Im thinking of making my own AV stand to house the electronics underneath and TV on top and im sure you guys can offer me the best advice on weather or not it would be ok to use MDF as ive heard its non reasonant and i assume this can only be a good thing.

Im thinking of the patterned front with the holes in so it keeps things cool and also the remote will still work through this. Im gonna leave the back open, is this a bad idea?

Also can anyone point me towards some pictures so i can get some ideas?

thanks
john

In regards to leaving the back open (in my opinion only) you'll do better to provide ample air intake at the bottom and an escape/exhaust area at the top. (These could both still be in the back.) WHY? Have you ever cleaned dust-bunnies from cabling and from behind components? Once your setup is finalized it'll (hopefully) be a while B-4 you go back there again. It can get to be real mess. Just be sure to leave about 3 to 4 inches clearance in the back so everything can breath.

Patterned front with holes? Hopefully all your equipment and shelving will work in unison to let your IR recievers peek "line-'o-site" at your seating position. (Probably not.) If you leave the front open you won't have IR issues and you won't have to worry much about heat exchange.

MDF has low-resonance but how are you going to finish it? It's hard to get a nice finish on MDF unless you use laminated MDF, and then you have to either buy DIY self-adhesive banding or use an iron to put better quality edge banding on.

After you weigh the cost of materials and your own good labor against the end result you might want to look at a "store-bought" commercially available entertainment center. I have good mid-fi components but I'm doubting they'd sound much different (if any) if I put them in an Oak cabinet or a solid MDF cabinet. Besides a lot of "hardwood" cabinets are veneer laminated over MDF now anyway.

As far as pictures go read some A/V and HT magazines, browse the furniture stores for entertainment centers, and go to a higher end A/V retailer who carries A/V furniture. If you're still bent on building you'll get enough ideas in those places.

I too, am building a stand for our home theater equipment. In my research into appropriate designs and construction techniques, I have learned a few things. Most of the equipment you will have or get will be heavy, especially if you are using a large screen CRT monitor TV. MDF is good, but as pointed out above, it is difficult to achieve an attractive finish. It also has problems with making strong joints, and will crack if not carefully nailed or screwed. MDF also will sag under a heavy load and will require a lot of bracing and support. I plan to use 3/4 hardwood veneered plywood, which is much stronger and accepts most fastening and jointing methods.

You asked about leaving the back open. This is not good if you are supporting much weight as mentioned above. The back will supply a lot of strength and prevent the cabinet from wanting to rack (twist diagonally). I will be using a 1/4" veneered plywood back, with large ventilation/cable openings routed into the center of it.

To ease the equipment installation, try to work in some opening sides to give access to the cabling or possibly drawer tracks on the equipment shelves. If your TV is to be enclosed in the unit, be sure to allow sufficient depth as well as height and width. Most commercial TV cabinets sold by furniture stores are only 19" deep, the standard dresser depth. Most new CRT TVs need 22 or 24" in depth to prevent the front support edge of the TV from hanging out over the front of the cabinet.

I would be interested in hearing what you finally end up in making. Keep in touch.

EXT

thanks for the advice. Yes i will keep in touch and take pictures. It is a friend of mine who will build it for me. He is a chippy and has access to a work shop with the company who employ him.

Ive seen a few of the bars and resturents theyve done so im hoping for something special, really nice finish as i will be going with nice wood after the advice given on here. Also i'l be getting the timber at trade prices.

What i may do is hang back on the doors for a while as i may settle for glass.

anyway thanks for helping
john

john:

You didn't say you had a trademan who has done similar work which you already admired; that changes things entirely. No offense meant, but in your post you sounded like a novice to woodwork so my advice on using "store-bought" cabinetry was based on that level of experience.
If you've got expert help custom is always better.

I decided on 3/4" Oak plywood with solid Oak shelving and face framing for appearance sake only. Since the cabinet is built in the wall and has doors I somewhat discounted the direct effects of resonance on my shelving and cabinet sides.

Sheik,

yea sorry for that its a bad habbit i've got, i kinda ashume that people know what im talking about and thats face to face also.

Dont know why i do it, but my dad does it alot to me so maybe thats why. And as the saying goes: while your trying not to be your mother/farther you dont notice yourself turning into your mother/farther.

My cabinet will be up against the wall and between two to three components wide and its the resonance im most concerned about as although my gear is far from top of the range im building for the future.

You did not mention weather or not you shelves were fixed or on slides, is there a real sonic difference?

Thanks for the help and no offence taken

john

This message was edited by john on 05/27/02 19:23.19.

John,

I'm in IT and could not overcome the heinous demons;
I just HAD to rack my system. If I had it to do over again I'd probably use fixed wooden shelving. Sliding shelving is probably going to buzz; all those little ball bearings and sliding metal tracks nearly touching each other? You hit some low notes and the vibration is going to dance the lithium grease right off the ball bearings eventually.


john, I think I'm having to read your mind again. In addition to resonance are you worried about access to the cabling at the rear of the equipment? You should be. The easiest thing would probably be to leave enough extra cabling length on each piece to slide it out and set it on a chair or stool while you fiddle. The drawback is that you can't always find pre-fab cable lengths and end up buying longer cables and "coiling snakes" behind your equipment. With stiffer cabling it can be a task to get the piece pushed back on the shelf without seeing cables popped up behind it.

Or you could commence figuring out how to access the cabinet from behind. It's much easier to manage cabling that way if you can find a way to do it.

If it's going to rest on carpeting it's going to be a bear to move when it's full of equipment and media. Some pre-fab cabinets have casters. Rather than messing around with casters or some such devices maybe you could permanently attach some of those saucer sized furniture glides to strategic locations on the bottom of cabinet.

Well I have just been through the exercise of building my own cabinet, I have an alcove which I wanted to install a cabinet into.
I ended up using 3 racks similar to the mid atlantic
[Link: middleatlantic.com] these wer built into a cabinet that had 3 sections made from Tasmanian Oak. There is plenty of air ciculation with inlets at the base which is filtered. The top of the cabinet has a depth of 700mm (29") and has a book case built onto the top. There is about a 2" gap between the wall and the back of the bookcase for the warm air to rise, this is also filtered to stop crap from falling down.
Only took me 6 months from start to finish to build the cabinet and bookcase.
All the cabling was custom made between the equipment.

I hear Tasmanian Oak is a devil to work with.

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