Stereo Racks and Stands
Buy the best stereo racks and stands selected and recommended by interior designers. By Caroline Patterson.
A stylish audio rack and stereo stand can set the tone in a music room, adding to the relaxed vibe you need to unwind. It also provides you with a safe and secure place to store your precious stereo equipment. A solid rack can reduce vibration levels when playing loud music, prevent distortion, and improve overall sound quality. If you’re struggling to find the right stereo stands for sale, here is a comprehensive list of the best racks and stands in various styles and price points.
Stereo Racks and Stands
Buying Guide
Caroline Patterson
Interior Design Expert
Caroline is a young, New York-based interior designer and home decor writer, obsessed with textiles and designer furniture. Backed with rigorous training from a prestigious design school, as well as a profound understanding of material quality and fabric care, she offers spot-on advice on how to furnish your place with reliable, functional, and aesthetically pleasing pieces.
Stereo racks and stands are a way of protecting your audio equipment, but they can also be an attractive part of your living room, family room or den. Ranging from purely utilitarian metal shelving right on up through cabinets made of rich wood and glass, they are an essential part of any good sound system.
A good stereo stand or rack is likely to have holes at the back of the cabinet for power cables, or for cables to run to speakers or sound pickups located in other parts of the house. This keeps the wiring both out of sight and out from underfoot, where it might be damaged.
Sound systems inherently have a lot of wires, cables and connections – unless you are using a wireless set up. Even with wireless, there are a lot of parts – they just don’t have as many trailing cords and cables. They also often have stodgy little metal boxes that contain the parts. It’s not that they are precisely unattractive, but more than that, they are utilitarian instead of decorative.
Your sound system could be a simple setup with a player, and a pair of speakers, or it might be a much more complex system that allows for quadrophonic or surround sound. It might incorporate one of the voice-activated digital assistants or be part of your smart house system.
A cabinet for your sound system can be a lot more than a simple metal rack from the local hardware or department store. It can have glass fronted doors to help keep the dust out of your equipment, a polished wood or faux wood exterior – light or dark, your choice, or it can even be a modern affair made of glass and chrome.
Even a simple rack can be made attractive by using chrome and finished wood to create the frame and the shelving, or by having the shelves arranged in an unusual way, such as a bentwood shelving unit.
Consider the type of furnishings in the room where you will place the cabinet. Will a spare shelving unit fit better with your style, or would a hefty, walnut cabinet be more in keeping with the rest of the room? Let your personal style guide your choice.
When selecting your stereo rack or stand, think about your stereo equipment and how much space it is likely to consume. Then consider the amount of available floor space in your living room, den or study. How big a cabinet will fit within your floor plan?
If you have a little extra room beyond your immediate needs, it doesn’t hurt to plan a little extra storage space for your sound collection. Of course, if you have serious space constraints, you might consider converting your sound collection to digital (there are legitimate services and ways to do this without copyright violations) and store the physical media. Cloud storage can offer amazing accessibility without sacrificing choice.