Just Moved: In wall speakers HELP!

[SAP12690]

Hi all,
I just moved to new house and the previous owner had set up a mini home theater in the basement , He has speakers built into the wall and left all the wiring for me, however I have no clue what so ever on how to hook this thing up. The speakers are "Boston" brand but he left no receiver or anything for the speakers to hook up to. Anybody willing to lend me a hand? I do not have a model number for the speakers or anything. Do I just get any other receiver to work with them? I could use any help I could get right now

[roar]

Originally Posted by SAP12690

Hi all,
I just moved to new house and the previous owner had set up a mini home theater in the basement , He has speakers built into the wall and left all the wiring for me, however I have no clue what so ever on how to hook this thing up. The speakers are "Boston" brand but he left no receiver or anything for the speakers to hook up to. Anybody willing to lend me a hand? I do not have a model number for the speakers or anything. Do I just get any other receiver to work with them? I could use any help I could get right now

Any receiver should do the trick. If the wires aren't labeled it is going to take a little trial and error to get them hooked up right, but that is a pretty straight forward.

Start with one speaker, pick any channel on the back of the receiver, Front Left or Front Right is probably the easiest. Go to the speaker setup on the Receiver and play a test tone, it will cycle through the speakers configured and eventually you will hear sound coming out of one of your speakers. If you guess right and your Front Right speaker is playing the test tone and the Receiver says it is sending a tone to the Front Right move on to the next speaker.

Most modern receivers can also test to see if a speaker is out of phase, meaning you've got the + hooked to the + on the speaker and the + hooked to the + on the receiver, it may be worth running that too. Take a really close look at the speaker wire, if it is copper in colour with a clear jacket on it there is often writing on one of the strands, it may even be marked with a series of "++++", that obviously is your positive strand and should be run to the positive terminal on your receiver. It may not have +'s on it but just have writing, I've always run the strand with the writing to the positive. At this point you are assuming they followed the same standard on the back of the speaker and that they followed that standard for all the speakers. So it is worth doing a phase test on each speaker.

The speaker wire may also be black (Negative) or red (Positive).

Do yourself a favour though and label the wires once you have them figured out.

Don't over think this, odds are the speakers are 8 Ohms and any receiver you pick up will be able to drive them. You'll be fine, take your time and it is a piece of cake!

[SAP12690]

Originally Posted by roar

Any receiver should do the trick. If the wires aren't labeled it is going to take a little trial and error to get them hooked up right, but that is a pretty straight forward.

Start with one speaker, pick any channel on the back of the receiver, Front Left or Front Right is probably the easiest. Go to the speaker setup on the Receiver and play a test tone, it will cycle through the speakers configured and eventually you will hear sound coming out of one of your speakers. If you guess right and your Front Right speaker is playing the test tone and the Receiver says it is sending a tone to the Front Right move on to the next speaker.

Most modern receivers can also test to see if a speaker is out of phase, meaning you've got the + hooked to the + on the speaker and the + hooked to the + on the receiver, it may be worth running that too. Take a really close look at the speaker wire, if it is copper in colour with a clear jacket on it there is often writing on one of the strands, it may even be marked with a series of "++++", that obviously is your positive strand and should be run to the positive terminal on your receiver. It may not have +'s on it but just have writing, I've always run the strand with the writing to the positive. At this point you are assuming they followed the same standard on the back of the speaker and that they followed that standard for all the speakers. So it is worth doing a phase test on each speaker.

The speaker wire may also be black (Negative) or red (Positive).

Do yourself a favour though and label the wires once you have them figured out.

Don't over think this, odds are the speakers are 8 Ohms and any receiver you pick up will be able to drive them. You'll be fine, take your time and it is a piece of cake!

Thanks for the help! I dont really know much about home theater set up but want to set this up nicely. Do you know of any affordable good receivers? I was looking at Yamahas but they are really up there . Also I did notice some the cables that are loose to connect and one had like 4 copper wires coming out of one. A Red, Green, White and Black, that really confused me... any thoughts? Also any idea if these speakers would work with HD audio? Like I want to make sure I can connect HDMI things to it.

[roar]

Originally Posted by SAP12690

Thanks for the help! I dont really know much about home theater set up but want to set this up nicely. Do you know of any affordable good receivers? I was looking at Yamahas but they are really up there . Also I did notice some the cables that are loose to connect and one had like 4 copper wires coming out of one. A Red, Green, White and Black, that really confused me... any thoughts? Also any idea if these speakers would work with HD audio? Like I want to make sure I can connect HDMI things to it.

Receivers... Yamaha, Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer, to me... buy what you like the look of... they all have their levels and it sounds like you are targeting entry level and at that point you are splitting hairs so find one that suits your budget and go for it. Check out the receiver forum here for more options, but consider refurb to stretch your budget and you can easily find something in the $300 - $400 range.

If one wire has 4 cables in it you've got a couple of possibilities. One, your speakers are bi-amped, meaning all 4 wires are used and the lows and highs of the speakers get separate power. Somehow I doubt this is the case for you, I'm not sure I've seen bi-amped in-walls before though I'm sure they exist. Second option is only two of those wires are live and I'd guess it would be the black and red, third option is it could be any combinations of those wires being live and finally, they may have split two of the wires, the red and black and run them to one speaker and split the other two wires and run them to another speaker... you would really hope they didn't do that as the jacket the 4 wires are in is likely rated for in-wall installation where the inner wires are not rated that way.

I've used 4 conductor speaker wire to wire a theatre before and when I did I only used the black and red wires. I ran it because I found a great deal on 4 conductor in-wall speaker wire and I also ran it on the hopes I would be adding bi-ampable speakers to my setup one day. I then moved and left the cables there and also left the guy buying my house probably asking the same questions you are You didn't buy my house by chance did you?

If push comes to shove you may have to remove the speakers from the wall to see how they are wired, but even with 4 wires you should be able to figure it out.

Any speakers can play HD Audio. How well it sounds is more dependant on the quality of speaker and receiver then the source of the Audio.

[crackinhedz]

What is the ohm rating of those Boston speakers?

Any pics of the room, wire connections, speakers? That would be helpful.

Bizarre they would have 4 wires per speaker, especially surrounds.

[SAP12690]

Originally Posted by crackinhedz

What is the ohm rating of those Boston speakers?

Any pics of the room, wire connections, speakers? That would be helpful.

Bizarre they would have 4 wires per speaker, especially surrounds.

We are going to be moving in starting this week. I can take some pics and show you guys! I would appreciate any and all help! thanks guys

[schan1269]

The 4 wires are hopefully for the rear. It is common to run xx/4 wire(you buy wire as 16/2, 14/4 etc. First is awg, second is conductor) to run it 1 spot, then take it to each speaker with xx/2.