built in shelves in a wall or a cabinet

[spartacus]

I am building a new home and am wondering if its better to build shelves built into a wall to house my components with a room behind the wall to access the back of components and to use to hide the cables and to run the dedicated services to or is it better to have a custom cabinet built on casters to hold my components as i have now?

 

[Bryce_H]

I built a closet in the back of my HT with front and back access. Prewired everything to terminate in the closet (IR repeater system is critical since the closet is in the back of the room and the components are behind 1 3/4 solid core door)

Love the setup.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Rear access is ALWAYS better. If you have your components on wheels, then you must constantly move a heavy piece of furniture and have the opportunity to mess something up anytime it is moved. Plus, without rear access, you have to squish all the cables behind the rack against the wall - in ways you really can't control.

Blech!

Rear access allows you to bring all the cables into a very structured cabinetry area and have full access to every single piece of equipment. Cabling can be fully controlled and hookups can remain solid throughout the seutp. Instead of fighting with cabling, every wire is put in its place and doesn't have to be disturbed every time you need to work on the equipment. It is far less of a headache, and much easier and more reliable for service and installation.

 

[Doug917]

BMXTRIX,

I built my rack under the stairs as my HT room is in the basement. I have about 2 ft directly behind my equipment and room to store old equipment and cabling at the shallow end of the staircase. It has worked out really well. At my old house I had everything on a rack and had to destroy the entire room, pulling everything out to change a cable or component. Now I can lust slide in behind the equipment and get to it rather easily. It's still a little cramped compared to building shelves into the wall and leaving lots of space, but it has worked out really well. Suspended ceilings are also a very good thing about a basement, as it is simple to run new cables and such. Personally, I'll never go back to an audio rack again.