Wednesday, December 21, 2011

cable racewayCan I combine coax and speaker wire using Wire Raceway?

I have been looking all over the internet to help me find a solution with concealing wires around my living room. I finally stumbled upon using wire/cable raceways. The one I'm planning to use is D-Line, because it seems like a very nice product. Anyway, I need to route my Verizon FIOS coaxial cable to another location in the room. Additionally, I need to route speaker wires for satellite speakers around the same room. Here are my questions:

1. So long as the raceway is big enough, can I route both the coax and the speaker wire in the same raceway? Or will this cause some sort of interference on either line? I am a semi-audiophile, so this is a big concern.
2. Should I only consider plastic raceways for my application? I see there are metal ones too, and I've read about "fire hazards", etc, so I want to make sure my setup is procable racewayper and safe.
3. Is it safe to use small screws or finishing nails on the raceway in addition to the adhesive? I just want to make sure it won't move or fall off after some time. My question is again with regard to audio/video quality and/or distortion. Will adding metal screws cause me a problem?

Thanks!
1) Yes. Coax is well-shielded and in addition, the frequencies involved are well above audio, so if any energy did escape from within, it wouldn't affect the audio.

2) Plastic is fine. Metal is okay too.

3) Screws will not cause a problem.

If you run only the cable and speaker or other audio wires in the channel, it should work fine. If you need to run power cords as well, you might get some crosstalk between the speaker wires and the power cords if they run parallel for several feet. It's unlikely, but possible, and if it didcable raceway cause a problem, it would be in the form of a 50 or 60 Hz hum out the speakers. I would run the power cords in a separate channel, and use metal rather than plastic, at least on the one carrying the speaker wires and cable.
I do coax and cat 5-6 on over 100 ft runs in schools and have no problems, Metal or plastic is your choice. We use metal for obvious reasons, Coax is shielded and cat 5-6 is not affected by emi unless you are hitting some serious amperage running through the wires. Metal raceways stay straight where as the plastic bends to easy and the metal can be painted to match easier. You can crank 100 amps ( audio) through 14 gauge wires and not notice much if you keep it under 100'. You can also use r59 coax to feed your speakers if you keep it under 50 watts, That makes for no distortion at all.

No comments:

Post a Comment