Cleaned, Rewired, and Organized

[itschris]

In preps for my new HTPC, I pushed my cabinet out and found myself washed over in shame. It was filthy and a complete disaster. Cables all over the place, dust everywhere.

The one major issues was the HDMI cables. They were too long... too bulky. I bought the newer Redmere cables and it made a huge difference. I originally bought all RedHead cables from SewellDirect.com, but ended up buying another bunch from Monoprice which I liked a bit better because they were braided. You can see the cables and comparison in detail here:

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/general-av-discussions/88735-new-hdmi-cables.html

So after a thorough cleaning I went from this:



To this:



I have some additional routing to do but I'm going to be putting in my finished HTPC so it's going to change a bit. But it's a huge difference. I can sleep at night now.

1) I replaced the HDMI's with the Redmeres from Monoprice

2) I got rid of the jumper speaker cables from the outlet that I made myself and replaced them with speaker cables from Sewell Direct. I'm really happy with those cables btw. You can see them in the linked thread above.

3) Replaced that stupid coiled up Monster Cable for the center channel with the Sewell.

4) Replaced the hodge-podge of network cables with CAT6 from Monoprice

5) Replaced my homemade speaker wires that I made with 4 strand Canar. They looked nice.. but I guess I didn't do a great job on the shrinkwrap. it seemed to pull away from the connectors and looked sloopy. I'm going to redo them at some point because...

6) I bought new speaker cables from Emotiva (two 2 pair sets)... the braided USS ones. I thought they looked nice and figured I'd give them a shot. It's not secret that I'm not a fan of Emotiva, but I was hoping these cables would be what I wanted and I wanted to try to support a sponsor. But... I just don't like these cables. First... 5 of the screw on bananas where just laying in the boxes. I screwed them all back on. Some of the bananas spin, some don't. I don't know if that means anything or not. The other issue is that the + and - are braided side by side making more of a flat vs round cable. They only coil in one way and get kinked because of it. I guess once they're laid out and connected it won't be an issue, but it's more of just a matter of "I didn't expect that." I'm not saying they're bad cables... I'm sure they're fine and I'll use them, but I should have paid more attention to what I was buying. Otherwise... they're nice looking... though I wish they were fatter and more ominous looking.

Yes... I like cables.

 

[Adam]

Are you sure that you posted the correct "After" photo?

 

[fuzz092888]

Are you sure that you posted the correct "After" photo?

His focus on cables allowed him to see past all that dust

 

[Adam]

His focus on cables allowed him to see past all that dust

I didn't even see the remaining dust the first time. I couldn't see past all those cables.

Ought oh. Chris did say that he knows how to ban people. On second thought, best organizational job EVER.

 

[ImcLoud]

Which one was the before pic, lol It does look better, but I was expecting something drastic, lol..

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

C'mon guys - stop busting his balls - there is a definite improvement, just not quite showroom ready. thats all
Chris - you could do better , I believe in you. For example the orange (network?) cable could be black and routed much nicely
If you need more velcro ties - I got tons of it

 

[itschris]

You gotta undestand there's a ton of crap in that cabinet. Router, modem, AppleTV, Cable Box, Blu-Ray, Amp, Receiver, CD Player, HTPC, and TV. 13 or 14 power cords, 4 HDMI, 2 Optical, 5 RCA's, 4 Cat6, 2 RG6, etc... that' a lot.

Yes okay... the dust on the upper side of the cabinet leave something to be desired. Missed that with the cloth. Geez! Tough Crowd. I take back everything nice I ever said about you guys. You all suck.

Truth is, I agree. It started out 100 times better but just got more troublesome as I added stuff back in. After this HTPC nonsense... I'm pretty much over it at this point. I'm not touching it again for another 6 months or until if my wife lets me buy a new TV. In the meantime... you all can suck it.

 

[fuzz092888]

In all honesty it does look better, and I'm certainly not going to post any pictures of behind my stand

Unless you're BMX with his magical wiring powers, definitely looks good.

 

[ImcLoud]

Its one of the sucky parts of having an ht cabinet, After my ht was setup for about 4 months, I figured it was the way it was going to stay so I measured all the cables I needed and bought them accordingly, pulled it all apart and reweired it start to finish with the new stuff, then over time I changed it a few times and its a mess again... My 2.2 parlor system is easy, its a toslink cable 2 speaker wires, 2 xlrs and 2 rcas with a few power cords, but I agree when you have a ps3, preamp, 2 amps, cable box, ipod dock, power distributer, whole house audio box, pc connections, ect ect ect it can get crazy out of control.

My brothers ht rack was insane, 3 mono blocks for his front end a 5 ch for surrounds, a preamp, a processor {denon avr}, a turntable, cd player, ps4, xbox, pc, blu ray player, cable box, dac, and surge protector splitter box... He has since cleaned it up, no more htpc and no more separate blue ray {I don't think}

 

[GO-NAD!]

6) I bought new speaker cables from Emotiva (two 2 pair sets)... the braided USS ones. I thought they looked nice and figured I'd give them a shot. It's not secret that I'm not a fan of Emotiva, but I was hoping these cables would be what I wanted and I wanted to try to support a sponsor. But... I just don't like these cables.

I was expecting the next sentence to be a complaint about them being too noisy....

 

[herbu]

Its one of the sucky parts of having an ht cabinet...

Ahh, but its apparent weakness is ultimately its strength.
1. The cabinet hides all the wiring from daily sight.
2. Put the cabinet on those little floor slidey discs, and its easy to slide the whole cabinet in/out for access.

Unless I pull out my cabinet and take pictures, nobody knows what it looks like back there.
I tried to bundle like cables together, (power, HDMI, speaker, analog, etc.), but it still doesn't look "neat". However, like my underwear drawer, nobody knows.

 

[ImcLoud]

I ran power cables up one side, rcas down the other and hdmi down the center, all my cables are close to length needed, I actually custom made a few and its still a mess..