how are your surround sounds mounted?? and what do you do with the cables? (1 Viewer)

[James Sybert]

i recently mounted my surrounds to the back wall behind my sofa. and it looks and sounds great.

but i'm trying to decide what to do with the cables. they are run through the attic and down the wall, so they are hidden from sight.

but, i currently just have them poking through the wall and connected with banana plugs to the speakers.

i'm wondering what to do to clean that up. a modular faceplate with connectors seems too big to stick next to it, but i'm perfectly willing to do that if that's the best solution.

what do you guys do? and if you pics, that would be great.

james.

 

[Jeff Bamberger]

One suggestion....

If you do the faceplate route.....don't use the connectors idea as it's another splice in your wire connections. Rather, use a faceplate with a small circular hole in it and just pull your wire through. It may not make a difference, but the HT purist in me likes to have a single wire going to/from each speaker....

(Of course, I violated my own thoughts when installing my subwoofer cable, which came up about 1.5 feet short. Rather than spend big bucks for excess cable, I added on a short extension cable. Seems to work fine.)

 

[EmaxJS]

For my father-in-law's HT which I had pre-wired during contruction what I did was for the surrounds (Polk Audio f/x 500i) I used a faceplate designed for coaxial cable (½ inch diameter hole) this is completely hidden by the speaker, but I used bare wire, not bannana plugs that allowed me to keep the wire flat in the small space created by the rubber pads. For the front speakers which are Bose speakers that had to be mounted to the ceiling I used a paintable solid face plate and left one screw loose so I could just pull the wire through, after painting to match the color I also mounted the speaker partially over the plate.

In my current HT (I'm about to move) where I could not run the wires through the walls I stapled the wires along the edges and painted them to match the walls. Apparently this was effective because when I sold my house last week 2 different men looking at the home asked if the house came with the built-in speakers.. and had to point out they weren't built in at all.

 

[Bill Kane]

On this forum it also is recommended to attach the faceplate directly to the wallboard using #6 plastic anchors using the screws that come w/ the plate. (My package came #6-8 x 3/4inch). Takes a 3/16th inch drill bit for the starter hole. This way a small wire run doesnt need a blue plastic gang box in a drywall hole.

 

[DaveHo]

My surrounds are fairly small, and I'm cheap and a DIY'er, so I built my own stands out of MDF and 3/4" gas pipe. Each stand consists of a triangular piece of MDF about 12" on a side with rounded off corners and edges, two flanges, and a 4ft piece of pipe. The flanges are screwed onto each end of the pipe, the one flange is screwed to the center of the MDF, and the speaker sits on the flange on the other end held on by heavy duty velcro(probably should have used Blue Tack instead). I drilled a hole at the speaker end of the pipe(used a rubber gromet to prevent any wire damage) and through the MDF to run the wire down the pipe and through the floor to the amp at the other end of the room. The stand itself is screwed to the floor from underneath in the basement. Oh, and I spray painted each stand gloss black for that "professional" touch. This is of course in a carpeted room so the holes in the floor really will not be visible if/when the speakers get removed. They actually look pretty darn good and the total cost was about $15 for the pair. For larger speaker just increase the baseplate size and use more than one length of pipe and an MDF top plate as well. You could even sand/lead shot fill the pipes that are not used for the wire.
-Dave