What's Your Approach to Dressing Rack Cables?


Just pretend for a minute that you have many different manufacturers, chassis sizes and AV cable formats and lengths and you need to keep AC cabling & power conditioner away from all of the AV cables- HDMI, coax, optical, speaker level and line level interconnects... How do you approach setting up and dressing an empty rack?
128x128psarahtonen
La Perla - power cords
Carine Gilson - speaker cables
Guia La Bruna - analog interconnects
Bordelle - digital cables

If you are on a budget La Perla (for everything) offers the best bang for the buck.

DeKay

So many variables.

In a typical vertical stack, it will depend on where the connectors are on each of the components.  There's no standard, for instance, as to whether input for A/C is on the left, right, or middle.  If the components are closely stacked, there's little you can do...

Yes, I am more interested in methodology, like starting with all AC going to one side and then..., versus the brands and models one has or recommends.

Thanks TLE.  That's discouraging. 
Some simple rules

1) Place the components with cable dressing in mind -- in particular pay attention to location of power cord inputs relative to your wall plugs or conditioner so you won’t need awkward turns

2) Install power cables first. Mine are all so stiff that you really have no choice in where they go. If needed something like the Furutech NFC footers can prevent weight causing cables to pull out

3) Dress interconnects trying to cross power cables at 90 degrees wherever possible, but don’t obsess about this (see below)

4) More importantly never let the interconnect cables touch the floor and use hooks in the wall and natural (wool or silk) ties to suspend the cables off the wall and get soft drapes that will isolate the cables from the effects of airborne and wall borne resonances. In all cases never allow cables to form loops

Frankly if the cables are adequately shielded I have found any effect of interference from power cords to be insignificant compared with the effects of acoustic resonance on interconnects so my dressing arrangements are more concerned with the latter. The one exception is low level signals (phono->SUT->phono stage) where you can get hum pickup -- again use the wall ties to move the cables away from the power cords. I have one long PC run to my pre-amp with interconnects in parallel. I run the PC at 1’ off the ground (on its own set of wall ties) and the interconnects at 3’ off the ground.
like starting with all AC going to one side and then...,
by the way -- one thing never to do (but is common in AV installations) is to bundle cables together (e.g, all interconnects down one side for example). Bundling interconnects magnifies the problems of vibration borne interference and is a big and very audible no no in a high resolution two channel system. In complex AV setups with many more cables it may be a cost worth living with but in two channel keep the cables loose and floating free of one another


It also helps to keep interconnects a length no longer than absolutely necessary. I have a few 0.5m lengths for that very reason.