Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners A poll on audio racks, which one would you choose?

dwm, THANKS SO MUCH.
Those pictures were great and certainly give me a better idea of the size of those Bell'Os.
It had not occurred to me that someone would actually own one of those four models i had described. The real life living room pics are far better to view than the smallish pics provided from sales websites.

I had not really measured out all the specs for each of the towers since i'm just looking generally at styles and prices right now. However, the wife does have a fair number of Inuit bone carvings that would accent the empty shelves quite nicely so we are not concerned about that aspect of the tower. However, it is true that if the tower is too large and not balanced on either side by some equivalent, then the tower may become too dominating a feature in the room. It seems to work nicely in your viewing space.
How is the cable management at the back?
It looks pretty clean from what i can see although most of your components are down lower.

If anyone else has any other home pictures of these models, i would sure appreciate it.

Actually, it's just about the worst for a projector; I left the ceiling and the side out of the pictures. :-) There's really nowhere good to mount a projector, and it'd be a battle with the light (it already is, and was even when I had a plain old CRT). There are 2 sets of french doors on the left, both facing south so they get a lot of light. There are 2 huge skylight wells in the ceiling, holding four skylights. Fortunately they have motorized remote-control blinds, or we couldn't watch TV at all during the daytime. :-) Then there's the fact that getting the source to the projector would be a nightmare. I considered it before I did the skylight wells and skylights, but it would have meant a lot of work, including tearing into exterior walls which I prefer not to do (insulation, vapor barrier, etc.).

I bought the Grand WEGA largely because it's light. The floor in this room is Kahr's London Ash, and it's a floating installation. I looked at several rear projectors, but I really didn't want 350+ lbs. of weight on my floating floor. The Grand WEGA is actually considerably lighter than the 32" CRT it replaced, maybe 125 lbs. or so. If it weren't so big, I could move it myself. I actually got it onto the stand by myself, though it was a little tricky.

The cable management is very good, Bell'O makes nice stuff. The cutouts in the cable race are big and are edged with plastic rings so you can't scrape your hands or your cable insulation. There are cutouts on both sides of the race, I try to keep power and digital cables tied on one side and analog signals on the opposite side. You can't see the cables unless you go almost behind the rack.

You nailed the one issue, if it's really an issue. The bottom of the rack doesn't have the cable race, it's wide open. However, the cable race would just be in the way. If you're like me, you need one or two shelves with a bunch of space to deal with a large number of cables: receiver or preamp and amplifier. I tried putting my receiver on the first shelf above the wood, but it wouldn't work because there's not enough room in the back to deal with all the cables to/from the receiver without having the receiver sitting right at the front edge of the rack. Right now the receiver cables are just dangling since I've been working on the room, but normally I have them tied together so all you can see is two big bundles straight down in the back. When I'm done mucking, I'll probably put them in loom or expandable nylon mesh sleeving (like the kind you might find on a PC power supply). I'm also considering just putting a couple of pieces of hardwood on the back there. The Sunfire receiver generates so litle heat that enclosing the back of the rack is a non-issue.

I don't know if I'd worry about the tower becoming the dominating feature of the room. These particular Bell'O units work pretty well just as display cases, and they're far from ugly. If you've got enough gear to actually fill one, whatever rack you use is bound to be a dominating piece in the room. :-) I only mentioned the size because there was a big difference between your smallest choice and largest choice. In my case, the wife acceptance factor was better with the Bell'O 2052's than anything else I looked at, probably due to the wood bases.

As for my components being down low... that's mostly because we have a rambunctious golden retriever. Small, light items need to be kept out of his reach, so they wound up high and the A/V items (in which he has no interest) wound up low. :-)

Yeah, cable management!!!

For those who do not own a rack/shelf with built-in cable management facilities like Bell'O, what do you do to manage the numerous cables around your electronics? Loom tubes? Velcro ties? Or nothing?

I am now pretty set on all the wiring around the AV gears, and so it is time for me to do some cable management behind my receivers/amps/players -- it currently looks like a bird nest... LOL

I'm hoping some birds will nest in the hideous tangle of cables behind my gear, actually.

I think I've got a rat nesting in mine. Some nice cable management would be nice. I'm going to try and get my brother-in-law to build something for me. I can't justify spending that much on a rack. Call me crazy, but I'd rather put that money into some more equipment.

Hear, hear. :-) The best looking gear can look like crap when there's a pile of cabling spaghetti behind it. :-)

Things I have used or am using now...

Zip-ties are a must-have.

PVC is good for fixed raceways, say behind your rack. Easy to cut and drill, lots of room, many types of tubing (elbows, tees, Y's, etc.), easy to connect together, and easy to paint any color you'd like (flat so it hides the surface irregularities).

Short cables. It seems like the simplest thing in the world, but... I hate the fact that it's near impossible for me to find good quality 1-meter RCA cables locally. I also hate the urge at the store to get a longer cable 'just in case' or because 'I might use it elsewhere later, and it might need to be longer...' or because I just bought a new source and forgot to order cables and just can't wait another day to play with the new toy. :-) When I'm not in a hurry, I order cables of the shortest feasible length for the purpose on-line. When you've got four sets of component video cables behind your rack, it's a bummer if they're all six feet or longer. Throw in multichannel analog audio cables and you're asking a lot of your rack in terms of hiding spaghetti. :-)

Split loom is pretty ugly; I prefer the spiral wrap type for anything that doesn't need the protection of split loom (is not in my engine compartment :-)).

Expandable nylon sleeving is nice for cables that need to remain very flexible and are uninterrupted. Bundling together RCA pairs, multchannel audio cables, etc. Comes in a lot of colors so you can color code things. The bummer is that you need a hot knife to cut it w/o fraying, and you usually need to put heatshrink tubing on the ends after installing for the same reason (but electrical tape will work too, it's just a bit uglier). But if you buy the right size, it uses very little space so you can use it in areas where you're concerned about restricting air flow. I use it a lot inside PC cases.

I'm not a fan of velcro ties. The only time I used them was when I was doing live sound engineering, and I only used them to keep cables organized while in transit. Black duct tape is more useful on-site than any quantity of velcro ties. At home I don't like them because they collect dog hair and my dog likes to steal them. :-) The hook part is durable, but I always find that the loop part loses much of its holding power over time, defeating the whole point (reuse). I also don't like the look.

Just about any wood trim can double as raceway for speaker wire. We have decorative oak baseboard in our family room, and it was flat on the back. Nothing the router didn't fix easily. :-)

I have the schroers and schroers deltastatic audio rack and I love it. Its not too big and saves space over bello racks and happens to look good with rest of my equipment. If you wanna take a look at the rack go to my home theater page http://web.randomelectron.com:42001/hometheater.html
I like the schroers you mentioned and like how the shelves are hanged using wires...pretty cool but expensive too.

I'm right with you there. Of course, I spent over $200 on wood for my entertainment center/equipment storage unit, and it's taking me over 6 months, but hey...

Anyway, when I get it done, I'm going to try to clean up the cables. I don't even have multichannel yet and it's a rat's nest!

Ken

ereed:
The deltastatic racks are sweet looking. I was looking into a furniture work model that looked like the deltastatic but had wheels on the bottom But I think I'll still go for the Lovan modular glass racks so that I can build vertical or horizontal. Having a projector there is some space below the screen to go horizontal and still have a nice look. Only issue would be cable management when going horizontal since most will show.

SAturn