in search of: a rack philosophy...

[dynomike]

I tend to put stuff with important meters at eye level, and stuff with knobs I turn a lot (stereo eq, stereo compressors used on the buss, etc) just a bit below eye level, so I can easily adjust it without moving my head too much off axis.

Preamps, etc, that I usually just 'set and forget' I've put nearer to the bottom. The patchbays for me are at the top because I like to be able to get in and mess with them without taking gear out of the rack.

Another important thing to consider if you have old or questionably built gear is where the power supplies are located. I know a few pieces I have are picky about who their neighbours are. Try listening to the noise floors of your different pieces of gear and seeing if cutting the power to its neighbouring pieces lowers the noise floor. If so, try rearranging things until you find the quietest setup.

[Osumosan]

One thing I look for is the pattern made by the unit depths on the back of the rack so that no one unit's I/O is hard to get to with a shorty between two deep ones. I get used to anything else.

[T-rex]

Over the years, I have developed a sort of philosophy with the racks.

I have made each rack semi-modular in one crucial way, and that's made life much easier. All of our racks at Tremolo Lounge are separate standalone racks with wheels. What I did was to very neatly wire all of the units to a patchbay or two within the rack. Also, all power goes to permanantly-mounted power strips/racks within the rack.

Essentially, each rack is it's own module and needs to have one master AC cord plugged in. Wiring is very carefully laid out and tied up within the back of the rack.

I have a master patchbay at the mixing station, which connects to the recorders, the mixer, headphone sends, etc. Within this rack, I have a patchbay that goes to 24 tie points that normal to tie points in the modular racks.

It's harder to describe thank it is to see, but the gist is that there are very few rats' nests of cables all over the place, as there are uncommitted tie points in each rack which go to the master patchbay. All patching is done with super-short cables from patchpoint to patchpoint within the same rack!

I used to have dozens of cables (all the same color!) strewn across the floor from rack to patchbay to get to the recorder. This way, I don't have to have EVERY PIECE OF GEAR in the rack connected to the master patchbay. They just connect to their individual rack's patchbay, which has uncommitted tie lines that go to the master patchbay. I will never need EVERYTHING patched in at once, so I usually can get away with 24 uncommitted tie lines even in a big tracking session.

As for types of gear, I group preamps and compressors that I use in tracking in one rack, with some spillover to a second rack. Effects and more specialty gear is in a second, third and fourth rack.

Every few years, I need to re-do some racks to configure new gear, and retire some gear to a spare rack, but it stays pretty organized for the most part.

Roger

This sounds really interesting. I have been wanting to figure out a way to do this so I coudl take my pre's with me mobile or at least in the drum tracking room. I was thinking about those elco connectors or something so I could just plug it into the master rack. Hmmm. . .

Anyway, all good advice. I group by most used with anything for tracking going close together and close to the board in case I need to make a quick adjustment.

Also, I boutght two panels with 12 empty spaces each for XLR connectors and placed at the bottom of my rack. I wired up the xlr's to the inputs on all my pres and I use two snakes to go to the tracking room (i.e. bedroom across the hall). That has worked great and been a lifesaver being able to switch between pre's quick and easy and no going behind the rack etc.

[newfuturevintage]

my rack philosophy:

first: a spreadsheet is your friend. It'll let you move boxes around to get a feel for where you'd like things to be without having to physically rack anything.

Spreadsheets are great for patchbay design, too. You will be using them, right? Make a few columns for top row of points, bottom row of points, the normals between them, and snake channels used. Also lets you add notes of why you're putting things where you are, and about what kind of cabling you need to buy to make it happen. Print this out and keep it with the rack. When you reconfigure a few years down the road, it'll make everything a lot easier.

Power cables. long power bars up the inside of the rackare your friend, as are rack mount power strips with lights on the front. Replace all IEC cables over 3' with 1-3 footers. It makes things much neater than you'd imagine, and only costs $2-3 a pop. If you're in a dark room, put a service lamp in the back of the rack for rewiring niceness.

