[JoshK]

I have been kicking around the idea of building a rack and rackmounting my gear and then building a really nice wood finish cabinet for the outside, so that it fits nicely into our decor.  My wife thinks my RM40's are "beautiful (but large)" but she thinks the salamander archetype rack is too industrial looking.   The concern I have is that I will kill all the isolation I have currently by coupling all the components to the rack.  Parmetal seems to sell parts for building your own rack.  Another thought I had was building a cabinet around my current rack with a nice door so the unit looks like furniture until the door is opened to reveal all the components.  

Any of you guys have thoughts on rackmount setups?

[Hantra]

As long as you mechanically ground the rack, I don't see a problem.  Your concern should be the release of mechanical energy more than the feeble attempt to try and kill it.  

If you keep that in mind throughout the construction process, you should have a better sounding piece.

B

[nathanm]

Racking your gear is great if your gear is rack-mountable, (with the ears on the sides) otherwise you've gotta monkey around with shelves and platforms and such.  Potentially rather expensive.  I built an angled rack for my recording gear and used two strips of solid wood to bolt everything to.  This is nice because you don't have to worry about lining things up with industry-standard hole spacings.  Also, with wood there's no grounding worries.  But mostly they sacrifice form for function.  A dolled-up external cabinet would certainly help though.  But there again in an enclosed rack you have to consider heat and ventilation as well as the fact that it'll be dark and cramped for fiddling with wires.  Lots of variables...  I'd suggest putting it on casters, that way you can roll it away from the wall when fiddling with wires.

[Brandon B]

I've got my whole setup (except the turntable, don't know exactly where it's gonna go) in a 7 foot tall rack, which rolls into a closet I built into the wall.  The only issue is this enclosure can resonate with loud bass.  Hasn't been a problem for music though.

You can get just the threaded rail parts of a rack from Middle Atlantic and build them into whatever you want.  You can also find some very strong and pretty inexpensive rack shelves at Markertek.com.

I went this route as my HT sub woofer and my 2 ch woofers are running off big Crown pro amps, which weigh like 60 lbs and only are really meant to mount this way.

BB