High end finish Stereo cabinetry?

[Matt Lan]

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