Cabling for steel framed home (1 Viewer)

[alanCLA]

Hello, I need some help. I am building a steel framed home and need some advice for the speaker cables i wish to put into the wall cavity.

What type of cable is best?
Will the frame interfere with the quality of sound?
what will be the longest distance i can run ?

For the home theatre im talking about running the cable around a room that is 5 metres wide and 6 metres long. But i also wish to run speaker to other parts of the home and would guess the longest run would be around 30 metres.

Please help me as i have to put the cables in soon in the next couple of weeks.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Welcome to the Forum, Alan!

The requirements for steel-frame should be no different than regular houses. I say “should be” because I don’t know if or how housing codes in Australia differ from those here in the States. Here, speaker wire generally needs to be rated for in-wall applications, so-called CL-2 or CL-3. Length is not a problem, as long as suitable wire gauge is used. Generally, 14 ga. is fine for up to 50 ft., over 50 ft. go with 12 ga.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Dick Knisely]

Alan -- I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I can't see any reason that the framing will cause trouble for the speaker wires. Runs that long mean you should plan on using heavier wire (12g). I have one run that's about 20 meters and used ordinary zip wire and it works just fine. I'm sure you can go farther but you may want secondary amplifiers anyway (below). Don't know the rules where you are but here in wall wiring must meet firecode specs that are different than the usual speaker wire.

If I were planning on doing a whole house setup then I'd consult with a pro about a distribution system that lets you control volume levels in each room. More than one way to do it but using a secondary amp in the destination room(s) also means you are as sensitive to losses across a long run. Do some searching here in the construction forum and online in general and you'll find other people who have done similar things and put up info on what they did and how they did it.