Easiest to hook up in wall speaker wire that end in RCA male?

[Moguls27]

I just bought a new place that is wired for surround sound with speaker wire where the speakers are, but the wires coming out of the wall near the receiver just have 5 RCA male ends, one for each speaker. I believe the prior owner had a Bose system. My question is what is the easiest way to hook up the RCA ends to a receiver? Do I need to rewire, can I just cut the ends off, or what are my options? I'm in the market for a new receiver, but none of the ones I'm looking at have RCA speaker inputs. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Whatever is on the back of your amp to female RCA's would be the easiest.

 

[Karadjgne]

A lot depends on the wires themselves. If they are true low-level type wire, cutting the male ends off would be a disaster. Best bet is a female-female adapter, then use whatever type of connector needed from the new receiver to RCA male (most common). Most better receivers use a red/black screw type connector that accepts bare wire or banana plugs. If this is the case, banana to male RCA are easy to get in common lengths. Worst case scenario, take a picture of both receiver connection and wire end and head off to your local RadioShack, BestBuy or MicroCenter.

 

[americanaudiophile]

If the wire going into RCA connectors looks like common speaker wire which is two parallel or twisted spiral of two wires then you should just cut the RCA connectors off. If the wire looks like a coaxial wire which is round and has a single wire in the center and a shield wire forming a tube around the center wire then that is not speaker wire and should not have been used. If you are stuck with it then use adapters as Karadjgne says.

 

[Mousemonkey]

If the wire going into RCA connectors looks like common speaker wire which is two parallel or twisted spiral of two wires then you should just cut the RCA connectors off. If the wire looks like a coaxial wire which is round and has a single wire in the center and a shield wire forming a tube around the center wire then that is not speaker wire and should not have been used. If you are stuck with it then use adapters as Karadjgne says.

Both Beldin and Liberty make a coaxial cable that can (and has been) used for audio.

 

[Karadjgne]

Yep, I have the shielded Belkin wire in my house, have adapters on it to mate with the 8-port speaker stud plate for my surround and mains. I was originally going with monster cable 12ga. But was told this was better (and cheaper)

 

[Moguls27]

Thanks for the feedback. The wires by where the speakers will be mounted are typical speaker wire (2 parallel wires), and coming out of the wall by the receiver are 5 pairs of the same wire, but each pair terminates in one male RCA plug. I picked up some Rockford Fosgate RCA female to speaker wire connectors, and will most likely try them out, but figured it might be easier to just cut the ends off. I just didn't want to ruin the wires or screw up the installation as I'm by no means an expert in this field. Just trying to get the most out of my current set up. If I use the connectors, what is the easiest way to ensure I have the polarity correct?

 

[Mousemonkey]

The centre pin is positive, outer is negative.