Cabling

Thankfully my roof is easilly navigated and insulation is simple to move around.

First comment... I hate noggins.

I am running 5.1 currently but decided to wire for 7.1. The cable I am using is nice heavy duty stuff of the type used in large commerical installations. I got a good deal on some off-cuts.

In the corner where my rack will sit I have a LAN point, Fox/FTA, single gang power (to run power up to my projector from my power conditioner), and a 2 gang power socket to be wired in later. Below that is the HDMI wall-plate and a speaker plate fitted for 7.1.

I did run into a hick-up with the HDMI wall-plate. A tip for anyone installing one of these... make sure you have a flexible HDMI cable and be cautious of how 'low profile' the female connector in the wall is. I have a thick 10m Kordz cable and I found that there was insufficient space to insert the cable. The cable mounts vertically into the plate... absolute genius when you consider that a screw penetrates through the wall into the c-mount.

I modified the cable connector and strain relief to allow it to connect and then cut the screw short so it didn't foul the cable. No pic sorry and I don't want to undo it again! It's in nice and tight...

Here is the finished setup at the source end.

And another pic of the wall-plates at the speakers. You can also see the surround brackets I am using. These are actually TV stands. I opted to use them because of the size of the surrounds and not wanting to drill them for other styles of speaker mount. The added benefit of this mount is that when I place speakers for 7.1 I can swivel the mount forward, thus moving the surrounds from behind the listening position to 90 degrees (the suggested location for side surrounds).