The Importance of Audio Furniture

"Audio Furniture" Adds nothing to the systen and usually gets in the way of good sound. I see a lot of great components that are stacked into a "entertainment center" All speakers need room to breathe. must be that WAF thing.

Most manufacturers of audio equipment don't make stands or furniture. When they are showing their equipment at a show, I suppose that they want the focus of attention to be on their equipment, not to provide free advertising to someone else's stand. Perhaps a reviewer reading this thread may wish to comment as to why they don't mention stands/furniture.

Proper equipment stands and furniture do make a difference of course. If it doesn't, then people should feel free to place their monitors on the floor, or in the china cabinet, or on top of a bar fridge in their basement listening room. Or they could put one on top of their amp and the other one on an overturned flower pot. When I was in university, I had one speaker on my bed headboard and the other one on a clothes trunk....on diagonally opposite corners of the room. Surround sound from only two speakers!

If a stand/cabinet has any glass, just say no. It would 'sing' along with your speakers. Best it be wood.

I'm sure that a solid stand with no resonance would have some effect on the sound but in my situation convenience trumps that consideration. I've got an all-metal rack from IKEA that I like better than anything else I've had for one reason, it has wheels.

Because I'm constantly adding or swapping pieces as I play around with things the ability to roll it out and turn it to the side to get to the cables and the backs of the components is great. I'd guess it has saved some wear and tear on the gear, too, since I don't as often have to move them in and out of the rack.

I made some concession to the usual concern about the metal rack 'ringing' by covering the bottoms of the shelves with sound-absorbing sheeting. I also put the components on sorbothane pucks and then heavy tiles. The convenience factor easily outweighs any other considerations for me.

Kenscollick,

All speakers need room to breathe. must be that WAF thing.

I agree about the WAF being a major determinant in most systems, after all we share our lives and abode with our better half. Your highly respected and excellent speakers definitely need room to breath as they actually radiate an opposite polarity sound field backwards (in the mid and treble) whilst radiating an omnidirectional (same polarity) sound pattern in the bass. So your speakers are not at all suitable for an entertainment center, for sure.

However, some worthy speakers can be designed to go in walls (soffit mount examples & soffit mount technical description). This can actually create the most even sound field possible as everything radiates forwards in the same polarity (bass, mids and treble) with much less comb filtering effects from first reflections.

Many acoustic studio designers support soffit mounted setups and there are a great many out there. This is much more complex than an "entertainment center" and often requires more bass absorption/trapping - especially on the far wall behind the listener....but the there is really nothing that matches how impressive and coherent these soffit-mounted designs can sound ( why else do you think studios would go to so much trouble and huge expense to build these show case soffit-mounted main monitor systems?) Basically these extremely expensive custom installations are designed to impress musically astute studio clients (artists/musicians) by sounding better than anything else the artist/musician has heard anywhere; if these systems can impress a major artist than it helps bring in more business to the studio.

Your great system clearly identifies you as a serious audiophile and therefore I thought these details may interest you. Enjoy!