Advice on speakers & cables

[trevt]

All

Hoping for the benefit of your knowledge and expertise - I'm refurbishing a house and plan to put ceiling speakers in the living room (3.7m x 7.4m), study (3.6m x 3.4m) and bathroom (2.5m x 3.8m). I have 8" joists which will be infilled with 100mm rockwool as sound insulation.

Speakers/audio aren't my thing, other than liking decent sound that doesn't distort at reasonable volumes, I'm pretty clueless. We listen to everything from classical to punk and radio.

Value is probably my most important consideration at the moment (I might just put the cable in and buy speakers later depending on cost).

So what should I look for, any recommendations and what cab;le should I go for? How many do I need - assuming single in the bathroom and 2 each in the other rooms?

Thanks in advance

[VEX]

What are commonly called 'contractor series' speakers are generally perfect for this sort of use.

I install Monitor Audio's range all the time and they sound really good. RRP is around £200 a pair.

V.

[VEX]

Sorry, I missed one of the questions.

Speaker cable, look for 16/2 or 16/4 cable. The 2 and the 4 refer to the number of cores, so you need a pair (2 cores) to each speaker.

If you putting a single speaker, I would recommend a dual stereo speaker which will allow you to run both left and right channels through the same speaker. But still wire it with two cable sets, 2x 2 cores or a 4 core.

Hope that makes sense.

V.

[trevt]

Vex

It makes perfect sense, thank you.

I assume 2 speakers in the bigger rooms and one in the bathroom should work ok? And get the cable - but keep being confused by "get 322 strand or 621 strand". Take it I should just ignore that and go 16/2 or 16/4

Thanks again

[Driller]

Not that Vex needs it but another shout for the Monitor Audios here. Very good speakers and very good value too.

Just fitted the latest generation single stereo T2 in my surgery room at work and the new low profile magnetic grills are great.

[skahigh]

Everything I read suggested this stuff was really good and good value.

I used it for my home cinema setup and I'm pretty pleased with it.

[VEX]

Van Damme cable is great quality especially for cinemas, but when your supplying over 1km of the stuff to be fitted into a house, over £1.50 per meter gets expensive!

The stuff I use is less than half that and comes in 305m boxes!

A house I supplied last week has taken almost 3.5km of cable, (gulp)

V.