How can we mount surround sound speakers on the wall?

How do I mount surround sound speakers to pre-wired wall plates?

• I built a new house and the surround sound installer used standard electrical boxes with solid standard wall plate covers. I have found little info on the net about what will and will not work with these. Can I bolt on bracket mounts to the solid plate and make this work? If not, what are my other options, as this seems to be the standard for new construction homes that are pre-wired. Thanks for your advice.

• Answer:

  It's difficult to answer this without more detail, so I'll give you some suggestions and you can pick what is applicable. First, where are the plates ... near the floor or high on the walls? Are the wires inside the boxes, and you have to use some alternate cover plate? How big are the speakers? Assuming you have blank plates on boxes high on the wall, the first question is how do you want to do this? You can buy plates with a single round hole ... these would allow a wire to be passed from the box through the (new) plate and on to the speaker. Look for a plate for a rotary dimmer switch at your local hardware store. Or you can buy plates that have speaker binding posts ... you would connect the wires to the inside of the (new) plates and then connect speakers using a short wire with appropriate connectors to the binding posts (See links for some options) As to mounting the speakers, there are various options. Some speakers have optional wall mounting brackets. These custom fit the speaker and may be an option. Or you can buy speaker wall mounting brackets, or simply sit the speakers on appropriate size shelves, or install wall anchors and "hang" the speakers on the wall. The latter option works best for speakers with mounting cutouts on the back (e.g. keyhole slot(s)). See the links for some ideas. EDIT EDIT I'm not aware of any such plates. The issue is that speakers come in all sorts of sizes and it is usually the speaker manufacturer that produces a wall bracket. I bought a house that had Bose speakers sitting on little shelves made from baseboard molding. You can keep looking but ....