Pre-wiring Audio
Pre-wiring is tricky—as it has to be done a certain way. If your plans include running one or more dedicated power lines, you need to be sure they’re properly grounded. This will help the room to be quieter as it keeps the noise and hum at a low level.
Normally, each outlet in your home has three wires—the hot, the neutral, and the ground wire, which is the one that runs from the outlet to the service panel. When many of these that are all different lengths are connected to the service panel ground, they create “current eddies” that make the 60 cycle hum. It’s important to remember to not use hospital grade outlets in the dedicated power line because those need their own grounds and can’t be tied together.
In order to reduce the hum and noise, you’ll need to only wire a single ground from the audio/home theater system to the electrical service panel. When installing one or more dedicated lines, you’ll want to remember that all the outlets that are attached to the A/V system need to be wired with the same single ground wire and run straight to the service panel. The “hot” and “neutral” wires are connected to the service panel’s dedicated power line. Only attach the audio and video system to this special dedicated line. One more thing to keep in mind is where all the different electronics—speakers, sub-woofers, video, video accessories, etc.—are going to be plugged in. Be sure there’s enough outlets available and that they are close enough. The lighting, fans, or anything else not related to the A/V system should not be put on this. They should rather be put on their own circuit with a separate ground that is also connected to the service panel.
By following the instructions above, you’ll have a room that is noise/hum free that has a “deep black background” that, in which, you’ll be able to enjoy both video and audio. Before starting anything, always be sure to check your local electrical codes first.
6 Lighting Tips For Your Home Theater
- Taking Temperatures: The lighting in your home theater is actually important. It will affect the color of the film. The best temperature is 6,500 degrees Kelvin. Fluorescents and dimmable LEDs are the only lights that can be set to this temperature.
- Genre Matching: You’ll want to create lighting settings that will set the “mood” of the room to what is playing onscreen. You can create lighting settings for music videos, children’s shows, news, games, drama, action, etc. You should have both a full-on effect that can be used for task lighting and a setting for watching movies that applies the correct sound as well as lighting.
- Sound Stage: You want to have good speakers while still keeping an overall (visible) nice theater experience. One way to do this is to have your speakers concealed in a cabinet so that they can be hidden from view when you want them to be or illuminated when you’d like to show them off.
- Setting the Theme: Choose what decor you want in the room that will show off your movie/tv preferences. For example, one family had lightsabers installed on the walls of their home theater that would turn on and off when you’d enter or exit the room.
- Defining Architecture: While the room may be dark, you still may want to show off the architecture of it. This can be done by getting custom LEDs to illuminate these areas. You could use LED tape that has may little light bulbs in it. These can be put in a hollow space created just so that the tape can illuminate the area without showing each individual bulb. This not only lights up the area, but also gives the space definition and depth.
- Group On: It’s wise to put the different types of lights on their own circuits. For example, put the column lights on one circuit, the steps on another, and so on. That way you can adjust each of these levels individually.
10 Common Mistakes
10. Use the Right Speakers – When wiring your surround sound speakers, you’ll want to use a durable wire. This is because wires have resistance, especially the thinner ones. That said, you don’t need super expensive cables, but you definitely don’t want to stretch a 24 gauge cable 50 feet from your AV receiver to the speakers. This is because the load changes a lot as the wires are being used due to the frequency of the sound varying. Therefore, if your cable is too thin, it can actually affect the sound. To avoid this, use a 16 gauge cable and, for up to 40-50 foot distances, a 12 gauge. If you’re going 50-60 feet, you should probably reconsider the entire multi-zone audio system design.
9. Don’t Overbuy on Your Interconnects – Many people don’t purchase the cables at the time that they purchase the speakers so they end up buying the most expensive ones. This is very unnecessary—you do want well-made cables but they don’t have to be extremely fancy. This is especially true if the distances are short. If they are longer than 10 feet, problems arise. If you plan ahead and don’t do something too complicated, you won’t overspend.
