gauge of the wire is the major factor when running speaker wires along with having stranded solid copper wire and not copper clad aluminum wire which is rip off.

Gauge would depend on the length of the runs and wattage of the amplifier and if your using 6 or 8 ohm speakers. If you want to use a high power system over 100 watts per channel (not total wattage) powering 8 ohm speakers over 50 ft away you will need 14 or even 12 gauge stranded copper wires for example.

How much audio? DH has a separate bonus room for crazy audio/video stuff, but I prefer "invisible" stuff in my main living area. I plan on doing a good quality sound bar under the TV in the family room. Still waiting for cabinet people to finish the built-in that the TV will go into.

We also have wired in ceiling speakers throughout the house tied into DH's sound system in the bonus room. I prefer my TV sound to just come from a front sound bar for 99% of things I watch.

@chispa I don't think it's going to be a crazy amount of audio? but we will have an amp and CD player and the wifi speakers would link with those. We're in an area now with much better internet than where we're going, and we use internet music stations a lot and play them through the same speakers as the TV, but I don't think we'll be able to do that as reliably in the new place. We have 3 speakers right now, the one centered under the TV plus two narrow "tower" speakers that sit on the floor on either side, and two in the kitchen ceiling. When watching TV we use the 3 main speakers (not the kitchen ones). In the new place I think we'd still want that set-up, but with wifi speakers instead of ceiling ones and for remote areas, like outside, or bedrooms, etc.

(Now that I'm describing this out loud it makes me think that the TV on the north wall I mentioned in that other thread is going to be tricky, unless we have bookshelf speakers instead of tower-style for the TV --but I don't know if those will offer sufficient sound for TV viewing, or music, in a room with a high ceiling, or if they'll satisfy the household audiophile...)

The speaker (ie audio) wiring you want is pretty simple - from the amp to the 3 speakers. Whether they are $5 wires or $500 wires is for the household audiophile. You need interconnects between the TV and the Amp - and again - $5 or $500.

I don't think you should ask your builder for any of this - you have to ask the household audiophile. The bigger decision is where is all this going. You don't want excessive distance between source and amp or amp and speakers. The amp generates heat that needs to be dissapated - ie can't just slam it into any old cabinet.

You can plan on tubing in the walls to hide the wiring but again - the audiophile needs to be consulted on diameter and whether they are ok with that. You want to make sure no 120V lines will be near the audio wires. Usually it is ok to cross perpendicular but certainly not running parallel.

A true audiophile (do you really have one?) can be pretty specific. Things like a dedicated circuit to an amp is probably in order. And as isolated as possible from everything else - perhaps coming off the main connection rather than through the primary circuit breaker panel. Probably with thicker wire - 12 AWG at least.

I have to doubt you will have any problem reliably streaming audio. We have an urban connection and a 2nd home rural connection. There is about a 10 fold difference in speed. We used to hiccup video at the rural place but audio is way easier and never an issue.

Post your plan with the proposed speaker locations and we'll be able to help you better. If you don't already have an A/V closet planned, or at least a place to house an amp/receiver, you should start planning from there.

Thank you @David Cary for the detailed input. After more discussion it sounds like we're going with an all wireless system, or as much as possible. So that should solve some problems. I think in that case the only things that will need to be hardwired to the amp will be the TV and the CD player. The main components will all be within 6 ft of each other. Either way the dedicated circuit to the amp is a good idea. Good to know that audio is not a problem for you in the rural location.

@LH CO/FL, we are having a cabinet built that will house the amp and CD player. We will probably do a sonos-type system but with bookshelf speakers, only question is will we have any wired speakers. The household audiophile is not an expert on setup but has a good source for information/advice.

We have a household sonos system with sonos amps and wired speakers. I'm a huge fan of the wired. We have the sonos set up for a 5.1 channel surround. In retrospect we added more ceiling speakers than we needed. We have a sonos soundbar for the 3 front speakers and 2 ceiling speakers for rear surround (plus a sonos sub). We added 4 additional ceiling speakers for the rest of our home to use sonos but we really only needed 2 more. We have the same set up in the basement - sonos arc and 2 ceiling rear speakers for surround. We have 3 sonos amps to power our 8 in-ceiling speakers.

We also have a few sonos roams that we bring to rooms that we don't have prewired (instead of having a bunch of stationary sonos, in our bedrooms/garage/outside, for example - places where we don't often listen to music but it's nice to have when we do). Those work really well and put out a ton of sound, and also work as bluetooth speakers so we can bring them on vacation.

What I like about the wired speakers is that they don't require outlets, and they're pretty unobtrusive in the ceiling. We didn't buy the sonos ceiling speakers as the amps work with any. Given all of your windows, you will have to plan your outlets well for wireless.

For our frame TV, we placed our soundbar on a shelf adjacent to keep with the art look. It's not ideal in that our sound isn't coming from directly below the TV, but we don't even notice the offset. For our basement theater set up, we hung the soundbar from the TV.

This is super-helpful, @anj_p, thank you! I guess I wasn't counting on the fact that wireless speakers still need to plug in somewhere.... yes, with all the windows, we will need to plan.

With every wireless wi-fi speaker there will need to be a power source and was about to add this fact but @anj_p beat me to it. As far as sound quality it is true wired is better than wi-fi but with the right speakers it could be hard to tell the difference.

Each Wi-fi speaker will basically have a small built in receiver with a decoder and a class D power amplifier, along with the speakers and frequency crossover circuitry. All of these components in the speakers need to be top quality (and usually be of a matching brand) along with a wi-fi signal with no interference. With quality wi-fi speakers and a good wi-fi signal the difference would be negligible, but going cheap with inferior components the difference could be nearly unbearable comparable to a 2 star motel lobby or a big box store. So be prepared to pony up the cash for top quality speakers.

Other reasons Music isn't reproduced to to a flawless enjoyment level is Using D class amplifiers, (and basically universal today) because they sacrifice some high fidelity for efficiency and reduced size and cheap to make, but still good little amps for most people. How you download audio files also makes a difference, when downloaded a large file it is compressed into a smaller file and some information is removed and discarded never to be reproduced again that you will never hear. Combine all of above with bad acoustics in a room and the result is a muddled mess.

This is why audiophiles resort to quality class A and A/B transistor or vacuum tube power amplifiers, vinyl and CD's music sources that pump large amounts of power to big speaker systems. It's not for everyone but I would suggest going to a orchestra hall if you've haven't before and witness what real music sounds like, then decide if you want wired or wi-fi for your entertainment area and what kind of equipment to buy.

Why would you discourage anyone from engaging into the world of hi fidelity audio reproduction bry911? Such a harmless interest even if the OP had even suggested going down that road (but didn't), So where is the evil?

Thank you, @bry911 and @kevin9408-- I appreciate the detail and the different points-of-view. I think maybe the simplest solution is for me to forego the sound system and just play the piano! 😁 Seriously, though, I listen to music in my car more than anyplace else at the moment and the (wired) speakers in my current living room sound a lot better. But I was at a friend's house for a gathering where they were using wifi speakers, and I was surprised, the sound quality was extremely good, and it would be good enough for my purposes most of the time.

I understand the part about interference with wired speakers and electrical, but what would cause interference with wifi audio?