# new house - wired for 5.1 (question)



## rfg78 (Aug 29, 2013)

Hi!

I just bought a new house. New to me, anyway. The living room is wired for 5.1, and I'm looking forward to getting my first 5.1 receiver. I'm a little confused about something, though. I hope you can clear this up for me. The in-wall wiring doesn't make sense just yet. Here's what I see:

On the wall where the screen will go, there are three ports with speaker wire. OK, L R and C. There's also a single male RCA (or SPDIF) right in the middle of the wall. Only other things there are a cable jack and a power outlet.

On the rear wall, there are two ports with speaker wire for the surround L and R channels. In the middle of that rear wall, there's a single female RCA (or SPDIF). 

Here's my question: I expected to find the other end of all five of those speaker wires somewhere! They are no where to be found! Shouldn't they all be routed to somewhere that I can access the other side of them - you know, to connect them to a receiver? There is only one blank plate in the entire room, and behind it is a cable splitter, nothing else. So what is going on, exactly? 

Is the single RCA (or SPDIF) for a sub? And, am I seeing both ends of the same cable there, or something else?

I can take pictures if it helps you answer - the room is still empty.

Thanks in advance for the help. The previous owners are out of the country and it would be difficult to ask them now. When I had the chance to ask them, I didn't expect any trouble understanding what was there.


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## Peter Loeser (Aug 11, 2012)

Welcome to the forum!

It's hard to say without knowing the intentions of the original owner/installer. I would also expect to find the other end of all 5 speaker cables in the same location somewhere. Have you checked all closets, basement, attic spaces, crawl spaces, cabinets, etc?

The RCA jacks on the front and back wall could either be both ends of one cable (i.e. if your receiver was at the front wall and you wanted to place your sub near the back wall), or they could be two separate cables, the other ends of which should be located with the (yet to be found) other end of your 5 speaker cables. If you're lucky, maybe you'll find a receiver already connected to the other end of all the existing cables! :bigsmile:


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## rfg78 (Aug 29, 2013)

Thanks. I will keep looking. The house is on a slab, so that narrows it down a bit. There is a blank panel in the dining room that I have not opened yet, so I guess that's my next place to look, eh? (The dinning room? I hope that's not it!)


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## Peter Loeser (Aug 11, 2012)

I agree, the dining room would be odd. Not having a basement will be helpful. Do you have a telephone/internet junction box anywhere in the house? Perhaps they had networking and A/V equipment centrally located somewhere. Check the baseboards to see if any look different or modified. Anywhere there is any type of built-in cabinet or entertainment center is worth checking very carefully inside and out. At each location, see if the speaker wire goes up or down inside the wall. That should give you a hint as to where to try to trace its path.

I did a similar hunt when my mother-in-law bought a new (to her) house a few years back. Most of the rooms had in-ceiling or in-wall speakers and a few had wall-mounted volume controls, but I couldn't find any speaker wires or amps. After a bunch of searching, we were finally able to track down speaker wires in each room (sometimes stashed in a custom cabinet/bench on the opposite side of the room). There was also a jury-rigged splitter down in the utility closet in the basement for a line level input that went to all the rooms. Long story short, what you're looking for could be just about anywhere.


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