Connecting speaker wire to audio plugs

[DanUK]

Thanks. I can try there too. Basically the Audio from the TV so that it uses my speaker setup rather than the TV speakers.

 

[mache]

Is the existing cable bare plastered in or run in a buried conduit. Could you pull out the current cable and replace with an optical lead to connect to amp???

 

[DanUK]

Thanks mache. I wish I could :-( it's plastered in and I can't pull anything through it (I've tried), I think the cable was also pinned beforehand. Definitely solid.

 

[Andy-1960]

I certainly would not recommend using the main earth as the return (in place of the missing screen) as in the event of a mains fault the fault current may end up in your TV and or AV receiver and it probably would not do them much good.

 

[DanUK]

Sorry I have to admit that is a bit beyond my knowledge. As the speaker cable will (hopefully) have standard audio plugs on the end I don't think they'll be getting any power as such. Is that what you mean?

In principle is it worth trying the route I planned?

Thanks for all the help - much appreciated!

 

[Andy-1960]

Basically you need 3 cores L, R and Ground and you only have 2 cores, so no, I do not think it's worth trying.

 

[DanUK]

Thanks Andy. That saves me trying it. Back to the drawing board... I'll try and figure out if I can somehow utilise the spare HDMI cable and get it working with ARC!

 

[dmxtothemax]

you may be able to use a video to cat five convertor,
then send the cat 5 along your speaker wire
And at the other end a cat 5 to video convertor.

do you want to send video or audio or both ?

 

[DanUK]

Thanks DMX. Just audio

 

[Lucien Nunes]

If the receiver does not have an HDMI input you can use an audio de-embedder to convert the ARC audio to analogue or optical, e.g. https://www.lindy.co.uk/audio-video-c2/converters-scalers-c105/hdmi-4k-audio-extractor-de-embedder-with-arc-mhl-p8542/s8698 These are available with 2-channel or optional 5.1 decoding.

As an alternative, if you are handy with a soldering iron, you could make up adaptors to use a couple of the screened pairs in the HDMI cable for the analogue audio signal from the TV. Although intended for the video signals, these will work well for analogue audio over this distance. A pair of HDMI back-to-back couplers and a short HDMI cable cut in half, will give you bare ends to wire into phono plugs. Any pairs will do provided you use the same ones at both ends. This is the sort of solution I would use for my own purposes as it will work OK and I would have those bits lying around anyway. Of course if you were being mean you could cut the plugs off the installed HDMI cable and wire the ends of that into the phono plugs, but you will come to regret it as HDMI plugs cannot be refitted when you upgrade and want to use it for HDMI.

Re line-level audio over speaker leads, although I do not recommend it, it can usually be done in some shape or form. In my previous life as a live audio engineer and designer of audio equipment, I have had occasion to send audio down all sorts of weird interconnects.