DIYbanter - View Single Post - Wiring Surround Sound: Speaker Terminal Posts / Wall Plate Combo

wrote:
Hello All,

Recently renovated our family room and installed speaker wire to all
four corners for eventual surround sound. I have the levitron speaker
posts/wall plates on the end locations that use one black and one red
post for a speaker wire pair. All four wire pairs go back to a single
gang box that also has one coax and one ethernet cable installed in it.

Planned on using a six-gang levitron wall plate, two for the coax and
ethernet and four for the speaker wire, but seems like each speaker
wire needs two posts, for a total of eight posts. I can't seem to find
a single speaker post that will accept both speaker wires (pos and
neg), and nobody makes a 10 gang wall plate (not enough room).

I was just hoping to find a clean wall plate solution and not leave the
gang box uncovered with wires hanging out of it.

Not knowing a whole lot about wiring speakers, would it be possible to
wire all four negative sides of the speaker pairs to a single post, and
use seperate posts for the positive sides of the pairs? Then I could
use an eight gang plate and blank one out (five for speakers, two for
cable/ethernet). I am not about to try this since I don't even have
any equipment to install, just curious if this would fry something.

Thanks!

Probably possible yes, but it would likely degrade the sound quality.
The surround system may use seperate amplifiers for each channel, and in
any event you would be creating a voltage drop at this merge point that
would also affect your quality.

And furthermore some devices may not like it at all, and nobody uses the
same stereo system for too many years, so it may not like your new system.

Just put up individual plates.

--
Respectfully,

CL Gilbert