# Wiring-Confused but Motivated



## revster (Feb 28, 2013)

Hello everyone. I'll start by saying I enjoy this forum and have read quite a bit that has helped me expand what little knowledge I have in the home theater/audio area. When I say little knowledge I mean very minimal! One thing that I have learned is that it is very interesting, so much so that I've decided to make an attempt at wiring my basement myself. Any tips and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Brief summary of where I'm at with the basement project... studs are up and the guys are just finishing running electrical and plumbing. Next step they will be insulating. I need to get moving on the wiring. The layout is pretty simple...There is one large room that I will be using as an entertainment room (tv area on one end, bar on the other). The bar area is approximately 17' x 14' and the tv area is 17' x 20' but it is all one room. There is also a separate play room for the kids that is about 16' x 15' and a full bathroom. 

Here are my goals as far as audio video. The tv area will be for watching movies, sports,ect. on 70" tv as well as listening to music. I will have a second tv in the bar area to use if I have a few buddies over and we sit at the bar to watch a game or have alot of people over for a game and need them both on. I plan on wiring for surround sound in the tv area which would include a center channel, and a left and right surround (all in-wall), and two rear surrounds in ceiling. Placement of powered sub is up in the air at this point. I also would like 2-4 in-ceiling speakers in the bar area, and a speaker in the bathroom and possible 1-2 in the kids room.

The biggest questions I have are what is the best way to wire things (and what components would I need) so I can have one receiver that will allow me to have both tv's hooked up to it, but also be able to have just one tv on with sound in that area (tv in bar on with just tv sound in bar area while tv area is off) and even have music in bar area and tv sound in tv area? The speaker in bathroom could just be wired up to the sound in the tv area on an in wall volume control to keep it simple. 

I have 500' of 14gauge 4 wire speaker wire rated for in-wall use (monoprice). I'm ready to start this thing. I have the motivation but not the knowledge! To be honest I don't really know where to start! Like I said before I find this stuff very interesting and am willing to make the mistakes and waste a bunch of wire if I have to! Maybe someone has a basic diagram out there on how to run wire (from components to speakers, in-wall volume control, etc). Thanks in advance and I look forward to providing you all plenty of laughs as I embark on this journey!!!


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## MrAngles (May 1, 2012)

revster said:


> The biggest questions I have are what is the best way to wire things (and what components would I need) so I can have one receiver that will allow me to have both tv's hooked up to it, but also be able to have just one tv on with sound in that area (tv in bar on with just tv sound in bar area while tv area is off) and even have music in bar area and tv sound in tv area? The speaker in bathroom could just be wired up to the sound in the tv area on an in wall volume control to keep it simple.


If you want to be able to have music on in the bar speakers while independently having a movie playing on the surround system, you need a separate receiver for the bar area. You could then split all your sources to both the bar receiver and home theater receiver so you could use any source in either location simultaneously or independently, which would require you to run HDMI and audio cables from your equipment in the home theater to the bar tv and receiver, or vice versa.

If you don't want to have two separate sources playing at once you just need to run HDMI from the home theater equipment to the bar tv and run some speaker wire from the equipment to the bar speakers. You'd need a three-zone receiver though to run the home theater, the bar and the bathroom though, most receivers are two-zone.


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## revster (Feb 28, 2013)

Thanks for the response. I was wondering what you thought about this set-up. I talked to a "friend of a friend" who told me I could run HDMI from main tv to dual zone receiver. Then run RG6 coax from separate Directv box to tv in bar area. Then run RCA jacks from bar tv to receiver. He suggested a speaker selector to get sound into kids room and bathroom. He also suggested I run Cat5e to all rooms with TV, and a few extra runs of it to main tv. Like I said before I am very new at this so he could be way off and I would not know it! Thanks for any input.


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## MrAngles (May 1, 2012)

First off, running coax from a DirecTV box to a TV will give you the worst possible picture quality you can get out of that box. You certainly won't be getting any high def that way. I don't know if that matters to you or not, but if it was me I'd buy a HDMI splitter. As far as running RCAs from the tv to the receiver, I don't know why you would need do that. Your DirecTV box should be connected directly to your receiver via HDMI then to you tv(s), so the audio will already be hooked up. If you only want a single source to be heard in each zone at any given time (I'm still not clear on what your intention is there), a speaker selector will work instead of a 3+ zone receiver, the difficult part is that most speaker selectors just have manual buttons on the unit, no remote control. I think what I would do is put an in-wall volume control in each room that you have a zone in.


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## rab-byte (Feb 1, 2011)

As for pre-wire just run all cables, HDMI/cat-6 from each display to your demarcation drop (ie closet/cabinet). Run all speaker wire to this location as well. With all your drops run you can close your walls. There are good wireless subs on the market now (I like Martin Logan Dynamo700/1000/1500)

As for equipment. A surround sound AVR for the tv and a stereo for the bar is easy and can be cost effective. Your other option would be an AVR with zine2 HDMI and zone3 audio. 

For both these options you will need 2 cable/sat boxes and a very good control system (URC would be my choice).


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