So we just moved into a new home, and I was thrilled to see it had 4 rooms with ceiling speakers...

It wasn't until we moved in that I started seeing how it was unusual.

The 4 zones in question return to the network panel in the basement. Not as speaker wire, but cat5 lines connected to This thing .

I would provide a better link but I can't find much about it online.

I'm having a real hard time understanding how the hell I'm supposed to drive speakers with ~23 gauge wires. Am I missing something? My next step will be to pull out the volume control in one of the rooms, and also pull a speaker to see how it's wired. I just haven't had a chance to do much lately.

My daughter bought an apartment with a similar setup it was crap so in the end I just used the speakers and connected up locally in each room to these (can't remember the exact make/model but many options):

https://audioinstallations.co.uk/powerli...ASABEgJQYvD_BwE

Ugh. I figured as much. I’m going to attempt to hook up an input to it when I have time, and turn the volume off on all but one zone to give it the best chance of working. I’m…not hopeful…

Ok…so I hooked everything up last night and…it’s…I’m not sure exactly how to feel. Perhaps I’m talking myself into thinking it’s ok. It’s definitely NOT GREAT, but for background music…it’s probably fine. It certainly seems designed with the sole goal of “background music during a cocktail party,” and it’ll work decently for that.

I might try to play around with it when I have a little more time. Considering it was installed in 2003 with the technology of the day (my house was built 2 years before the first Sonos product), I might eventually see what I can do to retrofit.

For example, this hilariously doesn’t even use 2 of the wires. It seems to use one pair to power the wall control, two pairs for the positive and negative on each speaker, and then leaves the 4th pair unused (I think it might be used for IR receivers on some wall control models).

I have to assume that I’d at least get better results by removing the wall controls entirely, and using each pair together for the positive and negative lines on each speaker.

Also, the system is currently set up so that the only possible input is from a pair of RCA jacks on a wall plate in the family room. So this analog signal has to travel all the way down to the basement and then back out to the speakers. The controller its self is powered so that’s assisting the signal, but this is all just so hilarious to me.

Eventually - once I’ve recovered from the general expense of moving - I’ll probably put a Sonos Amp in the basement, and wire up the 4 pairs as I mentioned to a speaker selector. Obviously this isn’t ideal, but it’s better than tearing out all the wires in the house I guess!

One thing I didn’t do yesterday was take out the volume knob on the wall. I’ll be very curious to see what kind of wire they used between that and the actual speakers. I’m assuming it’s still Cat5. If I was made of money I would probably find a way to wire up a Sonos Amp in every room with speakers, to minimize the wire run.

My bet is that your complaint is most likely due to the speakers rather than the wire runs.

So long as the audio is balanced/differential on twisted pairs (preferably STP), and the cables have been routed sufficiently far from the nearest mains cables, this actually doesn't sound like it was a terrible idea. Power-over-Ethernet (which this pre-dates) can drive 25W DC over Cat5, so this probably does similar. It's certainly theoretically possible to make a decent audio output from 25W DC and a balanced audio input, though as Tony says it depends greatly on how good their wall-unit amps and their speakers are.

Peter

That could certainly be the case. I've also wanted to pull the speakers out and see what kind of specs I could ascertain from the back of them. In my experience, ceiling speakers can be tricky to get to sound good in general, since joist bay construction can vary, and most of them aren't able to get much oomph anyway.


I don't know about the speakers, but the amps aren't in the wall. Those are just volume control knobs. All the power comes from back in the network enclosure. I'll have to look at the unit that's powering it, because I wonder how many watts it might be outputting total. There's four rooms that are wired, and I'm not sure it's outputting much power.


Definitely not shielded. I have no idea what balanced and differential means, even after googling it


Ah this is almost never the case around here. I've seen low voltage wiring in so many homes in my area, and it's usually done by electricians who begrudgingly run the low voltage. It's almost never done correctly, with the right distance and 90 degree intersections. I used to run low voltage for new home builds and I would always ask to follow the electricians, so I could run my lines correctly.

I found the manual. It's not differential as both audio channels and DC power for the amplifier all share a ground connection at the wall-unit end. So yeah, it's theoretically possible to make such a thing that's good, but these folks did not in fact choose to do so.

Peter

If I'm remembering things right, a balanced audio connection is only possible between the music source and the amplifier. I don't think there's such a thing as a balanced speaker wire run. If you tried to send a balanced signal directly to a speaker, the result would be silence.

Balanced connections require that the electronics on either side of the connection are specifically meant for that purpose. They often use special plugs so that there's no confusion.

I mean, I suppose you could use a cable which was intended for a balanced connection and connect its wires from the amp's speaker-out to the speakers, but the fact that it's a balanced cable can't help reject noise in that situation. At that point it's just a piece of wire.

Sometimes you'll find balanced connections on a thing which seems to be just a speaker, but if you look closer, it's actually and amp and a speaker together in the same enclosure. I'm thinking of things like stage monitor wedges, for example. You run a balanced XLR cable from the mixing desk's Monitor Out, to the wedges. But the wedges themselves have amplifiers in them, they also need a power cable. Pretty much any time you have a powered speaker, it's not just a speaker: an amplifier is inside the speaker enclosure too.

So you could, for example, have a balanced connection between a hifi stereo and an external amplifier (provided that they both have balanced outputs and inputs), but not from the amplifier to the speakers. Not without some electronics at the speakers which are intended to receive a balanced output.

I am shocked!

Yeah, I'm honestly not surprised. Just looking at this thing, I was pretty sure this wasn't a "thing that's good."

I found another "not good thing" in my living room, which is - in theory - wired with a 5.1 surround speaker system. I mean, I believe that it's wired, but it appears that the home builder implemented yet another hack product that shouldn't exist. You'll never believe how all the speaker lines terminate in the wall plate: an ATX 24-pin connector. The previous homeowners then left the cable bundle that attaches to this: the 24 pin on one end and 10 banana plugs on the other. I'll have to take a picture when I have a chance. I've never seen that before...

I'm going to take your word on this

I was wrong. Not a 24-pin. Some kind of 16-pin connector...

I can't post a photo at the moment but it's still funny to me

https://imgur.com/a/yf7WeIN

In case anyone wants to see photos of dumb, intermediate technology. I gasped when I pulled that surround cabling connector out of the wall and saw how massive it was. Then I gasped again when I saw how poor a connection it made.

The in-wall volume control knob is included in that collection. I'm honestly not sure what the wiring is doing there. Are some of the wires dedicated to sending signals back to the system? I honestly have no idea. But I think I'll be pulling these out and just using each pair wired together to serve as the positive and negative for each speaker. Does that make sense to do? I'm either just going to wire it straight through or replace these knobs with a simple on/off switch.