In the past I’ve always had the cables for speakers out in the room, either under carpets, or behind bookcases. Sometimes this doesn’t work quite so well, for example for multi-channel surround, and cables sometimes have had to be routed awkwardly.

Now I’m wondering if I should consider hard wiring cables into the walls, which might require considerably longer cable runs, possibly going up into the ceiling space, and then down to a connection point close to each speaker location.

However, in a fairly typical rectangular room, some obstacles could be avoided by going the long way round at floor level, but requiring considerably more cable. Obstacles could include doors and fireplaces.

An alternative, but perhaps not a good one, is to use wireless connections, with active speakers. That wouldn’t take all the problems away, because of the power requirements, but might reduce the need for a lot of signal cable to be installed. I suspect quality would be compromised significantly with wireless links.

Comments?