Toad

I'm moving into a room with hardwood floors, and I'm having a hard time with my speaker wire -- my fiance will not let it "show". Obviously, I can't hide it under the carpeting and run it along the wall. My other thought was I could simply drag it out from my entertainment center, leaving about 2 ft. of wire exposed before it gets hidden by the couch, then the end-tables.

What do you guys do? If I did what I described above, is there a good "remedy" to hide that 2-ft exposure?

Thanks a bunch!!

Brian Shannon

You could try flat cable

http://www.audioadvisor.com/store/pr...peaker%20Cable

Home Depot also sells plastic conduit, you could atach to the wall and paint.

Good luck

palebluedot

If you have an IKEA near you they have all kinds of really cool cable management stuff that hides the cables.

BigDave

I used flat cable to run along the baseboards and it's not too bad looking.

The other solution is to go into the walls. That's what I'll be doing when we own a house.

Toad

I wish there was a simple "rug" solution or something. The dimensions of the room aren't very conducive to a HT, I don't think. Too many doors, hallways, open areas, and no carpet!

Thanks for the suggestions, and keep 'em coming!

bfrank

You could get different base moldings that would leave an area behind for the wires.

(hardwood floors is suckekekeke for home theater)

sorry

Toad

Good idea, but the problem is that no matter what, speaker wires will have to run across the floor at some point.

I'm just trying to figure out the best way to "hide" it.

JLB

What's worse than hardwood is brick....which I have....fortunately, we have a big rug and some decent sized furniture to deaden the room....

Then, I am luck for my surrounds as we have this fake beam that runs across most of the room. We also have wainscotting around the perimiter. So, I tuck the wire in the wainscoting until it reaches the beam, I think tacked the wire to the beam right where it meets the ceiling. It's hardly noticable......

Toad

For those of you who run wire along the ceilings, or any other vertical place, do you tape it or tack it?

Bricks II

You could run it under the floor like me. I drill holes next to the entertainment center, feed the wire through the floor into the basement, and bring it up through holes next to the surround speakers. I staple the excess wire to the basement ceiling. It works very well. It won't work if you're basementless, of course. Just my solution as a suggestion.

Blade

If you want to hide it, neither...use some kind of molding.

I just repositioned my rears and have to deal with this now myself (I have carpet, but don't want to run under it, and the cable is yellow!) What I plan on doing is finding something to cover up the wire and then paint that a similar color as the carpet so it will blend in better. Haven't tried it yet, so I can't say whether it looks as bad as it sounds.

Since you have wood flooring, and as long as the wire's not in a foot traffic area, you could use wood molding on the floor. If it's low profile enough, and you get a good match on the color, it should blend in fairly well.

Good luck.

-David

Toad

Blade, I like that idea, thanks. Of course, more likely than not, it will be a foot traffic area. Since it's an apartment, we virtually have to take advantage of any space we have.

I may post the layout of this apt. in OTHER later is anyone wants to take a stab at helping me decide where things should go!

Toad

Patrick G

I rent, and I run my surround speaker wire (total of 4 speakers) into the wall, up into the attic, and down the other wall. My sub is also at the back of the room and I run its wires down through the floor underneath the house. It's very easy to do if you have an attic and a crawl space.

bfrank

Blade, at the perimeter of your carpet is a tack strip that the carpet is "kicked" on to. This strip is usually a 1/2" from the wall and about a 1/4" thick. This creates a gap under the carpet between the wall and the tack strip. I run the wire around the room in this gap. You can either pull back the carpet or just push the wire in to the are with a wide blade ( no relation ) screw driver.

Works great

Blade

Interesting. I didn't know that.

Unfortunately, my current problem is with wire that's no where near the wall, but rather running under two end tables and the couch.

But I'll use that for part of the other wire run. Thanks.

Toad

Unfortunately, I have no attic space or crawl space -- I'm the middle level in a 3-story building.

Basically, I guess I'm looking for a suggestion on how to simply hide this 2-ft. speaker wire (in a footpath, running from ent. center under coaches/endtables, up into speaker stands). I almost envisioned putting like a Welcome mat over it ... but quite obviously, my fiance would rather put knives in her back than deal with such an unsightly problem!

macsax

For the short exposed run consider this: find a nice place that has a decent selection of natural wood, trim can work for this but take into consider what is to follow. Take the wood on a flat side and cut (or have someone else cut) a channel groove into the center. This will be the bottom and the channel is where the wire will be routed. The other side should be shaped so it tapers very gradually to the sides creating a nice gentle arc. Finally stain it to match the floor and you basically have a uniform bump/ridge that is significantly less unsightly than many of the alternatives. This is not the best solution and there are many negatives not the least of which is the potential trip hazard so have it shaped, cut or planed as short as possible. You are not in an envyable position. If you can't do this yourself and don't have any friends who can, most good lumberyards have cutting services and should be able to acommodate a request like this.

Also, I'm not sure what the HVAC (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning) situation is in your building, but air returns may be an option if they exist.

Toad

Anyone else?

JimRochester

My HT is my familyroom which is over the basement. I ran the wires under the floor and a local shop ran the wires up the walls for me.

nekobus

This is exactly what I did and it works great. I also used white flat wire against the baseboards when there was no carpet handy.

Toad

That may be the route I have to take, but the flat wire I found has some kind of attachments that don't seem to be able to fit into my speakers/receiver (both utilize the thinly exposed wires to either plug in or wrap around), so I'm not sure it would work.

I also have a problem with my coax cable (for cable TV)...that's obviously a bit thicker than speaker wire...are there some tacks or something to tack it to the baseboards (which might actually fit it AND the speaker wires)??

What do you guys think about running all that stuff along the ceiling? Too tacky?

Goblincat

My basement theater has a suspended ceiling, so it was easy to run the wires to the surrounds. The wire runs up to the ceiling in the corner, so it is not real visible.

For my main floor theater, I ran the wiring in the tack strip gap like bfrank said, and then up the wall to the surround. I used the flat wiring, attached it to the wall, and painted it to match.

Geofferson

When I installed carpet in my HT, I did so knowing I'd be running wires under it. So I now run the wires under the carpet along the walls. If I had a hardwood floor, I'd do as Bricks II mentioned, by drilling holes and running them through the basement.

Toad

Unfortunately, in a one-floor apartment, I don't have that option.

Man, it's driving me nuts!!

Toad

How do you get flat cable into your speakers and receiver? With my normal wire, I just insert the small exposed wire into the "socket".