halogen lighting?

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...

To answer Ed's question...on inexpensive halogens, a small transformer is built into each individual lighting fixture, so there is no way to isolate the source of the noise from the source of the light. The Home Depot-type tracks are called "low voltage", but the the voltage running through the track is 110V. The step down occurs at the fixture. True low-volatge systems run 12v through the track, which limits the length of the track run due to voltage drop.