Studio Rackmount - Order and Use Suggestions?

H13

Inspired
So...about a year ago, I built a studio desk with bits from IKEA. What worked surprisingly well is that the shelf I used for my monitor\speakers was high enough to fit 4RU under it fairly comfortably, which suited my needs perfectly.

Then Fractal had to go and announce that the AFX 3 would be 3 RU. I mean I could lie and say: "I'm not gonna get the AFX 3" but...it's gonna happen so let's get ready yeah?

Also, that desk that I built? Yeah, the top now has a bit of a...erm...disco smile? It's sagging in the middle from the weight on top of it. So it's time to move stuff off the desk and into a rack.

What I'm gonna do is get an 8RU, then throw it on wheels so that I can move it around. The only cables I need to swing outside the rack is the USB cable to my PC and the 2 output cables to my speakers. If it's on wheels I can get behind it easy, move it to other rooms or whatever without much hassle.

So I'm gonna get custom cables (made to length to avoid a nest of cables, also colour-coded) and blahblahblah, gonna do it properly so that I don't have to do it again.

Here is the arrangment I've figured out so far, but I'm keen to hear what other people think about this.

Velcro'd to the top of the RU: My DI box and Reamp Box.
=============================================
R1: Empty (Room to run cables to the DI\Reamp Box, you'd have to see my interface to understand)
R2: RME UCX Interface (when you get the rack adapters, it takes up a whole RU. Thanks RME...)
R3: RN5012 Preamp || RN5043 Compressor
R4: { AFX III }
R5: { AFX III}
R6: { AFX III}
R7: Furman Power Conditioner
R8: Empty (Room for expansion)
===============================================

My "logic" here is that everything is cabled in the same direction. Everything gets lead to the RME Interface at the top of the rack, with the power being the only thing that heads down. I'm hoping that makes for some easy cabling which doesn't result in a complicated (albeit colourful) nest of pain?

Suggestions? Is there a better way to do this?
 
I like it! ;)

When I've put together my rack, the order changed based on different units' rack depth, jack locations, etc. (if you put a shallow rack between two deep racks, it's really hard to access it, that sorta thing.) Only you have the combination of racks you have, so you're probably going to know best how to put it together.

Suggestion for GAS, maybe try to fit a wireless in there? Line 6 G10 has been really convenient for me. One less wire.
 
I like it! ;)

When I've put together my rack, the order changed based on different units' rack depth, jack locations, etc. (if you put a shallow rack between two deep racks, it's really hard to access it, that sorta thing.) Only you have the combination of racks you have, so you're probably going to know best how to put it together.

Suggestion for GAS, maybe try to fit a wireless in there? Line 6 G10 has been really convenient for me. One less wire.

This is the sort of advice I'm looking for :)

Since cable access is an important thing to me, is it a better idea to order the rack units in terms of size instead of a "processing" order? Doing it that way won't really make a huge difference from out front...

If I'm in the studio, I prefer using cables :). Wireless for live rig ;)
 
IIRC some Furman power conditioners emit a quite strong EMI from their top. Some people had issues with those EMIs deleting/corrupting presets stored on rack units.
 
IIRC some Furman power conditioners emit a quite strong EMI from their top. Some people had issues with those EMIs deleting/corrupting presets stored on rack units.

Yes.

...

I'm sorry what?
 
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