Wiring surround speakers

[jimgioia]

My system is roughly 7 years old. It's a (great) Onkyo surround sound reciever connected to Polk Surround sound speakers.

I am re-doing my great room an want to mount the front an rear speakers. Fronts on the back wall and rears on either side wall behind seating area. Attempting to run speaker wire though the wall seems a daunting task at the very least.
I may already know the answer to this question but do I have any other options for connecting these speakers without having to run speaker wire through the walls? I don't want to run track on the wall to hide the wires and a wireless kit doesn't sound like a great idea. Previously had the speakers (front and rear) on floor stands which I hate. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks Jim

[tonyb]

What kind of speakers are we talking here and how big is the wire ? You don't want to hang anything that has ports out of the rear of the cabinet.
Wires can be hidden behind baseboards or under carpet too. Rears .....you can also get wireless speakers for that position.

[ZLTFUL]

I would go with the under the baseboard suggestion. That's how I wired all of the wall plates in our townhouse.

[jimgioia]

Thank you very much for your respone.

The front and rear speakers are roughly 4" wide by 6" tall by 5'" deep. They weigh roughly 6-7 lbs. each
I want to run 16 guage wire from the reciever to each speaker. I guess that first off, can the speakers (rear)
be close to the floor or up 5-6 feet on the wall (which is where I was planning on putting them.) If they can be close to the floor, I will just run the wire up from the floor. But, if they must be elevated, I would need to get the wire through the wall.

[jimgioia]

To further eleborate, I was planning on running the wire for the rear speakers from my reciever down to a speaker wire wall plate (which would be about 10" from the floor) From the wall plate, the wire would travel (in the wall) through the floor and into the basement. Then across the basement ceiling and back up though the wall (5 or 6' high on the wall) on the rear side of the great room both sides. In reading on the subject, people are saying that that is the preferred position for the rears. Again, can the rears be put close to the floor. If so, I really have no issue.

[tonyb]

That small of a speaker.....close to the floor ? Not if good sound is your goal. Idealy you want them at least ear level or maybe a foot or 2 above on the rears.

[jimgioia]

Yeah Tony, thats what I figured. Thanks for your input

[Espolksytem]

I was just at harbor fright looking at some fish tape for pulling wires threw walls i was also thinkingh about doing the same thing problem is the way im looking at it is there is going to be some hole patching to do when im done because the smallest hole i can make to run the tape in the wall will still leave a hole bigger then im going to want so yeah ill be doing some patching its still the best way to do it in my opinion patching small holes like that is not very hard to do as long as you have a touch up paint to use so you dont have to repaint the whole wall.

[jimgioia]

Yep. I bit the bullet yesterday and cut out holes at the bottom of the right and left wall. Used the fish tape (with little trouble) and got the wire up to holes I made 6 ft up the wall. Through the holes on the bottom of the walls, I drilled and ran the wire through the plate into the basement, then back up on the front side of the room where my reciever is.

[Anthony Hinton]

Nice! Much better than the under carpet idea imho. I tried the carpet idea and after a few months you could feel the wires.

[TurboGTU]

I just did this at my place a couple months ago, I went the wireless route for awhile, but it was just not up to par. Definitely don't regret it. I did it as part of rerunning all my low voltage wires, replacing coax and adding cat5e so I can't finally use my 24 port switch in the basement and get my server up and connected hardline to everything else that uses it. :)