Fire Resistance Cable recommendation

SSri

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Hi all,

We have done some kitchen work. The builders are coming in the next 2-3 weeks to replace the floorboard. I am looking to buy some cables in the next few days.

First, they are going to be in-ceiling speakers. The speaker cables will be over the living room, kitchen and office ceilings; all of them would be terminated at one of the wall-to-wall living room bookshelf.

1) The cables need to be fire resistance/fire retardant speaker cables, don't they please?
2) One cable run would be about ~80 ft. A few would be 60-70 ft and the rest may be 40-50 ft. Would a 16/2 be enough for these distances, assuming the standard ceiling speaker may be 8 ohm.
3) I have looked at one in addition to a couple of them recommended by a local music shop.

- QED QX16/2 LSZH 2 Core Speaker Cable 100m Box; £90 - £100

Local music shopped recommended one of the following

- QED Microwhite speaker cable 100m box; £312.00
- Cambridge Audio Ultra Micro Speaker Cable, 100m; £400.

I would probably need 300m for the ground floor alone. I am not sure if it is worth spending £1000-1200 for the cable alone. This is excluding cables runs for the first floor bed rooms (5 in total).

I know this forum is full of experts. Your recommendation will be very helpful in deciding and purchasing the cable.

Thanks for your help.

SSri
 
You can get QED QX16/2 for less than you appear to have seen it advertised for. You can even get a 300m reel for less than you'd be paying for the 100m of QED Micro you've been quoted for:

QED QX16/2 LSZH 2 Core Speaker Cable 300m Reel - By Brand - AudioVisual Online - Home Cinema and Hifi Specialists


I'm not even sure that the QED Micro or Cambridge Audio wires meet your fire retardant requirements? I'm assuming someone at Richer Sounds suggested these, but they are simply suggesting wires on their ease of installations as opposed to them meeting any fire requlations.

What you really need to know is the longest length or run of wire from amplifier to speaker(s). This length will determine the gauge of wire required. The QED QX16/2 should be fne though unless the cable runs are extraordinarily long?
 
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@dante01

Thank you for the cheapest link. That's a good deal.

The longest lengths are from kitchen to a central point in the living room; this is a challenge as the lengths are going to be 97 ft to 107 ft. I am concerned 16/2 may not fine.

Living room/Office is between 50 ft and 60 ft. I reckon that I can get away with 16/2.
 
Is this a pure copper please? It is shown as LSZH; does it mean fire rated?

14/2 Speaker Cable.

They typically sell it for £90 per 100m. But they won't sell it for home as they sell it to businesses.
 
@dante01

Thank you for the cheapest link. That's a good deal.

The longest lengths are from kitchen to a central point in the living room; this is a challenge as the lengths are going to be 97 ft to 107 ft. I am concerned 16/2 may not fine.

Living room/Office is between 50 ft and 60 ft. I reckon that I can get away with 16/2.

If the QED QX wouldn't be suitable then neither woud the other two options wihich are a lesser gauge than the QX cable. The QX cable is 14AWG wire which is rated good to a distance of 35 feet when used with 8ohm speakers. You'd technically need 10AWG wire if the runs are to be 100' in length. This is very thick cable. I'd doubt you'd notice the increased impedance being imposed by the cable unless the amp is particulay low powered? Yes, the wire construction is pure copper and oxygen free.

LSZH means Low Smoke Zero Halogen and not fire retardant. This in itself is no indication of a cables certification or its compliance with building regulations, but the LSZH rating awarded the QX cable would satisfy the relevant bodies if ever scrutinised by them. You as a domestic household will never need to meet these requirements. The QX cable is true installation grade speaker wire.
 
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Unless it is a commercial property, standard cables should be fine?. Why do you think you need fire resistant cables? None of the cables you mention are fire resistant, they just produce less smoke and fumes when (if) they burn.
 
Just to correct a misunderstanding:
Low Smoke Zero Halogen cable is specified for commercial buildings - where there will be a lot of it and the fumes present a risk to evacuation. It is generally not required in domestic premises, where the concentration of cabling will be far lower and the level of fumes generated similarly lower.

There's no requirement under the current regulations that refers to low voltage cabling such as speaker and data cables, only that you use separate containment - no shoving them in the same conduit, that sort of thing!
 
Thanks all.

