AV Receiver under stairs, TV in Lounge?

[Andehh]

With a new 1/2 house refurb I am looking at moving all my AV gear under the stairs and just having the TV on the wall and speakers put up.

I have a 15M HDMI cable that will reach from the stairs, into the ceiling then down the cavity into the lounge (pretty much have this in place already to split the skybox into the bedroom) but I am wondering about the speaker cables.

These speak cables will range from 15-25m based on distance + routing round the room from the 'hole in the wall' where the cable routing enters.

Am I likely to suffer any *noticeable* degradation from cables this long? I am not an audiofile and have a very mid-range Mordant Short speaker setup, so am after practical advice! Looking at 12-14 gauge cables.

Thanks

[davek_964]

My setup is the same - all my kit is in the cupboard under the stairs, although I don't have the distance problem you have. My front speakers are the other side of the wall, and the cable for the rears goes under the floor so is only a few meters.

My guess is you won't have much of a problem - however, I would say that (assuming your under stairs is a cupboard and not open) you might be surprised at how much heat gets generated. Admittedly, I have a lot of kit in mine but the temp in there does get quite toasty if it's on for a long time.

[megaphone]

Speaker cables will be fine. I'd be tempted to pull in some CAT5/6 cables as spares , just incase the HDMI cable ever falls over. I'd test the HDMI cable before you install, although it sounds like you're already using it?

[Andehh]

All good calls, will route in some cat5e and yes, will make sure it's a decent working hdmi cable first.

Thanks

[OldSkoolRS]

There's quite a few of us doing this over on AVF. I moved my gear under the stairs earlier this year and haven't looked back; no gear on show in the room is good from a WAF POV, but more importantly there are no LEDs to light up my projector screen in dark scenes and my noisy subwoofer amp(s) are far enough away to not be an issue out of the room.

You should be fine with 2.5mm speaker cable even on long runs, I did run 4mm cable for my passive subs as one is quite far from the amp and 1500 watts, but my speakers are fine on 2.5mm. I'm redoing the room next spring after some building work, so I hope to add Cat5/6 to be ready for 4K as my current HDMI cable is 7 years old (works fine for 1080p 3D though even at 12 metres long). Definitely recommend adding Cat5/6 at this point if you can.

You'll also need some kind of remote repeater too. I use a Marmatek device that looks like a small pyramid. It works OK, but it needs to be a little way back from my rack, so I have to put it on the floor in the hall with the cupboard door open (helps with the heat to be fair). I might look into the Harmony IR/RF models this winter since I can't upgrade anything else until the building work is done...

[Autopilot]

I completed my install recently and have the same setup, AV gear under the stairs and TV and speakers in the lounge. Speaker cables were quite easy as it's an old house and has suspended floors so just ran cables pretty much in a straight line to where they needed to appear.

To future proof the system, I've used some HDMI over Cat5 converters. In a nutshell, i have a small transmitter at the Amp end and a receiver at the TV end and are connected via an Ethernet cable, a Cat 6 in my case. The product I bought enables a 60m length of cable between devices before signs of the signal degrading. To connect the devices at either end, I bought the shortest HDMI cables I could find to keep it all tidy. It came with IR extenders which plug in to the boxes, so point a remote at the TV and the signal goes to the cabinet where it all lives so works fine.

[Andehh]

Sounds promising guys, sort of thing I am hoping to do!

I am looking at the Logitech harmony Touch remote, to enable one remote to then control all my gear. I presume I will need an IR blaster, which I can find in the US (link below) but not in the UK to allow me to control them remotely?

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Blaster-Emitter-Com...




Edit; We had the Marmatek pyramids as well, before we just started using our smartphones to control the sky box. Also worth nothing, with the Pyramids turned on it blocked the remote to my previous tenants Vauxhall Astra. We had to turn them off whenever he came home, so he could lock his car! Obviously using a similar/same frequency.

[kooky guy]

I've put all my AV stuff in a cupboard to one side with the intention of running additional TVs from the stack via HDMI over Cat5e from the amp.

I really struggled to find a remote control solution and ended up with this (along with a very long extension cable):

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/141000879587?_trksid=p20...

It works amazingly well and was dirt cheap too.

My cupboard does get rather warm though, even with everything on Standby. Need to look at some sort of silent forced ventilation.

[Andehh]

kooky guy said:

I've put all my AV stuff in a cupboard to one side with the intention of running additional TVs from the stack via HDMI over Cat5e from the amp.

