Wire Tangle?????

Years ago I got tired of having to battle the whole mess behind my entertainment system shelves, so I took the whole thing apart and built slide out trays for the equipment to rest on. Also I put in lights in the back with a switch at the front of the rack. Then it became fun to rewire stuff, and everybody who stopped by the house got a demonstration of the set up.

I'd attach a picture of that, but I don't have that house anymore, and it was built into the wall. I bet the new owners liked that set up.

And it is a bad idea to coil the wires up and tie them neatly together. Looks good, but you will end up with cross talk from the power cables to the signal cables.

Rather than coil them make a snake. Ok what's a snake? I just made that up. Think of the letter S then the dollar sign $. Where the vertical line in the $ is where you would squeeze the cable together. Actually that is more like an accordion. Also if it's possible don't run power cables cables parallel to speaker cables and interconnects. Try to cross them at 90 degrees.

A friend of mine was having trouble with noise on his system, and asked me to come over and look at it. He had "tidied up" the back of his center by neatly tye-wrapping and using cable channel materials. It looked very nice, but that is what was causing all the problems. We took it all apart, separated the power carrying lines from the signal lines, and kept them loose but separate, and it went back to working OK again.

Crossing by 90 degrees as mentioned above reduces the cross talk coupling enormously. Cables will need to cross, so you keep them away from each other, and then make a run across at 90 degrees. Having some open hooks screwed in the back of the entertainment center allows you to drape the cable into the proper positions,

This thread jogged my memory when I was young helping my father in his TV shop. We would go out on a call for bad TV reception from the antenna we had previously installed. The problem was the excess antenna lead in wire neatly coiled hanging on the back of the TV. Uncoil the wire and the picture would clear up. As Mofimadness said, coiling the wire will create inductance, and affect the signal.

Thank you all for your feedback, no pun intended. Am about to install new power cable and a couple of interconnect upgrades. Will try to follow your suggestions and live wit a hopefully reduced tangle.