At The Cable Connection we find that connecting a speaker to
an amplifier or a wall plate is certainly one of the easiest parts of
connecting a home theatre together yet it is also one of the areas most
commonly connected incorrectly.
Connecting a speaker, using the correct
polarity, provides a much richer home theatre / stereo experience allowing the
speakers to stay in phase - ie. all drivers moving in and out at the same
time.
The connection points on the back of most
speakers and amplifiers are either binding posts
or spring
clips.
These
connections are most commonly marked with a red and black terminal.
The red side always indicated the positive
(or active) terminal and the black is the negative (or neutral) terminal.
Sometimes these can be marked with a simple ‘+’ for positive and a ‘–‘ for negative rather than using a
colour.
It is also possible to mark the black colour,
or negative terminal, as white. This
is also acknowledged as an accepted negative colour.
Connecting a speaker is reasonably simple
provided you use the following as a guide:
*Whichever lead you make the positive in the
first instance, continue this pattern through the entire wire up*
What this means is that when you choose your
cable make sure you use the stripe side (this could also be
the writing or even a different wire colour) every time for the negative
(industry standard) and the non marked side or red side for the
positive. By doing this it will make
it very easy to make sure your speakers are wired in the correct phase.
 |
These plugs are colour coded in the same way as discussed previously (red for positive and black for negative) and help with easy and fast removal of speaker cable from speakers.
A 5.0 setup consists of 5 speakers. The combination is laid out as
below with a left and right front speaker, a centre channel speaker and a
pair of rear speakers.
The wiring as described previously is shown in a
more graphic format here:
You
will note that each terminal colour matched the colour of the cable used (I.e.
Red to red). This makes identifying the
cable much easier in an installation.
For more information on hooking up speakers correctly contact us at The Cable Connection on 1300 85 4441.
|