(1) We did run some LS0H UTP CAT6 in-wall; all laid and clear of power cables, over the ceiling, loft and in walls. We did not use any conduit for the data cables.

(2) I understand 16/2 maximum distance is circa 50ft, while mine is double in some places.

(3) Spoke to QED QX16/2 LSZH 2 Core Speaker Cable 300m Reel - By Brand - AudioVisual Online - Home Cinema and Hifi Specialists and discussed the distance issues. They say the distance impact on 16/2 won't be noticeable for domestic installations for human ears. They say they have run 16/2 longer distances than mine, they do not see any difference in sound unless it is measured under scientific conditions.

(4) If we are running cables over the ceiling, especially in the kitchen, don't we need a fire resistance / fire rated cable? I am not even sure there is any fire proof/resistance/retardant cables.

Yes, the builder will not lay speaker cables closer to the power cables powering ceiling down lights.

(5) I spoke to the local music shop and audiovisualoneline; both recommended LSZH/LS0H 2 core speaker cables without the need for any conduit.

Happy to be corrected, though.

Appreciate your valuable inputs.
 
There's no requirement under the current regulations that refers to low voltage cabling such as speaker and data cables, only that you use separate containment - no shoving them in the same conduit, that sort of thing!
Is that a requirement? I am surprised as it is hard to see how that is relevant to building safety. You learn something every day.
 
It is a requirement that you can't mix differing voltage rated conductors in the same containment.
If the speaker cable was rated at 240V then you could run it in trunking/conduit with mains cables, although not good practise with interference ect.
I've yet to see any 240V rated video/data leads:)

As already stated and as far as I'm aware there are no fire resistant speaker or data cables, you could use FP200 cable for speakers if you really wanted to but I wouldn't recommend it.
 
Thanks @ian34g. I have narrowed it down to a few, which are listed below.
  1. QED QED QX16/2 LSZH 2 Core Speaker Cable 300m Reel - By Brand - AudioVisual Online - Home Cinema and Hifi Specialists £250.00
  2. Trusound 16/2 Speaker Cable - £0.5/m for 300m quote
  3. Trusound 14/2 Speaker Cable - £0.75/m for 300m quote
  4. Trusound 12/2 Speaker Cable - £1.09 /m for 300m quote
  5. SCP 12/2 SCP-12-2-OFC-LSZH-WT SCP Speaker Cable - ~£750 for 300m
  6. SCP 14/2 http://www.ugotonline.co.uk/SCP-14-2-OFC-LSZH-OR.html- £+400 for 300m
FP200 looks like a pretty good deal. I spoke one of the retailers; they typically recommend it for Alarms and not for Audio.

I was initially leaning towards QED 16/2 for cost reasons, although I am still a little concerned about the distance, which is between 100 ft and 110 ft from Kitchen to a living room wall to wall bookshelf.

Trusound dealer will only sell it to business to business. I can ask my builder to get it for me. Hopefully, he will agree. This looks like a pretty good deal, if I can get my builder agree. I can get a 12/2 or even a 14/2 (get away with hardly any noticeable difference in sound).

Has anyone used Trusound and SCP please?
 
Would be interested to know what you are planning - before you get too heavily into speaker cables :)

Joe
 
@joe: Thank you for asking. I will summarise it briefly here:

Property:

It is a large property, 3 zones on the ground floor and 5 bed on the first floor. I want multi zone with independent control in every room. Control is through smart devices. Minimum 5 zones and maximum is 8.

Current:
  • TV, Sky HD+, 350/20 Virgin Business broadband
  • A lot of CAT6 throughout the house, terminated at patch panels at the loft
  • Cisco managed switch at the airing cupboard
  • 2 UAP AC pro - wired and connected to the switch leveraing 5Ghz.
I am not allowed to break the wall again to terminate speaker cables in every zone; this already happened, plastering and decoration are complete. Whole house multi zone audio/video/TV are an afterthought. Stupid of me! :)

Plan:

  • Opening first floor floorboard and replacing; hence speaker cable. Happy to go alternatives without wires.
  • Building a PfSense FW/Router
  • Spec is finalised for ESXi VMs; one of them will be the media server
  • Home Cinema at the living room
  • Multi room audio and video -- media server, amazon fireTV, BluRay -- and TV
  • I would like to be able to listen different music, video, tv options in different rooms.
  • A decent collection of blu rays are DTS. I definitely want HDMI 2.0, HDCP 2.2.
Considering no speaker cables are laid, what are my options please?

