High End, and Rack Mountable

Brystons love Maggies. Personally, I'd buy 2 of the Bryston Pro Pak 500 watt mono plate amps and mount them to the back of the Maggies. Forget speaker cables, and just run long ICs.

As for the rack thing: I used to do that back in the day (mid 80s to mid 90s) both for audio and HT, but it can be a hassle, unless you take Barry's advice (but then the use of a NAB-type rack becomes moot) It is definitely hard on equipment cosmetics, and unless you use insulating washers on all mounting holes, tying all the chassis together electrically can cause major ground loop problems unless you are able to connect everything together using balanced (XLR) interconnects.

Since the harm from floor-borne vibrations are negligible in comparison to the far more harmful air-borne and internally generated vibrations and resonance it is actually a very good thing to direct couple the components to the racking system.

In other words, if you did not direct couple the components to the rack, where do you suppose the air-borne and internally-generated vibrations and resonance captured by the components in a moment in time but only disapate over a period of time would go?

However, it's really a moot point considering the design of the rack you describe since it is on casters (not appropriate for direct-coupling) and since the rack was probably designed for nothing more than perhaps an industrial look, computer server consolidation and convenient and controlled access.

Moreover, the rack walls and access door may also rattle at louder listening levels thereby making a bad situation worse.

I would suggest that you not attempt to rebuild your otherwise nice system around this rack that was never intended for this purpose and that will probably induce more sonic harm than what you had previously.

-IMO

Another consideration is using plastic or hard rubber isolation washers to not scratch the components when mounting.

I have used plastic washers on all of the components which, to me, doesn't seem like a big deal.

I never understood why any rack mounted components would turn up for sale with scratches around the mounting holes.

No offense, but HELLO - we are talking about faceplates DESIGNED to be mounted on a rack?!

Re vibrations, this is an interesting thought, but I am not so concerned about this. Stehno, given that Audio Research and others are sold with rack mountable faceplates, do you think they had more of an "audiophile" rack in mind? Or were these faceplates all the rage cosmetically, but never intended to actually be mounted to a rack?

Whart - yes, heat is a concern and certainly for amps and tubes. At this point, I have kept my Mark Levinson amp out of the rack - it sits closer to the speakers. And for my SP11, I searched and scraped around ebay to find the rare rack mountable Audio Research ventilation units so I have one above the preamps power supply and one above the preamp itself which I think is fine. I also leave the rear door open a bit.

Kublakhan

I have checked out the Sweetwater device and THANK YOU - yes, that is more or less exactly what I have been looking for.

Now hmmmmm.....I wonder if that SPDIF output (?) can go straight into a rack mountable, Audio Research DAC III.......

another rack mountable shelf for a turntable......

...will try later to post some photos, but to me it is the best way to go.

Cwlondon...

Since you're interested in the Sweetwater you should also check out this idea:
http://www.logicsupply.com/default.php/cPath/79
You can get the computer built inside this case. It's a lot cheaper than the Creation Station (which is overkill for what you want to do...but still cheap for an 'audio component' so who cares? but this last idea is likely to be noisier than the creation station.

Also...you can get something small and fanless which looks like an audio component:
http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/cPath/49/products_id/397
Mount that on the side of your rack or even on your wall behind the rack...

And then for a hard drive to hold your music to go with it you can get something REALLY COOL for a rack system:
http://glyphtech.com/site/products_gt103.html

That glyph rack is what i have, by the way. i don't have it rack mounted, however. (those glyph drives in that case are very quiet) you can obviously also use this with the creation station which would look really nice together in a rack.

You might also be interested in building your own rack using rack mount pieces you can buy at dj stores or at www.sweetwater.com - it's easy.