5.1.2 setup under-floor / in wall wiring - advice sought

[Chaff]

Warning: un-exciting pictures coming up.

Hi All,

I have reached the point in my renovations where I’m thinking about how to run wires to my 5.1.2 system before carpets & decorating so would like to consult the Naim forum hive-mind for any experience and advice on to how to make this look neat and a bit of a sanity check before I do something regrettable.

There is an old fireplace just boarded/plastered over at the moment but I am thinking about installing some chunky shelving in there, putting my Hi-Fi & AVR kit on there and running wires up the chimney to a TV which will be mounted to the wall directly above and also to two height speakers for Atmos.

For the rear speakers I would simply be looking to run wires from here…

…under here…

…to here

As you can see there is plenty of room to run speaker wire for the rears under the floor and I can easily access the chimney above because it was removed down to the roof level so it is just an exposed hole in the loft but all I know is for insurance reasons I think I’m technically supposed to run CL2/CL3 wiring for fire regulations in the UK, and obviously a bit of making-good to do in and around the old fireplace.

I am not considering floor terminals but I am wondering about channeling the wires up the wall in conduit to a speaker wall plate evel with the mains sockets as the room isn’t huge so existing rear stand-mount speakers will be close to the wall. On-wall dipole speakers could be an option, in which case I would drop the wires down from above.

What do you guys think?

[feeling_zen]

I installed 7.2.4 last year. If I was to abbreviate the experience into just a few bullets it would be:

• If you might ever move the hifi, install a banana plug wall plate somewhere unobtrusive for all the speakers to terminate to the back of. Then you just make up banana to banana patch cables of the right length to where the amp is.
• Run conduit for everything, even under the floors. If you ever need to replace the cables, you’ll be thankful you have conduit to snake the fishline through.
• Since you can’t snake terminated cabled through conduit, and soldering plugs or spades on a cable coming out of wall is a recipe for disaster, choose good pretinned custom install cable. You’re likely to be bare wire connecting any speaker with no rear clearance.
• Don’t forget conduit for the sub. If you want the sub cable to be hidden in the wall, you will have to bite the bullet and snake shielded mic cable through and then solder the RCA plugs on… But it least it will be a ground level soldering job.

It was a hell of a job but the end result was superb. Go slow. Be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

[Chaff]

Brilliant, thanks for the tips!