Audio lines: make 'em a bit longer than you think you'll need. If you want to move stuff later, it can keep your from having to buy new lines to reach the new location. Of course, keep audio and power lines from crossing as much as possible.

[ashcat_lt]

Currently, I don't actually have anything in a rack. The 8' aluminum rack doesn't fit in the 7' basement where I'm currently installed. So I've adapted an old dresser. Ghost sits on top with all the rack gear in where the drawers should be. I mostly group by purpose and standard signal flow from top to bottom.

When I was using the rack I usually put the poweramps right at the bottom, to keep the center of gravity of this thing as low as possible.

I'm mostly posting here though to vent my frustration re: the non-standardized layout of the rear panels of rack gear. If it's so important that I keep my AC power cables from running very close to and parallel with my audio lines, then why does each piece of gear have these things on different sides? Some even have the AC right in the middle! WtFnF,O? Can't we just pick a side and make everything nice and easy?

[drumsound]

My only advice is to stack your blue effectrons on top of each other, so you look as if you have a rare 4U effectron with tons of knobs on it in your rack.

how the hell did you know i have multiple effectrons?

*checks locks on doors*

Because you're a TOMB regular!

[ColinMiller]

I have a few flight cases of gear and for me the position is important. Each gear has some factors that must be weighed:

The importance of the gear (use wise)
How often the gear gets changed (some gear always keeps the same settings, some don't)
Does the gear need a ventilation spacer?
Depth of the gear (I try to ut deeper gear closer to the bottom to better support the gear above it).

So for example, my Manley tube mixer sits at the bottom of one flight case because it does not get changed much at all. While the API EQs and distressors get changed every single song and therefore are at the top. The more activity gear gets, the higher to the top (which is closest reach). Then comes depth. Both the APIs and distressors for example get a lot of use. But the Distressors are much deeper than the API chassis so the API goes above the distressors, etc.

Some gear may have vents on top which often means needing a blank rack space above. However in some cases if a very shallow piece is right above it, there may be room for ventilation without using a blank space since the shallow piece does not block the vents.

blah blah blah..

[ColinMiller]

One thing I look for is the pattern made by the unit depths on the back of the rack so that no one unit's I/O is hard to get to with a shorty between two deep ones. I get used to anything else.

I don't know if you ever deal with MIDI, but this is always a big PITA when it comes to MIDI racks. The MIDI interface (I usually deal with unitors myself) are always 100x shallower than all the MIDI gear. And it's only 1 rack space meaning all the gear around it makes it hard to get to in the back. And even if its on the top or bottom it's the same case. Sure if you have room you can leave a spacer, but many times that's not an option. And even putting it next to the rackmount power outlets can be tough because of all the wires form that.

I don't really have a point, but your post just reminded me of that.

[roscoenyc]

I have a few flight cases of gear and for me the position is important. Each gear has some factors that must be weighed:

The importance of the gear (use wise)
How often the gear gets changed (some gear always keeps the same settings, some don't)
Does the gear need a ventilation spacer?
Depth of the gear (I try to ut deeper gear closer to the bottom to better support the gear above it).

So for example, my Manley tube mixer sits at the bottom of one flight case because it does not get changed much at all. While the API EQs and distressors get changed every single song and therefore are at the top. The more activity gear gets, the higher to the top (which is closest reach). Then comes depth. Both the APIs and distressors for example get a lot of use. But the Distressors are much deeper than the API chassis so the API goes above the distressors, etc.

Some gear may have vents on top which often means needing a blank rack space above. However in some cases if a very shallow piece is right above it, there may be room for ventilation without using a blank space since the shallow piece does not block the vents.

blah blah blah..

Excellent points about ventilation.
Some gear gets much much hotter than others

[channelcat]

my rack philosophy:

first: a spreadsheet is your friend. It'll let you move boxes around to get a feel for where you'd like things to be without having to physically rack anything.

