, but that could be made to look really clean by just punching a small hole up where the wall meets the ceiling for the speaker wire to go into the wall, then drop it straight down the 18 inches or so where it can come back out of the wall directly to the speaker.

You would do the same thing for the opposite wall (to conceal the speaker wire running from the receiver to the ceiling), but obviously it would be a longer pull behind the drywall. You'd probably need a cable fish tape to make the pulls easier - something like this.

Those would be pretty long runs, since you'd be going around the perimeter of the room, but good speaker wire is cheap. Here are some good options from Monoprice.com
ir
(including 250' with a white jacket for $40).
 

Robert_J

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As Jason mentioned, attic or behind the ceiling things that are up there. If there are locations where you can see wire up there, you can use flat wire. It's expensive but it will disappear behind paint. You could use it in the places where you might see a wire and then solder regular wire to it for the places that are completely hidden.
 

brankulo

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thanks, so you guys thing the two wires already in place are in good position? i was thinking they are little too high but maybe not. for rear speakers, i am thinking just run cables above those dropped soffits (there is a 4" gap between them and actual ceiling). there is no attic. than i would just drop down from the soffit from its far rear corners, get some ceiling mounts and attach speakers. would that be a good placement, or little too high. it would be around 10' high. i am assuming i would tilt both pairs of speakers down towards the sofa. am i right? thanks
 

Jason Charlton

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They probably are a bit high, but given the architecture, you don't have much choice, and even so, if you are able to angle them down slightly, you'll be fine.

For the rear speakers,ceiling mounts would work fine with the speakers angled slightly. Follow the guidelines on the Dolby website to determine how close to the corners they should be. You don't have to rigidly follow their guidelines, since the Onkyo 9100 system has the Audyssey calibration feature built in so it can fine-tune the speaker levels to accomodate your specific room configuration.
 

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