When using 4 wire in wall cable to connect speakers I have always used Red and White for the right channel and Green and Black for the left, with Red and Green positive. Using Red and White as a pair dates back to old red/white pairs for early stereo days. Obviously, it really does not matter as long as you are consistent, I just wondered what others did.

I always used Red/Green and Black/White.


Red positive and black positive.




If you label it does it really matter?

Right Speaker = [Red +][Black -] (like the speaker terminals on most speakers)

Left Speaker = [White +][Green -]


If there is no obvious left or right speaker in a ceiling i make the "first" speaker red and black. The first speaker is where the home run lands and either continues on to the "last" speaker or gets spliced to the last speaker. No real reason to do it this way other than to have a standard practice. It lets me know where my splice point is.

This is how we do it also. 

Red is always positive and Black is always negative..... everything else follows that IMO.

I've always done this as well. Thought it was pretty standard.

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a buddy of mine is a electrician .. he goes with red and black are + and white and green are neg. Theory being that in electrical black and red are hot, white and green are neutral/ground. Easier for him to remember I guess

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trunk slammers

Red + / Black -
White+ / Green -

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FASTLS

Christmas colors and newspapers

red plus, green minus
white plus, black minus

Not only is this the correct way to wire it, it is how many mfgs have their speaker terminals color coded on the back of their equipment.


Even Russound... Ken, and you being the Russound fan bois, should know this. Not sure about your beloved A Bus though.

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Red & Green are always positive. I think of christmas colors when im having an off day and cant think clearly LOL!

Your electrician needs to stop doing audio or learn that the convention in audio is different and when he does it that way he screws up anyone who works on the system after him.

This discussion comes up about every two years, with things dividing into a couple of approaches. In all of these approaches, black is negative.

First, there's what you get when you buy a two-conductor cable: black and red. Red is positive. Black is negative. So it makes sense, when you add two more conductors, to stay with black and red. So green and white... hmmm... I cannot tell you why, but green is negative and white is positive. Before I just knew this, I remembered green as grass, so it's on the ground.

With that wire scheme, I would call black and red the left channel because, in general in this society, we read and make lists and all kinds of stuff from left to right, so the first pair is left. But some do it the other way.

But I decided a dozen years ago to see if there was a standard, and CEDIA seemed like it might have its act together; I was wrong, but they had a standard. They used red and green for the right channel and black and white for the left channel. The grounds were the green and the black. I remembered this by the phrase "Christmas colors are right." Whether you pay attention to Christmas or not, that phrase won't warp your heathen soul, so you can use it with impunity. And once again you must remember that in the world of audio, black is negative.

By the way, black is only positive in the electrical world. In manufacturing, test equipment, audio, video, even wired flashlights, if there are two colors, black is negative. Your electrician friend needs to submit to the program. Sorry.