Speaker wire in conduit?

B

Bob in WI

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Had a discussion the other day w an individual who runs his speaker wires in conduit. His run is fairly long as mine will be.
The concept is that there are stray signals all over your house from the wireless router, BT products, cell phones, microwaves.... you get the idea.
If the run is longer, the wires are more susceptible to picking up this dirt & you might hear it as low level distortion.
Putting the speaker cable in metal (ie. conduit) helps shield it from this potential interference.

I'm mixed on this - I see it as possible but is it audible?
Anybody heard of this before?

I'm working on my room now so if I were going to do this, now would be the time.
 
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Bob in WI said:
Had a discussion the other day w an individual who runs his speaker wires in conduit. His run is fairly long as mine will be.
The concept is that there are stray signals all over your house from the wireless router, BT products, cell phones, microwaves.... you get the idea.
If the run is longer, the wires are more susceptible to picking up this dirt & you might hear it as low level distortion.
Putting the speaker cable in metal (ie. conduit) helps shield it from this potential interference.

I'm mixed on this - I see it as possible but is it audible?
Anybody heard of this before?

I'm working on my room now so if I were going to do this, now would be the time.
Click to expand...

Don't run your speaker wire in parallel close to house current wiring and you'll be fine. If you do have to cross the house wiring do it at a 90° angle and again you'll be fine.

Licensed master electrician since 1986, wired countless whole house systems without issue.
 
I understand that would minimize possible interference from household current & makes perfect sense from that perspective.

The discussion I had regarded stray electrical signals from appliances, wireless products, microwaves, etc.
 
Bob in WI said:
I understand that would minimize possible interference from household current & makes perfect sense from that perspective.

The discussion I had regarded stray electrical signals from appliances, wireless products, microwaves, etc.
Click to expand...

Most of those you need to worry about are traveling on the house current wiring and why some use power supplies that clean the current feeding their equipment.

But it is a good idea not to route speaker wires near modems and routers, or have your turntable near them, it usually manifests as a motorboat sound.
 
Sgt Shultz said:
Don't run your speaker wire in parallel close to house current wiring and you'll be fine. If you do have to cross the house wiring do it at a 90° angle and again you'll be fine.

Licensed master electrician since 1986, wired countless whole house systems without issue.
Click to expand...
:thumbsup: I helped wire my mother's house for sound when she was having it built. Some did run through conduit, and some did have to cross AC wiring.
None of the speaker wiring picked anything up from the mains.
 
Sgt Shultz said:
Most of those you need to worry about are traveling on the house current wiring and why some use power supplies that clean the current feeding their equipment.

But it is a good idea not to route speaker wires near modems and routers, or have your turntable near them, it usually manifests as a motorboat sound.
Click to expand...
I'm running a dedicated 20 amp circuit for audio & as the wires run across the basement concrete wall, that will be in conduit.
The power itself should be pretty clean.
I'm just trying to think of things that are easy to do while the walls are open & I have flexibility.
I don't want to do rework because I missed something.
 
I installed a whole house audio system, 12 zones, and used this shielded cable, see the link. It had no issues, very slippery, the black jacket, and was so easy to run. I would not waste time on running conduit, unless you are say doing an audio room where you would feel the need to replace the wiring for some reason on a regular basis. Here is the wire, they have a few to choose from, great guys to work with, and their gear is top notch. They are out of Texas and have been around for many years. https://www.htd.com/Accessories/Speaker-Cables
 
Bob in WI said:
I'm running a dedicated 20 amp circuit for audio & as the wires run across the basement concrete wall, that will be in conduit.
The power itself should be pretty clean.
I'm just trying to think of things that are easy to do while the walls are open & I have flexibility.
I don't want to do rework because I missed something.
Click to expand...
I would run CAT8 cable, you never know.
 
Installing in conduit only does harm to your bank accounts. Can only do neutral or positive things for your sound. It does make future pulls to the same place easier.

That said, running it with care as noted above or in properly grounded, shielded cable will make the need for conduit a personal one.
 
Semanon said:
Installing in conduit only does harm to your bank accounts. Can only do neutral or positive things for your sound. It does make future pulls to the same place easier.

That said, running it with care as noted above or in properly grounded, shielded cable will make the need for conduit a personal one.
Click to expand...
Exactly, it is a waste of money in most cases. The only time I could see running conduit is if you are continually swapping out cabling and such in a dedicated room behind the walls. And even then, why?
 
Sgt Shultz said:
Don't run your speaker wire in parallel close to house current wiring and you'll be fine. If you do have to cross the house wiring do it at a 90° angle and again you'll be fine.

Licensed master electrician since 1986, wired countless whole house systems without issue.
Click to expand...
What he said.

Speaker wiring is about 1,000 times less likely than other audio cabling to pick up interference because the signal is already amplified. Line level, preamp level, and especially phono level signals are much more prone to interference.

Conduit might be useful to protect speaker wire from damage, or as already noted, to permit re-pulling later. Usually not necessary.
 
Bob,
Stray EMF's aside, if you wanted a nice physically protected environment in the wall for your speaker wire, how about PVC conduit?
Relatively inexpensive, easy to work with and if you went with 3/4 or 1" it would give you the ability to swap wires should you ever decide to do that.
 
The problem with running conduit for the uninitiated is too many bends, more than 360° over the entire run can be difficult to pull through and why it's not allowed by the NEC. Access points/pull boxes are required if needing more, this may be almost impossible in existing homes or at least not aesthetically acceptable.

This is why conduit is run through slabs where it's much easier to go from point A to point B with a minimum of bends
 
Justrucking said:
I would run CAT8 cable, you never know.
Click to expand...
While not Cat-8, but I have had excellent low level signal distribution results using attic run Belden brand unshielded HQ Mediatwist Cat-6E cabling providing 4 separate video cable runs, and 1 audio run to 5 rooms of my house since winter 2009, utilizing active and passive balun technics to feed those room`s A/V systems from my living room`s master A/V rack`s 5 different selectable A/V sources.

Each of those endpoint room`s flat screen TVs can select any of 5 different video sources, that are all active 24/7/365, except the BluRay feed, from 1080P BluRay & Component video (RGB) all the way to down to 480i resolution composite video from inexpensive wireless camera systems that supplement my 1080P wired security camera system that primarily feeds the Component video distribution system.

This also allows me to choose or not to selectively turn on any of the endpoint room`s feed from the living room`s A/V rack stereo or not, and locally adjust the loudness, or mute as desired.

I normally keep 4 rooms stereos powered up 24/7/365, so while I`m home, no matter where in the house I happen to be, there is a nearby stereo playing my all day playing WAV. ripped music at just above conversational SPL.

I love this setup and perfectly suits my home bound reclusive lifestyle.
 
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