Spreadsheets are great for patchbay design, too. You will be using them, right? Make a few columns for top row of points, bottom row of points, the normals between them, and snake channels used. Also lets you add notes of why you're putting things where you are, and about what kind of cabling you need to buy to make it happen. Print this out and keep it with the rack. When you reconfigure a few years down the road, it'll make everything a lot easier.

Power cables. long power bars up the inside of the rackare your friend, as are rack mount power strips with lights on the front. Replace all IEC cables over 3' with 1-3 footers. It makes things much neater than you'd imagine, and only costs $2-3 a pop. If you're in a dark room, put a service lamp in the back of the rack for rewiring niceness.

Audio lines: make 'em a bit longer than you think you'll need. If you want to move stuff later, it can keep your from having to buy new lines to reach the new location. Of course, keep audio and power lines from crossing as much as possible.

Excellent point! It's so much easier moving stuff around on a spreadsheet during the planning stages than actually racking and re-racking gear. Also on my rack layout spreadsheet, I note the power requirements of each piece of gear in an adjacent column, as well as a tally at the bottom of each rack with the total number of pieces that need to be plugged into a power conditioner. Anal, I know, but that's why it's called planning.

A spreadsheet for your patchbays is also a really good idea. I keep one thats sort of a scratch pad, and separate from my actual patchbay label spreadsheet (the pretty, colorful one that goes on the bay).

Start a spreadsheet for your wishlist too, but don't spend too much time obsessing over it. It's a great place to make notes on pricing at different retailers, notes on rack requirements/dimensions for tabletop units, and other general notes like "Andy Hong Approved!" (yeah, I've got one or two of those in there).

Regarding dealing with the dark spaces behind your rack, I've been using a Stanley LED flashlight, which has a button that releases a latch on the handle and splits it out into a tripod base. Very handy indeed! One of the best, and most useful, gifts I've ever received.

My philosophy is to rack gear by type (pres, EQs, compressors/limiters, effects, etc.). It simplifies my TT patchbays too. Within each type, I place tube gear at the top, followed by anything else that lets off a lot of heat. But you know - YMMV.

Enjoy your new rack!

Stu

[The Real MC]

Pay attention to heat. Stuffing the wrong rack units together can create an oven which will shorten the life of your gear. Put two or more hot units together and that heat accumulates fast. A lot of audio processors - new or vintage - run really warm.

Cooling fans are a no-no in a studio until you want that vintage whirring sound of fans in your tracks. Just leaving the back lid off does not always work. Usually a single blank space right above a hot unit serves as adequate ventilation. Give that heat a short path to fresh air.

When planning out your rack, plan for expansion not for extra gear but for blank spaces used for ventilation.

[mtw]

sorry to hijack the thread, but....

What are folks' opinion on cable style to use between the gear and the patch bay? Multipair snakes or individual cables? The snakes keep the wiring between the gear and the patch bay neat, but you've got these tails hanging off of the end of the snake spread out between the inputs and outputs on the gear. I guess I lean towards single cables but maybe there are advantages to snake cable I'm not considering....

[weatherbox]

I keep EQs and stereo/bus compressors nearest at hand. Setup here is two 14 space racks each with a 6 space case on top, both sitting to the right of the mix position. So the top left case is full of EQs, and the top spaces of the rack underneath are stereo comps. Tweaky mono compressors are next in line - closest rack, middle positions. At the bottom are the comps that typically don't change settingswise or are one-knob sorta deals, as well as reverbs that don't get tweaked too much. The second tower is patchbays, monitor switcher, and converters up top, preamps through all but the bottom of the rack, where power supplies live. It's been pretty easy to work with though once everything gets moved to a larger space there'll be some shuffling. Currently only the converters and the hottest of the tube comps have vent space, so whenever that move comes larger racks will be in order.

re: the cabling thing, everything is on a snake, and I patch in short (2-3') cables where necessary to prevent one of the snaketails from being overly stressed on a stretch/hang.