I had my new home wired for a 5.1 system by the builder.  I uncovered the wall plates today to find out that he wired cat5 to each of the 4 sat. speaker locations and a coax cable for the subwoofer.    Is this normal?  How do I take the twisted pairs and connect them to my 522D's?  And for the sub type F connector on one side to a rca on the other?  Do they even make that kind of cable?

Thanks

Hello Jason,

Most installers will run regular inwall speaker wire to the speaker locations, ususally a 16ga, so that is a bit odd.  Cat5 can work as speaker wire, it's just not ideal becuase of the thickness of the wire.  You can pair of a few of the strands to make the pos and neg connection, just be sure to keep it the same on both ends.

Many installers will use a coax cable with F-Pin for the sub cable.  Again, you can get a better cable, but these works quite well.  You just need to get and F-Pin to RCA adapter from Radio Shack, Home Depot or some store like that.

I found a link about this very topic.

 

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=bc0b968a5d281c13e60de805a04170ae&threadid=441154

 

Vin

I had the wiring company come back out this weekend to fix it. The installer attached speaker wire (not sure which gauge) to the end of the cat5's and 'repulled' each of the 5 zones. Didn't take him too long. He understood my concerns... Thanks