Articles and whitepapers

What to Look For in Specialist AV Furniture (1/6/2005)

By Sara Jones, Kell Systems

With the UK home cinema market experiencing growth rates of 70% year on year (source: Interconnection Consulting), the need to stylishly yet professionally house electronics equipment is correspondingly on the rise.

When it comes to choosing AV furniture there are a number of fundamental practical considerations that the piece should accommodate before styling and aesthetics are even touched on.

Accessibility

Accessibility is probably the most often overlooked element. However beguiling a piece of AV furniture might appear from the outside, it must respond functionally to your requirements from the inside. In this respect, a worthwhile exercise might be to project forward, imagining the piece of furniture with the equipment inside, fully-installed and wired up. Then, consider what you would need to do were any single device to lock up - as can often happen. If the answers are restricted to either rebooting the entire system or struggling to pull a fully-laden cabinet away from a wall in order to access the back of a device, it could well be the wrong choice of furniture long-term.

Specialist furniture to house AV equipment is carefully designed with on-going easy access to equipment in mind. If you are considering a bespoke commission, you may want to include castors coupled with a removable or open back panel in the brief, so that the piece of furniture can easily be pulled away from the wall and the back of the equipment can be reached if required. Equally, there are some ingenious designs that include detachable side panels that can easily be unclipped to expose power distribution strips. In this way, if any one device locks up, it can be rebooted without the furniture even having to come away from the wall.

Kell Zebrano cabinet incorporating three individual 19" racks offering a total of 36 rack units of space

Airflow and cooling

Another important consideration when buying specialist AV furniture is airflow and cooling, particularly when you wish to hide equipment away from view in an enclosure. Worth bearing in mind is that some devices, for example servers, PCs or power amps, run hotter than devices such as DVD or CD players that typically emit less heat. Either the specialist furniture manufacturer or the custom installer should be able to advise on the best layout for equipment within the enclosure, allowing sufficient airspace around devices that run hotter.

The golden rule is NEVER put equipment into a fully enclosed environment since this runs a high risk of it overheating. Moreover, if the air flow handling and cooling of the furniture is not sufficiently specified to cope with the equipment's requirement, it could potentially reduce the MTBF (mean time between failure)/life expectancy of some devices by as much as 20%. In brief, heat will degrade the lifespan of all modern electronic devices, and the more heat, the shorter the useful life.

Mainstream AV furniture will typically comprise open shelving with equipment on view, thus avoiding any heat build up issues. Nonetheless, this configuration exposes equipment to dust which can be detrimental long-term.

Conversely, the current trend in high-end specialist AV furniture is to conceal the equipment in hand-built, dust-proof cabinets. This means that mechanisms to prevent heat build-up must be designed in. The simplest way to reduce heat build-up without disrupting the aesthetics of the cabinet is to supply a cabinet without a back panel so that hot air can escape. However, for installations involving expensive equipment, you may wish to consider incorporating an active silent-fan cooling system to actually control the air-flow within the cabinet and ensure that true front-to-back cooling is achieved.

Rackmounting

The decision-making process should also consider what type of mounting solution is required by the equipment. The price of professional-grade, rackmount equipment has dropped considerably over the past few years, and consequently, an increasing number of rackmount devices are entering the home installation market. As such, basic shelving will not suffice, and a 19" rack solution will be required. The beauty of deploying a 19" rack is its versatility. A 19" rack can accommodate both shelf-mount and rack-mount equipment, allowing infinitely more choice should you decide to upgrade equipment to a rackmount option at a later date.

A kitted out tall Kell Oslo-styled 19" rack offering 38 units of rack space

In terms of choosing a 19" rack, there are some very stylish, high-end cabinets available that incorporate 19" racks and silent fan cooling. Alternatively, you could look at building a wholly bespoke piece of furniture around the metal chassis of the rack, but again, the design process must ensure that sufficient fans are included to cool the equipment contained within.

Kell Houston styled 19" rack with glass doors, offering 18 units of rack space with built-in silent fan cooling

Marriage of form and function

High-end AV furniture is designed for purpose, incorporating all of the above functional elements into a desirable piece of furniture, to create a true marriage of form and function. It is typically hand-finished, and as such, different combinations of finishes and materials can often be accommodated. While mainstream AV furniture is mass-produced by machine, and therefore does not lend itself readily to customisation in either finish or size, it does share the same goal as high-end furniture, namely to fully integrate form and function. Indeed there are some wonderfully innovative recent entrants to the market that reflect this trend, for example plasma screens and personal management centres that double up as mirrors when not in use.

From a stylistic perspective, there are two distinct trends emerging in high-end AV furniture. In very simple terms, the trends are defined by:
a) Clients who desire a stunning, signature piece of furniture.
b) Clients who require a piece of furniture that effortlessly blends in with the rest of the interior decor.

Both types of client require distinct approaches that should be accommodated by most high-end AV furniture manufacturers. The former type of client requires highly-experienced designers who are prepared to work proactively alongside the client, incorporating distinctive features, for example coloured remote-controlled LED back-lighting, and interesting materials such as metallic finishes, unusual coloured laminates or even a combination of materials to lend texture. The latter 'blend in' type of client requires a supplier who is flexible and has the expertise to work with a wide range of finishes to colour-match existing furniture.

Timescales

The time taken to manufacture high-end AV furniture is largely dictated by the degree of customisation required. For example, choosing exotic materials with a longer lead-time might prolong the production process. That said, as a ballpark, allow four to six weeks for the production process itself, and possibly add an extra two to accommodate the conceptual stage.

Thinking ahead

Whether you choose an off-the-shelf piece of furniture or go down the bespoke route, endeavour to think carefully about what will be required from the furniture both now and into the future. Take on board practical considerations such as the installation and the impact the choice of furniture might have on the installation process. Think forward to how the piece might accommodate future expansion of the system. For example, if you plan to extend the installation, it might be worthwhile choosing a modular design.

And very lastly, consider the piece of furniture as an investment - something to take pleasure from visually while it protects and prolongs the life of your equipment.

Sara Jones is Head of Marketing for Kell Systems, manufacturer of high-quality multimedia furniture.

www.kellsystems.co.uk