High end finish Stereo cabinetry?
 

Hi guys, I am finally getting around to planning a new home build. We've been in a condo for the last 20+ years working with the space we have... We listen to music everyday, much more than we watch TV, so plan to keep the 2-channel system in the living room, probably below a TV on the wall. It won't be a pure 100% audio room, so we'll have to work around those compromises.

Since we are building the house from scratch, we have some time to plan layout right. You can see attached the pic of our current AV furniture. The current gear is basically unchanged (missing from the photo is the K-03, Aurender and Rega TT), but this is what we cobbled together with a few hundred dollars of COSTCO furniture, glass added on top, and some creative cable management/false backs to hide the ugly birds nest. It's still a slightly visible mess in the 6 inches between the cabinet and the wall.

https://www.audioaficionado.org/show...t=matts+system

Looking for advice on how to do this 'right' in the new place, the objective is to make it look REALLY clean, be functional so components can be accessed and cleaned, and to hide the cables as much as possible. In a perfect world, we would only see a few power cords going in (assuming we do dedicated outlets) and 2 speaker wires coming out. Options so far:

1. Design custom built ins. I see this would make sense if we can design hidden access to the cables behind the wall. I think this would look super clean, but is more $involved$ and may not even be feasible based on the room layout. I don't know yet what the living room will be backing against and whether it will permit the cables to be accessed in a 'closet'.

2. A cabinet that can hold all the components. Can such a thing even be bought or would it have to be custom built? I want to ensure it can be rolled in and out for periodic access, would require a false back to hide the interconnects etc., needs adequate ventilation. etc.

Would be grateful for your ideas here on both approaches, pros and cons.

I stopped by a dealer today and saw the BDI stuff - it looks OK, but still would probably fall short of the cable management requirements, and probably size as well since the 501's are tall for example.

My preference is not to go custom and reinvent the wheel, but since this is by definition a visual focal point of our living room/great room, I want to do it right.


Thanks in advance for ideas and pictures.

Cheers

Matt

Built in cabinets if possible are a great way to hide most of the gear. This was my solution https://youtu.be/a3i_DETaCg0

Serge..Wow......your room and system is outrageous. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

What speaker cables did you use?

Transparent. Having gone from mild to obscenely wild (five digits price) for the 30 ft runs from the amps in the rack to the speakers as I moved "up the chain" of Transparent cables.

I am still using my first pair of the Transparent speaker cables to this day. :yes: For under $250 they are still the best bang for the buck. :music: I have experimented with others recently and did not find any increase in performance that was worth the extra expense so left them in to stay for any foreseeable future. It's a different room and different system today than the older video I posted above

Very nicely done, Serge. Thanks for sharing.

I blame AA members for making fun of my amps sitting on the floor for years before that project. :D

In all seriousness it was a fun project with aesthetically pleasing results. The built in cabinets solved a major problem of what to do with the plethora of gear that was needed to support a full blown 7.1 theater/2ch high end listening room. :yes:

High end finish Stereo cabinetry?
 

Built in cabinets have their ups and downs. Aesthetically it will blend in, and acoustically the gear is recessed. You want to consider the cable runs for equipment placement to keep power isolated from interconnects and speaker cables, it does make a lot of work and very time consuming at first pulling gear, but this goes quicker as you learn. And at least for me, I like to see my equipment from the sweet spot and the cabinets afford this. Power and interconnect cable is also less expensive. Treatment over the TV will need to be addressed at some point, but that can come later. Good luck!

Weird Cuba brings up an extremely valid point; Heat. If your building make the cabinets as big as possible. I put a fan system in with a thermostat for when it reaches 92 degrees the fans kick on low speed. The design I mention is for solid state amps.



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Serge - how do you access cables and back of equipment in your cabinet? Any problems with heat?


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I had a custom built in made for my Mcintosh electronics and turntable, it you can find someone to do it go for it.

That was one of the best sounding rooms Serge :thumbsup:

I designed the room (as close to the golden ratio as possible) as the rest of the house was being built. The access to the back of rack was easy from the adjacent hobby/storage room. It was all planned ahead.

Obviously that’s not always the case with existing spaces but a wall could be built for a catwalk or similar.

Thanks everyone for the replies so far. Serge, what a room! I think if we were building this out of the basement space, it would be a no brainer. We're thinking main floor in a bungalow, so space will be at a premium.

1KW - your avatar is exactly what I had in my 'mind' - can you please post a full size high rez picture? And interested to know how you access behind your built ins - what's behind it?

Whatever I do, will think through heat for sure...

Besides full built ins, does anyone have pics of beautiful/clean moveable cabinet furniture assuming central placement between the speakers? Kinda like what I have now, but high quality and with better cable management? And casters so it can be accessed for periodic changes and cleaning.

I would think such a really well designed standalone cabinet would serve the purpose, be movable to a new location if required, and probably less expensive even if done 'right' and to a high standard. Just not sure such a thing exists.

Lots of options :)

PS - David, no need to post pics. I just saw your Herman Miller thread. Beautiful. This gives me some good ides on built-ins... the pics in that thread are perfect.

Thank you.