Equipment Rack Placement

Conventional wisdom is amp between speakers with long ICs going to rack on side wall. But if you look at pictures of high end audio shows of room set-ups many have rack between speakers wich are moved far out into room. My set-up is rack between spaekers which are pulled out 5ft from wall, speakers are 6ft center to center, seating position 7ft from face of speakers forming near field set-up. I feel if speakers are pulled out at least 5ft from wall, effect of rack in the center is minimized, all cables are kept short, plus you get to see your beautiful equipment, Sam

highend audio shows are not exemplars for equipment placement. having helped in the setup and teardown of rooms at ces and stereophile shows, i can tell you that you must frequently use your space for display as much or more so than for optimum sound quality. when i took the equipment rack from betweem my speakers a few months ago and treated the back wall where it had stood with asc wall panels, i experienced an improvement in soundstage depth and width nearly as great as upgrading the speakers themselves. (i now have only my amp behind and between the speakers--i use 6 ft. cables and 21 ft. ic between amp and pre). it costs some for this setup but its well worth it.

Corn F.B. no doubt your set-up is best if room permits and exta IC cost not objectionable. However I think in practice not many audiophiles take the trouble to do it because you very rarely see 20ft ICs for sale at Audiogon.

sam: actually, it's fairly easy to find 6,7&8 meter pairs of ic's on audiogon. just post a "wanted" ad, specifying the wire you desire and, i can almost guarantee you, you'll get at least one response very quickly. BTW, the 2 best audio shop soundrooms i've visited in the past 30 days have setups much like mine (audio unlimited, in denver; goodwin's highend, in waltham, ma), as do a number of my friends. it is no more expesive to go in this direction than using multiple sets of 1 1/2 or 2 meter pairs of ic's, as many do. and it truly does render a HUGE improvement in soundstage/imaging.

As long as the rack isn't more than 2/3 as high as your soundstage, or speaker height, is what I've also heard. I can't say from experience since my rack is off to the left of the soundstage and the other times where I had the rack in between the speakers, it was a shorter rack (20"). However, I haven't experienced any audible of effects of rack placement period.