Solved! New Construction Audio Wiring

[timtex]

Hello, we recently bought a new home that was ordered by another customer, but they backed out, so we had no input on anything that was built into the home. The opposite was true with our previous home, and the builder wired it for ceiling speakers and an obligatory volume control in the wall. Our new house has a similar set up, but the wiring is different. Behind the TV there are two white-jacketed speaker wires with left/right (black/red) wires inside. There's also one purple-jacketed four conductor wire, and one blue data wire (Cat 5 or 6). There are two outlet boxes in the living room ceiling that also have the white two-conductor speaker wire. And on the patio there are two more outlet boxes up high on the wall, and although I haven't taken the covers off, I'm pretty sure the purple wires are in there. The problem is there's an outlet box by the patio door that has ALL of the wires in it. There is one purple, one blue for data, and two white ones. I'm assuming this is for some kind of keypad controller, which we do not need or want. In fact, we would never install speakers on the patio. The puzzle for me is how do I connect the ceiling speakers in the living room, if the outlet box for volume control only has two wires instead of four? Do I really have to spend a lot of money on whole home audio equipment?

 

[jsmithepa]

And obvious thing to do is visit the neighbors, they probably have the exact wiring scheme.

 

[americanaudiophile]

It sounds like an electrician wired this up and didn't really know what he was doing. You don't use electrical boxes at speakers.
The speaker wires at the TV sound like they were supposed to be for TV sound for the ceiling speakers. You could use them this way with an amp that has it's own volume control and optical input but you won't get any music except through the TV.
You could connect them to a Sonos Connect Amp and control them with the free Sonos app. This can be expanded to other rooms that don't have speakers with Sonos Play speakers when and if you want to. Not cheap but it works great and lets you access a lot of music.
The wiring outside sounds like there was going to be some kind of old school controller at the box. There should be wires from that box going to the boxes where the speakers were supposed to go. No need to worry about this part since you don't want to use them.

 

[timtex]

I actually solved this on my own. I looked around in the attic, and found that the white wires went directly from the wall to ceiling speaker locations. It then occurred to me that the purple wire only goes from behind the TV to the outlet box by the door. The white wires in the outlet box actually go to the patio speakers, and the purple and blue wires feed into a volume control or keypad from the amp or receiver. Also, it's actually pretty common in new construction homes for the in wall/ceiling wires to terminate in an outlet box, since the buyer usually selects and installs the speakers. Since there was attic access, I pulled the wires out so that I could place the speakers away from the boxes. I'll either repair the outlet box holes myself or hire someone to do it.