I really struggled to find a remote control solution and ended up with this (along with a very long extension cable):

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/141000879587?_trksid=p20...

It works amazingly well and was dirt cheap too.

My cupboard does get rather warm though, even with everything on Standby. Need to look at some sort of silent forced ventilation.

That's the sort of thing I am hoping for, but would need the receiver on a cable 15m away to run it back to the cupboard with all the AV stuff in? Is this what you mean when you say you have a long extension cable?

[kooky guy]

Andehh said:

That's the sort of thing I am hoping for, but would need the receiver on a cable 15m away to run it back to the cupboard with all the AV stuff in? Is this what you mean when you say you have a long extension cable?

Yes, although I think they only guarantee it up to 10m (but I suspect they're just covering themselves). No-one seems to sell anything like this in the UK and what little there is available is really expensive. I was very impressed at just how well this works and it costs literally peanuts. The supplier is very communicative and helpful too.

The alternative might be to use a HDBase-T HDMI over cat5e/6 adaptor. The pair I've just bought to link it all up to the bedroom include an IR receiver and blaster.

[Andehh]

kooky guy said:

Yes, although I think they only guarantee it up to 10m (but I suspect they're just covering themselves). No-one seems to sell anything like this in the UK and what little there is available is really expensive. I was very impressed at just how well this works and it costs literally peanuts. The supplier is very communicative and helpful too.

The alternative might be to use a HDBase-T HDMI over cat5e/6 adaptor. The pair I've just bought to link it all up to the bedroom include an IR receiver and blaster.

Thanks mate, that is sounding ideal to what i am after! How much was the HDbase-T out of curiosity? What setup do you have there.

Additionally, with the Sky Box being split between 3 rooms, I am wondering if it is possible to get 2 x IR blasters (1 for each room) so that sky remote can be used from either room to control the centralised sky box. So for the lounge a Logitech Harmony Remote would control the AMP & Sky box & TV....but from the snug (with no surround sound) a second IR blaster would allow a sky remote to control the sky box & TV.

Then we would just use the Sky App on our phones to control Sky from the bedroom, as we do at the moment.

[kooky guy]

Andehh said:

Thanks mate, that is sounding ideal to what i am after! How much was the HDbase-T out of curiosity? What setup do you have there.

Additionally, with the Sky Box being split between 3 rooms, I am wondering if it is possible to get 2 x IR blasters (1 for each room) so that sky remote can be used from either room to control the centralised sky box. So for the lounge a Logitech Harmony Remote would control the AMP & Sky box & TV....but from the snug (with no surround sound) a second IR blaster would allow a sky remote to control the sky box & TV.

Then we would just use the Sky App on our phones to control Sky from the bedroom, as we do at the moment.

This was the HDbase-T setup, although I have to admit that I've not actually installed it yet as I'm struggling with my cable routing:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/111704195194?_trksid=p20...

The IR blaster I listed originally does two rooms (ie two receivers).

[C0ffin D0dger]

davek_964 said:

My guess is you won't have much of a problem - however, I would say that (assuming your under stairs is a cupboard and not open) you might be surprised at how much heat gets generated. Admittedly, I have a lot of kit in mine but the temp in there does get quite toasty if it's on for a long time.

This really surprised me, I relocated our phone socket + BT Modem, router and my HP Proliant Microserver to the cupboard under the stairs. Went from being one of the coolest places in the house to one of the warmest. It's not hot enough to be of any concern but it is amazing just how much heat a couple of bits of kit can kick out!

Edited by C0ffin D0dger on Thursday 10th September 12:23

[davek_964]

C0ffin D0dger said:

This really surprised me, I relocated our phone socket + BT Modem, router and my HP Proliant Microserver to the cupboard under the stairs. Went from being one of the coolest places in the house to one of the warmest. It's hot enough to be of any concern but it is amazing just how much heat a couple of bits of kit can kick out!

Yeah, and I have more than a couple! I'm sure I've forgotten something, but in my cupboard I have :

Freesat box, PS4, two routers, a couple of NAS, Surround sound amp, Class A integrated amp used as a pre-amp (that one really kicks out some heat!), power amp, Squeezebox plus, DAC, an extender for my remote, Ethernet hub, Popcorn hour...

I think that might be it. Oh - apart from the fan I have running through an air brick which somebody thoughtfully placed in that wall at some point in the past.

If I moved it all back into the lounge, I could probably ditch a radiator!

[C0ffin D0dger]

Just re-read my post, meant to say "not hot enough", so don't worry my house isn't about to burn down