On Fine Audio - The Basement is the Ultimate Solution

A short time ago I faced a good problem to have. I needed a place for 7 monoblock power amplifiers for my home theater system, and there was no way they would fit in the cabinet space that was available. Not to mention all of the wiring and the heat issues that are associated with a cabinet installation.

Our primary listening space is the living room, and I've always preferred to keep the gear as tucked away and out of sight as possible. Not only for the WAF factor, but in general - even though I really like to look at the gear  - I prefer a clean, nearly invisible installation. Which is why most of the gear up until this point has been in a closed, ventilated wardrobe cabinet thingy placed to the side of the room, and it was too small for all of the incoming amplification.

  Source cabinet today. Notice
       how empty and clean it looks?     

I had pretty much resigned myself to heavily modifying the existing cabinet with a reciprocating saw and suffering through the heat issues with extra cabinet fans, when I came upon a solution that was so obvious and so simple, that I kicked myself for not thinking of it 20 years ago when I moved into this house. In order to keep wires out of the way in the media room I have drilled holes in the floor near the back wall to run cables from the AVR into the floor and through the basement to the various speakers on the floor above. I was rerouting some wire one day and it hit me that I could easily just put the amplifiers down here in the basement, just below all of the gear and the main speakers on the first floor (all of the speaker wire runs were already routed through that very spot). Holy cow - and the more I thought about it the advantages just kept becoming more and more abundant. So I did it - I currently have an H/T AVR running as pre/pro, 5 little monos running the surround speaks, and 2 Odyssey monos driving the mains.

Ok, so my install may look a little crappy, but it's a 100% functional installation.
The Best Sound Possible being the goal.

If you are in a postition to 'disappear' your big hardware like this I highly recommend it as an overall system tweak because the performance gains that can be had by doing so are huge (not to mention the practical gains), and here's why:

              A hi-fi bomb shelter              

• Complete Sonic Isolation - Currently all of the amplifiers are sitting 1 floor below the speakers in the living room. Placed on a rack that is sitting on a thick slab of cement poured over the hard earth. Two feet from thick cement walls. Even when driving the system upstairs to insane levels not even the most persistant vibrations make it downstairs to the amps - sonically the presentation area is absolutely invisible to the amplification gear. It's like a little bomb shelter for the amps.
  
  Tweak Savings Value: $ $100 - $1000 Isolation products are moderately pricey, and this solution can eliminate their necessity. Also, you don't need an expensive sound isolating stand either - any shelving or stand system that meets the basic requirement of rasing the gear some distance above the floor works perfectly. Currently I'm using metal kitchen racks. This isn't a permanent solution - I plan to build some wood racks shortly, but they won't be pretty, or crafted to insane levels of rigidity - because they don't need to be. Cash in the pocket baby.

• Proximity of Amps to Speakers - The amps that power the front mains are sitting just underneath the floor from the speakers they are driving. There is one meter of cable running from the pre/pro to the amp, and one meter of cable running from the amp to the speaker. Toss in another .5 meter of wiring inside the amp and that means that there is only about 2.5 meters of wire in between the pre/pro and the speaker upstairs. Seriously, how cool is that?
  
  Tweak Savings Value: $$$ $100 - $5000+ Cable can be expensive, so short cable runs are cheaper - a few hundred dollars can buy a lot more 'quality' if you only have to buy a small amount. Not only that, but shorter cable runs should lead to better sound. I think.

This ordered chaos? Invisible...

• Wife Acceptance Factor - Wow, what can I say about this. Hidden in the basement (literally) your equipment is absolutely, and pretty much completely invisible to spousal inspection and appraisal. I'm not married anymore, but I was married for 17 years and I know exactly how this works. Additionally, if your basement is unfinished (like mine) you can also strategically stack boxes around the equipment rack to discourage inspection even further. The SO will have no idea what's down there so it doesn't matter how ugly it is, and you can swap stuff in and out of your system with impunity and they will never know.
  
  Tweak Savings Value: $$$$ - Friggin priceless dude. How much would you pay for complete freedom to have any hardware you could afford?

• Ambient Operating Temperature - Not only is the ambient temperature in the basement easily 10 degrees lower than the living room at any given time, but since there are no visual or spatial requirements governing the placement of the amps you can pretty much set them out however you like. I've currently got mine on those steel wire kitchen rack things with plenty of space around every amp, and because the shelves are made of wire the air flows completely around every piece - all the time. There are no solid surfaces above, below or to the sides of them. Just sweet, cool air.

        Chillin like a Villain - and who can blame him?       

Tweak Saving Value: $ $50-$500+ Fans are kind of cheap - but a good, well ventilated and LARGE (remember we're talking 7 amps and a pre/pro here) equipment rack could set you back. Not to mention peace of mind as there is no maintenance required - shit just stays cool naturally.

• Placement/Maintenance - Kind of a side bonus really, but the amp rack in my basement is 2 feet from the wall. I can walk around back there. I have a nice bright lamp back there. It's a snap to easily read any plug label on the back of any piece of gear - so plugging, unplugging, and swapping gear is sinfully easy. Crawling, craning, and crying over pinched knuckles are no longer required to complete basic wiring tasks.

I can't bear to think how awesome my system would be by now if I would have thought of this years ago, but I can say how much better my system sounds since I did this. At the end of the day it's a very simple and obvious change, and while not applicable for all, it might be applicable for some - and the rewards are well worth it.

Also, I acknowledge that this is about as cheesy as it gets.