Running an RCA cable in the wall
Running an RCA cable in the wall
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craigjm

Original Poster:

19,353 posts

216 months

Thursday 8th April 2021
quotequote all
I am renovating a new place and for the sake of the looks of the lounge (I know I know) it’s likely that my turntable will need to be in a different place to the amp. Rather than run an RCA cable along the skirting for about 5m I have come up with the following idea and just wanted to check out it would work.

Basically fit a socket near the amp and a socket near the turntable with one of these sockets



Then run the cable in the wall to connect the two and then use RCA cables to connect from that socket to the amp and to the turntable.

That should work right? If you tan the cable in the same in wall channel as power cables would that cause any issues interference wise etc?

Can you see any other issues / other suggestions?

ribbit

57 posts

210 months

Friday 9th April 2021
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Two quite bad ideas.

You really need to keep signal cables away from power cables, to reduce EMI/RFI. This especially applies to turntable cables as the output tends to be quite low and therefore more susceptible to interference.

Turntable leads should be kept as short as possible.

ribbit

57 posts

210 months

Friday 9th April 2021
quotequote all
Is there any reason you cannot move the amp closer to the turntable, then run longer cables to your speakers? This is always going to work better.

craigjm

Original Poster:

19,353 posts

216 months

Friday 9th April 2021
quotequote all
ribbit said:
You really need to keep signal cables away from power cables, to reduce EMI/RFI
Yes this is what I thought

Tony1963

5,703 posts

178 months

Friday 9th April 2021
quotequote all
I suspect that vibrations in the walls will also have some effect on the sound. I’ve no doubt that someone somewhere has a beautiful expensive solution to this wink

Mr Pointy

12,563 posts

175 months

Friday 9th April 2021
quotequote all
The first problem is that the signal level out of the record player is very small, which is why your amp has a dedicated phono input with a hefty amount of gain in it (& some RIAA eq of course). You could get round this by having an external phono preamp under the deck & this would give you more chance of using longer cables to the amp.

Whether or not you'd get away with using buried cables is difficult to say; if you used high quality cable with good screening you might just about get away with it but it wouldn't be surprising if you had some issues with hum at least. You certainly need to keep it clear of running alongside a mains cable for any distance.

If you can get the signal in a balanced line level format you'd be pretty sure to be succesful, but I'm not sure if any consumer equipment has this option. You could add converters at each end if you really wanted to split the deck & amp.

One other option is a deck with a Bluetooth output (these are a thing now) but that might not be the solution you're after.

craigjm

Original Poster:

19,353 posts

216 months

Friday 9th April 2021
quotequote all
Yeah the deck has a built in stage. I have looked at the project Bluetooth deck may give that a go over the rege planar plus

gmaz

4,914 posts

226 months

Friday 9th April 2021
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Running cables in walls isn't easy as there are studs and corners to negotiate. You also risk bad connector contacts

If the wireless bluetooth transmitter/receiver is no good, I'd run a cable in a 'D' shaped micro conduit on top of the skirting board, and it would be virtually invisible.

https://www.toolstation.com/d-line-3m/p57441


craigjm

Original Poster:

19,353 posts

216 months

Friday 9th April 2021
quotequote all
gmaz said:
Running cables in walls isn't easy as there are studs and corners to negotiate. You also risk bad connector contacts

If the wireless bluetooth transmitter/receiver is no good, I'd run a cable in a 'D' shaped micro conduit on top of the skirting board, and it would be virtually invisible.

https://www.toolstation.com/d-line-3m/p57441
Yeah thats the other option. Was just trying to keep it as neat as possible. Will probably buy a Project essential 3 BT deck

NorthDave

2,473 posts

248 months

Monday 12th April 2021
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I would expect the bluetooth option to be much lower quality than a wired version - if that makes any difference to you. BT is compressed and a decent stereo will show this up.

The difference would be comparable to CD and mid range MP3.

craigjm

Original Poster:

19,353 posts

216 months

Monday 12th April 2021
quotequote all
NorthDave said:
I would expect the bluetooth option to be much lower quality than a wired version - if that makes any difference to you. BT is compressed and a decent stereo will show this up.

