Rack & Architecture Explorer.
Walk through a reference AV rack, IT/network rack and BMS panel — every unit explained, sized and labelled. The boring rack that runs the room.
- Racks
- 3
- Form factor
- 42U
- Assembly
- Off-site
- Room temp
- 22–26 °C
/ Rack explorer
The boring rack
that runs the room.
Every premium system lives or dies in a rack you never see. Pick one and we’ll walk you through what each unit does and why it’s sized that way.
- Spare 10U
AV · Architecture
AV / Cinema rack
A reference home-cinema rack. Sources at the top, processing in the middle, amplification at the bottom. Cable management is invisible — that's the point.
Hover or tap any unit on the rack to see what it does.
AV / Cinema rack — bill of architecture
- Cable manager (1U): Hides the patch cabling between sources and the matrix.
- 4K HDBaseT matrix (2U): Routes any source to any zone with sub-frame switching latency.
- AV processor (Trinnov / Storm) (1U): Atmos / DTS:X bass-management, room correction, calibrated EQ per seat.
- Streaming sources (1U): Apple TV 4K, Zappiti, calibrated streamer for reference content.
- Network switch (PoE) (1U): Dedicated AV LAN; Dante / AVB ready for distributed audio.
- Multi-channel amplifier (4U): 9 to 16 channels of clean power for 9.1.6 Atmos chains.
- Sub amplifier · DSP (2U): Two-to-four-sub array driven by a calibrated cinema DSP.
- Online UPS (2U): Double-conversion UPS keeps the chain stable through brown-outs.
· Why it matters
The rack is the part of the project the owner never sees and the one most likely to fail. A reference AV rack is 42U, ventilated, labelled, with managed PDUs and a clear cable comb; a typical site-built rack is none of those. The difference is not aesthetic — it is mean-time-to-repair. A documented rack lets a third-party engineer fix a problem in twenty minutes; an undocumented one takes half a day and a phone call.
· Frequently asked
The rack —
what people ask first.
Why a 42U rack for a home?
Because the kit fits, the airflow works, and the cable management does not collapse on itself. Smaller racks are cheaper at handover and more expensive at year three, when adding one more amplifier means rebuilding the whole stack.
What goes where in the rack?
Heaviest gear (UPS, amplifiers) at the bottom; switches and patch panels in the middle; sources and matrix processors near the top. PDUs run vertically on both sides. Hot side and cold side never face each other. The explorer shows this for AV, network and BMS racks.
Do you build the rack on site or off site?
Off site, then deliver as a unit. The rack is wired, dressed, labelled and bench-tested in our workshop, then trucked to the site and dropped into the equipment room. On-site builds are quicker on the surface and slower on the timeline.
What about cooling and noise?
Equipment rooms run between 22 and 26 °C with positive air pressure. Noise is managed at the room, not the rack — racks are not soundproof. For premium cinemas, the rack lives in a separate room with isolated HVAC; for offices, in a server room with structured cooling.
Can I see a real rack before signing off?
Yes. Reference rack photos, BoQ and as-built documentation are part of the design pack on every project. The explorer is the public version; the client version is project-specific.
· Begin
Want the rack
done properly?
Send the systems list, the equipment-room footprint and the cable plant. We will return a rack design and a BoQ within two working days.