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NILES AUDIO CORPORATION – 1-800-BUY-HIFI
11
CONCEALING LOUDSPEAKER WIRE
ABOUT INTERIOR WALLS
Interior walls in almost all North American residences are hollow, so they are easy installation sites
for flush mounting loudspeakers and routing new loudspeaker cable in the house. Looking at a
painted wallboard, plaster, or paneling, you only see the skin of the wall. Behind it is the home’s
skeleton; 2-by-4 inch wood or metal “studs” running vertically from the floor to the ceiling in walls
and 2-by-6 inch or larger “joists” running horizontally in the ceilings and floors. The space between
the studs and joists is used for the home’s wiring and plumbing.
ABOUT EXTERIOR WALLS
Concealing wires in exterior walls is more complex, since the walls are stuffed with insulation to
protect the house from the heat and cold outside. Moreover, our national building code requires
that a horizontal stud placed between the vertical studs break the hollow wall space in exterior
walls. This “fire blocking” makes it very difficult to retrofit long lengths of wire. In some areas
of the country, the exterior walls are constructed of solid masonry and have no hollow space for
loudspeakers or wires.
PLANNING THE LOUDSPEAKER WIRE ROUTE
Start by examining all the possible routes you
might take to run the loudspeaker wire from the
loudspeaker to the home theater system. Use a
stud sensor or other device to locate the internal
structure of the wall. You will want to avoid all studs
or joists. Figure 6 shows a typical wire run from
the loudspeaker location in the wall, across the attic,
then down through a top plate (i.e., the horizontal
2-by-4 or 2-by-6 inch wood laid across the vertical
studs) to a wall plate or a J-Box in the wall behind
the home theater system itself.
Find all the locations of your existing electrical,
phone, and TV wiring, and then plan the loudspeaker
wire route to avoid them. Crossing wire paths is
acceptable, but 60 Hz hum may be induced in the
reproduced audio if loudspeaker wire is run paral
-
lel to electrical wire for more than a few feet. If
possible, try to keep loudspeaker wire away from
parallel power cables by at least 3 feet.
loudspeaker
Location
Volume
Control
Location
Stereo
Location
Figure 6. Running loudspeaker wire
from a wall loudspeaker to a home theater
system location.
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