The difference would be comparable to CD and mid range MP3.
I also have that reservation so I am going to go and listen. This is the BT deck I would be looking at and useful they compare it to a Rega Planar 1 which is what I currently have

https://www.whathifi.com/pro-ject/essential-iii/re...

The wire in the wall thing isnt going to work it will be too close to power lines. The other option is to run it along the skirt but you would still have a 3m RCA

Mr Pointy

12,563 posts

175 months

Monday 12th April 2021
quotequote all
craigjm said:
Yeah thats the other option. Was just trying to keep it as neat as possible. Will probably buy a Project essential 3 BT deck
Depending on how badly you want to do this & how much you want to spend there are ways round the unbalanced issue. You could use a unbalanced to balanced converters & then you can have a long a run as you like (& interference is less of an issue) using devices like these:
https://www.canford.co.uk/RDL-AV-INTERFACES-FLAT-P...

That's just an example - there are loads of different makes available. You could go unbalnced to digital/opticl/Toslink which would mean you could run a longer cable.

If you're looking at the Essential 3 BT then they also do a Digital version which would allow you to use a fibre cable:
https://www.project-audio.com/en/product/essential...

If you're into spacing your cables off the floor on custom made wooden supports though you would have to accept that some of these options might have a bit of an affect on the ultimate sound quality.

craigjm

Original Poster:

19,353 posts

216 months

Monday 12th April 2021
quotequote all
Great info thanks

Lucid_AV

452 posts

52 months

Tuesday 13th April 2021
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It may not be practical to work with because it's fairly stiff, but good quality satellite coax is pretty well shielded from RFI.

Go for the all copper stuff: Webro WF100, Triax TX100, Philex PF100 are all good. They're cheap too by Hi-Fi cable standards so accept no substitute.

For something very well shielded but extremely easy to work with then have a look at this.


Autopilot

1,326 posts

200 months

Wednesday 14th April 2021
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If you don't mind risking wasting the money, buy the interconnects, stick it all to the outside of the wall and try it and see what it does.

I have my AV Receiver under the stairs and I had a few issues with my sub which I guess will be similar to what you may experience. I tried a few things to see if I could reduce the annoying hum that the Sub produced, but in the end, I just ran the sub lead directly from the back of the amp, followed the cable runs in to the living room and managed to get the other end through a small hole in the skirting board and plugged straight in to the back of the amp.

Any time I tried to use converters, connectors or things that weren't shielded enough, it just didn't work so literally have it plugged directly in at both ends over a long run.

TheRainMaker

7,062 posts

258 months

Thursday 15th April 2021
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Autopilot said:
If you don't mind risking wasting the money, buy the interconnects, stick it all to the outside of the wall and try it and see what it does.
This is what I would do, just try it, it won't make any difference if it's in the wall or not.

Just keep the run away from any mains as much as you can.


craigjm

Original Poster:

19,353 posts

216 months

Thursday 15th April 2021
quotequote all
TheRainMaker said:
This is what I would do, just try it, it won't make any difference if it's in the wall or not.

Just keep the run away from any mains as much as you can.
Very true I will try it out and before we move the sockets and do the plastering. It may also be an excuse for me to buy a new deck if it doesn’t work hehe

AnotherGuy

836 posts

264 months

Saturday 17th April 2021
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I've done exactly this - RCA connectors with shielded coax going 5m to an under stairs cupboard. For both vinyl and sub.

For the SystemDek I go into a Cambridge Audio phon amp and then into the RCA wall plate which ends up at a Denon AV amp.
For my Monitor Audio sub you only need one channel, so that comes from the Denon, out to the wall plate and one (of the pair) of RCA interconnects is used.

My electrician installed the cable/plates. I know he wasn't particularly fussy about avoiding electrical cables, sharp bends but he did use a decent cable. I get no buzz/hum or feedback from either device.

SystemDek
|https://thumbsnap.com/Cv9bSSyx[/url]

Sub
|https://thumbsnap.com/xyT8Bh8k[/url]

Understairs cupboard
Work in progress but contains Virgin Router, Mesh hub, XBox, RaspberryPi (running PiHole), Symphony hub, 24 port switch
Denon AV amp, Yamaha Amp (for kitchen 4.1 system), Virgin TV hub, Samsung Smartthings hub and an HP server running all my media.