Thanks
 
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One advice I would also require is a central location for all speaker cables. I am no longer sure living room bookshelf (bottom shelf) is ideal to manage a large amount of (messy) cables.

If I drop all cables (ground floor and first floor) to the first floor airing cup board, I also need to achieve the following, is it not?

  1. Speaker cables will be connected who ever is the vendor (Sonos, AVRs, etc)
  2. media server will be connected to (1) via cat6 and network switch. Media server will host both music and video
  3. I need to connect Amazon FireTV and Bluray player - not sure how. At the moment, they are hooked up on the TV via HDMI.
  4. Home Cinema in the living room (TV, bluray, amazon fire tv, media server) should hook up everything and leverage the speakers.
  5. a speaker cable drop from the airing cupboard (amp, AVRs) to each location of the Sky HD+. Otherwise, while I can stream music and video (and hear audio of the video) over the speakers, TV audio won't play on the speakers. Am I right please? I am not how I can achieve it, though without breaking walls again.

    In summary, if all speaker cables are terminated at the first floor cupboard, which will be less messy, I am not sure how I can achieve (4) and (5) that too if I want multiple TV points each with a sky box. I am sorry if I am confusing. My plan to is to slowly expand as I go along. The priorities are speaker cables, their location and the plan to tie all together.
 
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Phew!

Pretty typical of the 'wish list' we are hit with daily from our Customer base :)

Having to work with the 'installed' cabling could be a limitation - more discussion around what you actually need to achieve in each Zone will tease out that detail.

You def don't want all that cabling/kit landing in a space you live in - a cupboard or cabinet with decent access/air exchange is required.

Media Server - have you actually built/tested who you are planning or are you simply going on specs?

Usability is key to all of your system - start with that and work back to cables etc.

Where about are you?

Joe
 
Thanks Joe.

Indeed. I am consciously aware I am going to have to compromise and put out a system which can be utilised optimally. I live in the UK about 40 miles west of London. I am building a FW server and my next project is the media server. This will be one of the VMs running on a Xeon CPU.

  1. Airing cupboard on the 1st floor houses the cisco switch. The temperature range in that cupboard is 23-30 (max) C in summer. The loft only houses the messy cat6 cables and patch panel.The airing cupboard does not have any exahust, but we can ask the electrician to install a 140 mm or a 200 mm fan to suck the air out into the loft (and get the cold air in from the loft in winter).
  2. The media server (Plex?) will host all (a) our music (iTunes, Apple music subscription), and (b) video. I am open to an alternative suggestion for Plex.
  3. We definitely want the Amazon FireTV to be enabled in Minimum zones (point 5) as we stream a lot of videos including Netflix.
  4. All zones (8 in total) have CAT6, and RG6 twin gun (for sky HD+) cables.
  5. Minimum Zones - 5: Living, Kitchen, Office (music only), Bedrooms 1 and 2. They definitely need access to points (2) and (3) above. The office would only require access to music through media sever. These zones have a plenty of CAT6 installed.
  6. The remaining 3 bedrooms also have CAT6 and hence access to media server is least of a problem. We are not very particular about these rooms, if we don't have any access.
  7. Living room should have access to everything and the speakers should be enabled for TV, media server, music, netflix and blu ray. The only way, I think, we can achieve is to terminate the living room speaker cables in one of the floor level cupboards on the wall-to-wall book shelf. The plan is to lay 8 - 10 single runs, leaving the front L, R, C and sub woofers to leverage the bookshelf to hide the cables.
  8. The speaker cables from other zones (excluding living) can be terminated at the airing cupboard and speaker enabled for points 2 and 3. We can certainly see at least one or two additional TV(s) with a sky box(ex) apart from the living room. The TV audio on the speakers will be a challenge if we put additional sky boxes in the minimum zones as sky boxes won't be able to connect to the amp in the airing cup board.
The key is to decide the locations for speaker cables and a high level plan as the builders are expected to come in the next two weeks to throw open the first floor floorboard.

I am very sorry if I have confused you further. I am happy to clarify in detail. Thanks Joe for your kind help.
 

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