My customer builds antenna's for missile systems. I cant go into more detail.

His main concern is noise levels building up along the path of the speaker wire over the course of the distance. (less than 60 feet per speaker to the rack). I cant recall the exact terminology however as this conversation was several months ago. I certainly could re-visit the discussion IF I understood to a higher level of knowledge the differences between the two. His audio knowledge does come from the late 80's and he did say "If I'm wrong and things have changed, let me know, but I'd like to keep as much of this balance as possible even going so far as to run xlr cables to the speakers and then change over if necessary." (I'm paraphrasing). He then said that his last integrator over 4 years ago convinced him to use speaker wire in his current house, and that he regretted it stating it never sounded as good as he wanted.

I've never had anyone ask me to run XLR to speakers (besides in a studio to monitors) only between pre-amps and amps. So, I became confused and started Googling. Of course I haven't really found an answer good enough, besides those amps mentioned above. (which I suggested to him) I figured we could locate them in the risers behind an access panel of sorts and then limit the large gauge speakerwire to roughly less than 10'. He was receptive to the idea.

We haven't chosen the lines of speakers or pre-amp yet but the fronts will be towers, and the rears and surrounds will likely be on-wall's, the center will get recessed into the front stage.

Im completely open to suggestions and idea's, its kind of why I asked you all, I'm admitting that balanced audio isn't my bag, I don't know enough about it, which is probably why my posts seemed misleading. Honestly I didn't think I would get such responses on this. But thank you all for your input.

QUOTE
"Start with the fact that you initially said the client wants XLR wire down to the last foot, at which point he wants speaker wire, and you later say that you meant there should be an amplifier in between. This is so fuzzy and undefined that you could get really messed up when it comes time to decide on something and actually spend money on it."

He never said he wanted speaker wire at the end, I just realized that no high end HT speaker has XLR inputs (besides some subwoofers), so logically it had to get converted back over if we did his suggestion of using XLR in the first place. Which is why I started looking into "converters" (if they existed) which then became "local amps" (because they don't)

No reason you would have noise over 60 ft of good quality speaker cables if the ac was done properly and if you have good quality audio components.

That said, of course using xlr balanced audio with monoblocks amplifier for each speaker would get you outstanding audio performances. If your customer have the budget, and if you can hide the amps close enough to the speaker or make them nice to look at, then i would go this way.

There is a lot of possibilities regarding the choice of equipement. Bryston is one of my favorite, but also Krell and McIntosh (supposing it fit the budget...)

Contact this company if you want high quality custom lenght xlr cable http://www.bisaudio.com/


Looks like a cool project. High-end theater rooms are always my favorite.

This sounds like a valid complaint... the last eight words, that is. It seems he is judging that speaker wire made things sound bad, when it might well have been an amplifier or speaker system, or combination of the two, that did not sound as good as he wanted.


Your knowledge should have trumped his statement at this point. If you google XLR wire, you'll find XLR connectors, and zzounds.com, in response to a search for XLR wire, suggests several products, all of which are cables with XLR connectors. See, XLR, technically (he's a technical guy) is a style of connector, not a wire. Him saying he was to use XLR wire in his system is like me saying I want to drive somewhere and use jet fuel to get there. My spec of "jet fuel" implies that I want to use a very specialized vehicle; the fact that I don't say "I want to use a very specialized vehicle" means I don't really understand what I want, but it involves jet fuel.


Okay, but we can only try to work things out from what you wrote about what he said:


You told us he does not want speaker wire until the very last foot, which sounds very much like "he wants speaker wire at the end."

The only way "noise" would "build up" on speaker wire levels to the point of audibility, is not running the speaker wire correctly. i.e. running the speaker wire right next to electric lines for a distance, etc...

That's the great thing about physics. It hasn't changed since the 80's... or the past thousand years. lol

Yeah, his system didn't sound good because of the speaker wire ;) . You are dealing with a client that has absolutely no clue what he's talking about when it comes to audio systems. He should stick to building rockets, something he might actually know what he's doing with.

The room accounts for most of the sound you hear. It is the biggest single factor to the overall sound quality you will get from the system. Ignore this and everything else is a crap shoot (maybe it will sound good, maybe it won't).
Also, you don't know what this client considers to sound good. He may think that something that's very inaccurate sounds great to him (i.e. BOSE system).

For a customer that is very picky like this, you need to have a very clear contract. Otherwise it has the potential to be a never ending job that you will make no money on (or even cost you money).

Yeah, engineers who do not understand the specialty they are dealing with are the worst.

Maybe we should all pitch in and get you one of these: [Link: mentalfloss.com]. Perhaps the humor of this ignorant mixup of terms might alert him to the idea that he has valid complaints, but is totally inept at diagnosing the causes or prescribing the solution.

What is his old equipment? Somebody probably sold him a bunch of crap telling him it's the best !

Also xlr is used for line level. Not speaker level! This is basic and you should have corrected him right on the spot ... You did not and now you have problems.

+1000

I tend to forget that rule, but it's so true. Makes me remember a lady who always been sad about a 10k audio system she bought because, according to her, it didn't sounded as good as her Tivoli shelf mini mono system... After a good talk, we made her understand that what she was considering as an audio reference was totally wrong.

Most of time, our job is mainly education...

Many audiophiles put their amps near the speakers and run long XLR cables to the preamp. That may be what he is thinking. The speaker wire shouldn’t pick up any audible noise but you can always use shielded wire and ground it at the rack. As others have said most of what a system sounds like will be the room, then the speakers, then the equipment.

If you are going to put the amp near the speakers, then choose for some reason to use shielded speaker wire, the speaker wire shield should be grounded to the amplifier chassis. If you run a ground wire back to the rack, that can't possibly improve things.

If the amps are in the rack, you should still ground any speaker wire shield to the amplifiers, not the rack. It's possible that the system would need to have the amplifier chassis not connected to the rack. The amp is the reference point for noise on a speaker wire shield.

He said at the rack not to the rack.

Engineers can be their own worst enemy. My company did electrical before it became an AV company. The owner of my company is fond of telling a story about an electrical job they did for an engineer, a partial renovation and small addition. They were adding a light fixture to a room that the engineer homeowner had wired years ago. They pull the light fixture off the ceiling and find that it used thermostat wire to carry the current from the switch to the light fixture. They asked the homeowner about this and he said that he did the calculations and that the thermostat wire had the necessary gauge to work. Often people do not know what they do not know, it is sometimes up to us to fill in the gaps in their knowledge.

Oh, yeah, right, he did.

But what started my response about this still needs attention: he said to ground the speaker wire shield at the rack when the amplifier is some distance from the rack.

That was confusing the way I wrote it. I meant if he chose to not use the long XLR’s and kept the amps in the rack and use shielded wire to the speakers. I can’t imagine needing to run shielded wire if the amps are located at the speakers.

Writing is a tricky game. We all know exactly what we are thinking, but we can't tell exactly what a reader needs to be told, and we sure can't tell if a reader has a preconceived idea that we need to overcome with detail. Obviously I usually go for the detail.

Again, I would make him explain why he wants to use these connectors. It may be because he read about using them in some bizarre audio mag that has everything BUT accurate info. Audio Karma is good for this kind of stuff. Also, I have read articles about people who weave speaker wire using Cat5e, saying it sounds far better than anything they had used previously.

You need to get some explanations before proceeding. This may be a job where the client is never satisfied.