Priority Interrupt by Steve Ciarcia A Simple Wiring Job

A couple months ago I made a joke about my opinion that, although I have lots of stuff in storage at my house, I’m not really a pack rat. I was simply attributing my tendency to want everything available in case I were ever to need it again as a case of overly zealous planning. Of course, the message is hard to miss when your wife orders a dumpster and puts it next to your favorite storage garage. Is that a suggestion, sweetie?

I heard the following as a joke, but I’m afraid it’s all too true. A group of professionals are standing together. Without directly asking about their professions, what single question will most likely identify the engineers among the group? Why, of course, it’s asking how many of them still have all their college textbooks at home. I say this with a straight face, but I have to admit I still have mine. Alright, I’ll admit I might even have a couple tons of books that could be a little out of date.

I realize this sounds uncharacteristic of me, but I have two entertainment systems at opposite ends of the house that have never been wired to share common sources. A number of years ago, I added a media room/solarium to the back of the house. I didn’t want to pay to have a hole the size of Rhode Island blasted out of solid rock. So, unlike the rest of the house, this section was built on a slab of foundation rather than over a basement that would have facilitated easy wiring. During the building phase, I put a couple miles of every conceivable kind of wire in all the places where I thought I might later place the entertainment equipment. (The hundreds of miles of extra wire in my house is a story for another day.) But as fate would have it, none of the equipment ended up where the wiring is.

This is all fine until I’m listening to music while walking from one end of the house to the other. The first audio system is connected to an XM radio receiver with automatic speaker control in the bedroom, kitchen, and living room. The second audio system is attached to Direct TV and plays in the solarium and out on the deck. Having both on at the same time means hearing different audio programs at each end of the house.

The obvious solution was to string a wire so both systems play from the same source, but that would have been easier said than done. Of course, when you have every conceivable electronic alternative on a shelf someplace, you get to start with less obvious solutions. My first thought was to use a wireless transmitter. The two audio systems are about 80¢ apart. I found a couple of old 28-MHz Rabbit Videocasters in my wireless transmitter bin. Nope. Forget those; they’re only monaural audio. Next, I came across a couple of 900-MHz Recoton video units, but the receiver output is modulated RF, not stereo audio. Scratch those. Finally, I spied a couple of 2.4-gig Wavecom Jr. wireless pairs with stereo audio I/O. Perfect.

It took dragging a ladder into the kitchen and stringing another wire to mount the transmitter 11¢ up on top of the cabinets, but that was a small price to pay for having a quick solution. I attached the wireless receiver to the AUX input on the second system and, voila, XM music on the deck. Smiling with success, I got my laptop and a scotch and went off to sit out on a deck lounge chair and write my editorial. I settled into the chair, flipped on the laptop, and nothing. Wi-Fi was dead! Oh, no. This laptop is still 802.11b (my others are 11g). The Wavecom transmitter must have been blanking the whole 2.4-gig spectrum. It was music or work, not both. OK, it was back up the ladder to rip all that out.

Needless to say I ended up stringing a wire. No simple wire, mind you. Realizing that wiring the HCS/audio system in the house to the solarium will be a recurring problem, I decided to go for the gusto and run a dual RG-6, dual CAT-5E, and a bunch of other cables (just in case ;-).

Did I say string the wire? I really meant bury it. There was no direct way through the house to the back of the solarium. The only means of getting a wire out there was to go around the house and through the yard—underground. And remember those rocks? That’s when the backhoe became part of this simple wiring job.

I’d like to say the task ended with the wire, but engineering problems are always reality-based. Eighty feet through the house became about 300¢ around it. Long audio cables mean signal loss, so it was back down to the shelves again. I had my choice of a variety of powered buffer/amplifiers and even impedance-matching balun transformers. The variety of shelf stock afforded me some uniquely elegant solutions. I ended up going through my old stereo equipment stash. At the end of my $20 worth of audio cable is now a fine old Nakamichi CA-5 preamp that probably cost me $1,000 way back when. After all, what good is all that stuff on the shelves if it doesn’t offer a world of possible technical solutions and an adventure or two along the way?