Rackmounts for Musicians?

williwilli asks: "Musicians face a multitude of challenges in this day and age, yet there are a number of musicians also trying to work towards the future. One constant challenge in almost any profession in money. With CPU's continuing to advance at a rapid rate, many musicians are finding computer-based software synthesis to be much more cost effective than traditional hardware synthesizers. While some musicians are using portable systems, the lack of expandibility limits the systems capabilities in terms of synthesis, multitrack recording, etc. While one could always throw more computers at the problem, many users will no doubt find a rackmount system provides much more capability and expandibility. As such, what insights might the Slashdot crowd be able to provide towards building your own rack? Is shockmounting necessary? Are parts readily available, or are there any 'open-source' CAD files out there? Are there music-specific materials, designs, or tips to recommend or avoid?" Would rackmounts for a mobile musician really differ so greatly from rackmounts made for a small server cluster?

Comments

See also...

[wka]

The same question was asked in this article at kuro5hin (apparently written by the same person who submitted this Ask Slashdot question).

The K5 piece has a number of useful responses.

Might help out...

[Jonny 290]

A while back, I needed rack specs, and had a bitch of a time finding them, so after I found them, I whipped up some layouts. Here's a PNG showing dimensions for everything; it'll render at true size on 72dpi monitors.

Linky

I've got a 300dpi version, but no way am I posting that on Slashdot. And no, it's not rackspecs300dpi.png. ;)

Some thoughts

[MrResistor]

First, I wouldn't build the rack myself. I would buy a good prebuilt one like an Anvil or SKB (Musicians Friend has an SKB 6-space for $70 right now).

From there, you can either buy a good rackmaount PC chassis, which will be expensive, or you can modify a standard case to mount in a rack. If you can pick up a tower that's just under 19" tall that should work. You can find raw materials for the bracketry at your local hardware store, or you can look up a local small machine shop and work with them. Small machine shops are great, because they usually have very knowledgable machinists who can be a great help if you don't really know what you're doing.

Of course, if you're going to spend that kind of money you can just buy a rackmount case. Kontron has some nice ones that will accept an ATX motherboard, but they start around $800. I'm not sure what kind of shock-mounting the ATX ones have. I've only used their backplane-based systems, but those are pretty good. You'd probably be looking at something like the 4-space Omnix 400 series to accomodate your PCI cards. With a 6-space rack that leaves a little storage space to pack your keyboard, mouse, cables, etc.

Regardless of what case solution you go with, you are definately going to want something more than just a single screw holding your peripheral cards in. If you go with a modified standard case that will mean constucting some sort of custom bracket to hold the other end of the card down. An industrial chassis like you'd get from Kontron should already be set up for that.

Is shockproofing necessary?

[/Idiot\]

You betcha, well, that is if your roadie is gonna toss your rack like he is gonna toss your Marshal quad. Solid-state == fragile-state, just think of your hdd platters :-)

Some experience

[herderofcats]

I have some experience with using musician rackmount racks with computer hardware which may help those trying to do the reverse.

I like to purchase musician rackmount racks because they are cheap (at least compared to computer racks) and come in a variety of "packable" sizes.

I have two 'fuzzy' ones that I use in my office -- one has a 1U power distribution, a 1u ethernet switch, a 1u KVM switch, and a small 1u server. This leaves 1u for cable management and a 802.11 router. The other contains my 1.5u Tivo Series 2, a 1u video switch, an 2u amplifier, a 1u DVD player, and a 1u power distribution.

I have a 3rd hard case, with front and back 'lids' that cover the the faces of the rack, that lock with a padlock and are shippable. I use this for conventions.

First, be very careful with the screws -- the screw holes for musician racks may be compatible with those for computer racks, but they appear to use a different size threading. You can ruin your rack by forcing the wrong type of screw.

Second, musician racks typically are far too shallow to use with most computer equipment. Be sure to order the deepest you can find, which typically with be 17" -- even that will not be deep enough for many computer rack-mounted devices, in particular rackmount PC cases which tend to be much deeper then 17".

-- Herder of Cats

Re:building the racks first...

[adolf]

I've built a portable rack, of the sort constructed with plastic-laminated ply, aluminum extrusions, stout handles and locking hasps. It was a reasonably fun project. I'll not do it again.

First, it was more expensive to buy a pile of parts than to purchase the same parts pre-assembled from Starcase, Anvil, or their kin.

Second, I had to put it together myself, excluding a not-insignificant amount of my life from other -- potentially more-fruitful -- ventures.

Third, Starcase-and-friends have the process down to a science. While I was futzing around trying to decide which type of pop rivet to use and fighting with bad tools and imperfect measurements, the professional box-builders would've been feeding stock through purpose-built jigs and making perfect components the first time around. They've got better assembly methods, better tooling, and better materials such as real, solid, steel rivets instead of hollow, aluminum pop rivets.

Another example of nearly-unavoidable material differences:

I used 1mm ABS plastic as an outer layer, laminated with contact cement, while the standard road case is covered in hard vacuum-laminated fiberglass. Why? Though these fiberglass laminates are readily available to us lay-folk, shipping 4x8 sheets of anything around the country involves freight charges such that the project would've been impossible to complete. Thin ABS can be rolled up and shipped UPS relatively cheaply, and applied to locally-sourced ply.)

So, don't build a rack, kids. Even if it seems like a good idea. It's cheaper, better, and faster to have a custom box built by someone who does it for a living than to go at it yourself.

Re:My planned tech hardware

[williwilli]

I figured it would be the topmost piece of hardware in the rack, so it wouldn't have to be on rails but can still remain horizontal.