Can I wire my apartment for sound?

January 15, 2007 10:06 AM

Our apartment is 11 years old. Apparently that's not quite new enough for it to have been wired for sound when it was built, so I have to do it myself. Hardwood floors, but it's a wooden building so presumably the walls and ceiling are fair game. Can I run wires without tearing off molding or cutting holes in the ceiling? How? Can I do it myself, or is it the kind of thing that requires a professional? How do they do this stuff?
posted by BorgLove to Technology (14 answers total)

Perhaps I'm a bit old-fashioned, but I've never seen anything except custom construction be "wired for sound". It's just not standard.

So, what exactly is "wired for sound"? There are lots of ways to run wire, some are easy, some are hard, some are ugly, some are invisible. It depends on how much you need to run and where it's going.

And yes, you can do it yourself. But you might want to get a professional, depending on the amount and complexity of what you want to accomplish. Details, please.
posted by GuyZero at 10:22 AM on January 15, 2007

This may not be a project you want to do to an apartment without landlord approval, and unless you are pretty handy you will prob want a professional to do so that the finished look is seamless
posted by edgeways at 10:28 AM on January 15, 2007

I assume you mean that you want to run speaker wires to a home theater system, although multi-room sound is similar. If you want the wires in the walls, floors or ceiling you will have to drill holes somewhere to get them in. You then fish the wires using a fish tape which you can get at Home Depot. This is difficult. You can run wires along the baseboards and staple them down. This is how your cable company will do a cable install. You can also buy special flat speaker wires which can be adhered to the baseboard like tape and then painted over.
posted by caddis at 10:28 AM on January 15, 2007

Response by poster: Nothing too complex, GuyZero. I don't need to run cables to every room, for example. All I really need is to be able to put speakers, 2 or 4, on the opposite side of the room to the TV and hifi system without visible wires. It seems like it would be a really hard task, so I wondered if there were tricks to doing it that I'm just not aware of. The room is colored light and there's no carpet, so the wires can't really be casually hidden.
posted by BorgLove at 10:33 AM on January 15, 2007

Response by poster: edgeways: I am the landlord :)
caddis: I've heard of fishtape. Up the wall, across the ceiling and then down and out through another wall seems like it would be mindbendingly difficult. I like your flat speaker wire option better.
posted by BorgLove at 10:38 AM on January 15, 2007

Flat adhesive wire

I'm getting ready to wire up my whole apartment with this in the next month.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 10:51 AM on January 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Fish tape is not usually used to fish something up a wall, across a ceiling, and down again. The way it's often done is to cut a hole at the bottom (I'd put a speaker face plate there personally) then cut a patch at the top of the wall at the joint between the ceiling and the wall. Squarish. You fish the wire up to there, and pull it through. Now you're 1/3 of the way. You cut a similar hole at the other side of the room at the top of the wall, and try to fish from the top of side 1 to the top of side 2. This is often going to be hard. If the ceiling joists run the right way, it's not too bad, but if they run perpendicular to your cable run... I don't know, pretty tough. If you can get to the other side of the room then you fish down like you fished up. You replace the patches and repair it - that part can be anywhere from easy to hard depending on your wall texture and skill with wall repair.

One note is that when doing a floor-to-ceiling fish like this, it's often easier to attach a weight to a string and put it in the top, then tie a cable to this when you get it to the bottom. It depends on what's in your walls.

Doing a custom wiring thing like this is waaaay easier if you have access to the space over the room. That isn't always possible and I have no idea if it is or not in yourcase.

The last installation I did myself I had the good fortune to do while i was putting in the hardwood floors. I cut a channel along the bottom of some of the boards and routed the cable through that. It's the easiest way, by far, but not everyone has that option. I've also done it by ripping up the baseboards and installing new ones (again with a channel that I cut in them) and I've seen it done with crown molding. Does your apartment need crown molding added by any chance? If so then all you have to do is get the wire from the floor to the ceiling on one side, and then down again on the other side, the rest run behind the crown.

If I didn't have access to the ceiling, or a way to go across the floor as mentioned above, I'd probably hire a pro or suck it up and use wireless speakers (which I don't think sound as good)
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:56 AM on January 15, 2007

The adhesive wire looks pretty interesting. Painted it would probably be reasonably inconspicuous.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:58 AM on January 15, 2007

You can get trim pieces that are slightly hollow on the backside - tack up your wiring, then install the molding over it with a few finish nails. Invisible, easy to de-install, no digging into your walls or existing molding.

Or you could go wireless...
posted by Aquaman at 11:16 AM on January 15, 2007

I've never heard of an apartment being pre-wired for sound! Is this something that might actually be available, if i asked the right questions???
posted by Kololo at 11:24 AM on January 15, 2007

Aquaman for the win.

Why go through the hassle of the wires?
posted by onhazier at 12:00 PM on January 15, 2007

Response by poster: Aquaman, onhazier: I think I'm starting to see things your way.
posted by BorgLove at 12:51 PM on January 15, 2007

If you've got baseboards, you might want to try prying one off and seeing if there's a big healthy gap between the wall sheathing and the flooring for you to run your cables through - I mean, the whole point of a baseboard is to cover that gap - and if it's a little too tight to get the wire through, the baseboard will cover if you widen it a little.

You can also go up-and-over doorframes this way, as well. Do exits by drilling a hole through the baseboard. When it comes time to move, cut the wires flush, push them into the wall, and use pre-stained wood putty to fill the hole.
posted by Orb2069 at 12:59 PM on January 15, 2007

So... everyone pretty much covered it. I would add that you can always take regular old speaker wire (available in bulk at hardware store) and simply staple it where your baseboard meets the wall or between the quarter-round and the baseboard.

Ugly? Sure, if you're looking. 90% of people won't even notice it's there. You'll find yourself staring at it nonstop. But it is an option. It's cheap and it's easy.

Wireless is simpler, but more expensive - though probably cheaper than getting an electrician in to do it. And flat wire is probably dead easy to install and indicates that you're far from the only person facing this problem.

If money is not an object, I'd say shop around for a quality wireless setup.
posted by GuyZero at 1:19 PM on January 15, 2007