halogen lighting?

I have halogens on a dimmer in my living room with my HT system. Though I have a Tice AV power conditioner, when I dim the lights I can hear noise comming through my system. This is minimized by turning the halogens all the way up. If you plan on using them, my guess is you'll need to have them on a different AC line than your system. Not having tried this, I'm not sure even that is totally safe. Good luck.

Low voltage halogens provide great outstanding atmosphere lighting for a listening room, BUT, the step-down transformer that is a part of the inexpensive fixtures will make a significant amout of mechanical noise if the lights are set at a moderately dim setting. This isn't noise induced into your system, but it is still a distraction for critical listening. There is an alternative, however. If you go through a specialty lighting supply store, you can get better low voltage halogens, the kind you see in commercial applications like restuarants and museums. These use a remote transformer that can be placed some distance away from the listening position, to reduce noise. Much more expensive than the Home Depot variety, but if I had it to do over again, I'd go that route. Good luck.

Why couldn't you just remotely locate the transformer from the home-depot type lights?

-Ed

A classic priorities question. Low voltage and dimmers are bad news for audio, separate lines or not. If the look is worth it, then do it, but it has a cost. I have a dimmer in my dedicated room, but I turn it off when I listen (I actually turn off all the dimmers and hologens in the whole house), using my trusty lava lamp for atmosphere. It's on a separate line from the audio, BTW.

I once had (for a few seconds) one of those cheap 'torchiere' up-lights that use halogen bulbs. The first time I switched it on, not only was a large amount of noise introduced that began spitting out at me through the speakers, a nasty and very loud buzz started emanating from INSIDE my amplifier. The light was of course quickly packed up and still sits in a dark corner of my basement. This was one of the ultra-cheap $19.99 garden variety lamps and I would expect some better results from upscale halogen lights of better construction, but still...