8. Pay Attention to Your Cable’s HDMI Features – Buying an HDMI cable is harder than it used to be. Initially, they would all have 1080p video and audio and so any cable you grabbed would work. They now have other features (such as an Ethernet channel, an audio return channel, 3D capabilities, and 4K resolution support), making it more complicated to get the right one. It’s wise to plan ahead and be sure you buy one that’ll last even through upcoming changes in the field, especially if your HDMI cable is in a wall or crawl space that would make it hard to replace. A good choice would be a “high speed” HDMI cable. They have the latest design with support for the newest features.
7. Active HDMI Cables Future-Proof Your System and Last a Long Time – HDMI cables are able to send billions of bits of data at any given second. That said, it’s easy for this flow to get screwed up. This is why newer active HDMI cables have a chip embedded in them—to correct this for the most part, giving you an image, which wouldn’t come up before. These chipsets are getting cheaper to manufacture, making active HDMI cables less expensive. You don’t always need them though. If you’re just running a cable 25 feet or less, a standard high speed cable will work just fine at 1080p. They are a smart choice, however, when you want to run said cable longer than 15 feet and 4K is on your horizon.
6. Speaker Phase Does Matter – You need to connect your tower and bookshelf speakers in phase. This means that the positive lead on the AV receiver or amplifier is ultimately connected to the positive lead on the speaker (and so on with the negative leads or terminals as well). If they’re connected right, each speaker is “additive” and it will sound as you’d expect it to. However, if even just one speaker is wired backwards (an example of this would be that a positive lead would be connected to a negative terminal…), the system becomes subtractive. This may not really affect wider stereo-separated sounds, but it seriously messes with sounds panned in the center. It may sound like a little bit of sound is coming from your brain or like there’s no bass at all. If either of these are happening in your home theater, you can be almost certain that wires are crossed. If your speakers aren’t easy to get to, you can test the wires with a 9V battery. This works because the small terminal on the battery is positive. You’ll want to briefly touch (don’t keep it on too long and it shouldn’t break it) the battery to the speaker cable leads. Orienting the “positive” speaker lead to the 9V battery’s positive terminal should make the speaker driver push outwards. If you perform this test correctly and the speaker pulls inward, you have wired it backwards. All you have to do then is swap them at either the AV receiver or the speaker.
5. Heat Rises – Because heat travels upwards, it’s smart to put the amplifier or home theater receiver at the top of the rack/shelves/cabinet (if you’re using one). This way it’ll be able to ventilate easier and won’t bake all the other components that are at the bottom of the cabinet. It seems a little backwards, but it really is the best choice.
4. Ventilation Is Not Just an Option – If you keep your system inside cabinets, you need to remember that ventilation is key. If you don’t make sure that air gets to your amplifier, it may quit working. This is because the buildup of heat was too strong and it fried the components. Be sure to either put a fan inside the cabinet or to open the doors.
3. Remote Controls Are AV Devices – Consider getting a universal remote to control the entire system instead of many separate ones. It will not only save you time, but also leave you less frustrated and ready to relax and enjoy what you’re about to watch.
2. Plan for an Upgrade Eventually – Once you get started in the world of sound sound, you’ll eventually want to update it. It’s inevitable. That said, be sure you get a system that allows you to upgrade. Thankfully, most AV receivers and speakers are upgradable, except for Bose (and maybe a few others). Just be sure that the proprietary connections are through the subwoofer instead of using the standard AV receiver with speaker level outputs and connectors. If you’ve installed the speakers (no matter where they are placed) correctly, you’ll be able to replace them easily, without much of a hassle. In order to accomplish this, you may want to leave a little extra cable in the wall or use standard speaker binding posts in the wall. Planning ahead is never a bad thing either—even as far back as installing the wiring for Surround Back speakers during the construction of a home.
1. Wire It All Up – Your AV system won’t be worth anything to you if it’s not plugged in. Mount the tv on the wall, install the speakers, and have everything wired correctly. It may take time but it will be totally worth it. It can done in an aesthetically pleasing way as well by venturing the cables up into the attic, under the carpet, or behind crown moulding.