Subwoofer Cable?

[Rolyasm]

I am running a second zone off of my Denon 3801 into my family room area. It is in a house I am building, so no insulation or sheetrock, yet. I want to prewire for the sub. I was told I could use coaxial (cable)line. Does this work? Anything better that I can get a hold of quickly? Also, going to drop some speaker wire into the same room for future surround. Is 2 lines of 12g. enough? thanks
roly

[Patt]

One of several different ways to do it, but my self powered sub gets it's signal from the speaker binding posts on back of the reciever.

edited: Let me say I am far from an expert on this matter.

[mickster1972]

Coax will work fine for sub; in fact it is what most sub patch cable is and should be made from. Get some with a thick center conductor (RG-6?) and good shielding. There are certain cable mfgr. online that will describe which types of coax are better for certain audio/video applications. 12 g. is plenty for surround speaker wire. I am running 50-60 feet (prewired inwall) of 14 g. to my surrounds without problem.

[Chris D]

Yup, I ran coaxial cable through the walls for my subwoofers. I chose to use RG6U, quad-shield coax, for quality. Works just great. You can buy coax RCA terminators from Parts Express.

I used 12 gauge speaker wire too. Just fine.

[ELTRIGO]

Subwoofer Cable?

I have two subs hooked up to my Onkyo system. One is the Onkyo 10" 220 watts (peak) sub that came in the Onkyo HT-S770 package and the other is a RCA 12" 200 watt RMS.

My Onkyo sub is behind my front right speaker, in the corner, set to 3/4 gain and my RCA sub is in the left corner behind my sweet spot. The Onkyo can get a lower frequency but my RCA has much louder bass.

I use coaxal cable on both of them and find it to be fine. It is much better than using a junky, tiny composite cable.

I don't know what kind of coaxal cable mine is but it works fine.

[eddiem67]

What is the distance you are running these cables?

[Shane Martin]

Yup, I ran coaxial cable through the walls for my subwoofers. I chose to use RG6U, quad-shield coax, for quality. Works just great. You can buy coax RCA terminators from Parts Express.

This is what I did.

[Chris D]

I'd say the coax running through my walls is something like 20' or so. No problems.

[Snap]

NOTE: They are all RIGHT! RG-6 and the RCA connections YEP work just FINE.

Here is the NOTE.......

After "ruff Electrical" and BEFORE insulation! Please DO NOT wire your stuff UNTILL the electrician your contractor is using is DONE with "ruff Electrical" They WILL NOT care about your stuff. They will throw all sorts of stuff on top of your stuff and not think a thing about it.

(I know it is shielded, and so forth and so on. But WHY take a chance!)

Do all your prewire after ruff in elecrical. Your speaker wire is the most at risk for doing it before the electrican is done! If you HAVE to......wire your stuff WAAAAAYYYYY out the way. The electrican is going to just "throw his wires across the trusses. You need to tack your wires up high to get away from his junk if you are wiring the stuff prior to "ruff electrical".

Best thing.....After Ruff Electrical, and before insulation! :T

Have FUN!

PS: if you drill a hole in a top plate.....Fire Calk it after you get the wires done. You need it to pass code. And do not drill ANY holes into trusses. The contractor will kill you, and then hit you with a HUGE bill! :cry:

[Snap]

Oh yeah... you normally only have 1 to 2 days after the elctrican is done before the insulation guys get there. The contractor does not like to have nothing being done on his house. So be ready, they are not going to wait for you! Have your RG-6, speaker wire, tools EVERYTHING ready so that you can go at a moments notice.

I had 8 hours once. Had to bring a generator to the house. Started at 6PM and finished late that night. Insulation guys showed up 4 hours later!

[ekkoville]

Best thing.....After Ruff Electrical, and before insulation!

Great advice, that is just what I did when we built five years ago. We did it on Sunday, insulation came Monday.

Be sure to take pics of everything you do and anywhere you might want to do something later. Sometimes you hide wires for two years later and you spend an houe digging and reaching in the drywall for something one stud over.

[Rolyasm]

Well, it is all complete. I hope I didn't screw anything up. I pretty much stayed away from the power lines, maybe crossed them for an inch or so, but that is all. I did run my RG6 and Cat6 wire together, along with some speaker line in places. Will that be a problem? Dear God I hope not. It will be too late to change it. Insulation went in yesterday. Thanks for the info.
Roly

[Snap]

Should not be a problem. If you kept them for the most part away from power you should be fine. The RG6 is shielded so It should not mess up your CAT5.

[JetFlyGuy]

Make sure you buy the RG6 connectors and not the ones for the RG59, I grabbed the wrong box at home depot and had my midnight project stall when the connector was too small for the cable!

[Snap]

:laughat: did that before! Except I had the RG-6 conectors in the truck, just grabbed the wrong tackle box when I went in for the job! I am not sure about all conpression stuff, but mine are color coded. Mine have a green ring aournd them for RG-6 and a Red ring for RG-59. I use Pro-Connect, Grey Fox and On-Q prducts. They work fine.