Welcome to A-V Services

"Your First Choice for Custom Audio and Video"

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This page has been created specifically for cabinet designers, interior decorators, and woodworkers.

Hi there!

The purpose of this page is not to tell you how to do your job; I presume that you already know what you are doing and I've seen some of your work so I know that you have taste as well as creativity.  But I imagine that unless you have worked with a-v companies before, you might just have a few questions for folks like me and you might wonder what you can do in order to coordinate your designs with today's rapid changes in home entertainment.  

Simply put, when I am dealing with a cabinet or an "entertainment center", I have four primary issues or concerns.

These are POWER, ACCESS, VENTILATION, and DEPTH.

Let's go through these one by one, shall we?

I deal in electronic components.  They all require POWER in order to operate.  Televisions, DVD players, CD players, cable boxes, DSS/Satellite Receivers, tape decks, VCRs, and God only knows what might be coming down the road!  

Not only do these components require power, but they are going to be placed into different parts of your cabinet and we must be able to get plenty of clean power to them.   We highly recommend running separate lines for audio and video back to the circuit box and it helps to allow space for a good surge protector/power strip.  The smart designer thinks about outlet location and equipment location when putting together the design for the cabinet.

That leads us into ACCESS!

I am a human being and so far, I've only hired humans to help with the installs.  Our arms can only reach so far and can only bend in certain directions.  Not only must power cables be run from the components to the outlet (or to the surge protector which is then conveniently located by the outlet!), but the various components must also be connected to each other.  

PLEASE think of what contortions are going to be necessary in order to reach and connect the components, and also how cable are going to be routed to and from.

Removable panels on side or rear of the cabinet can make everybody's life easier as can extra wide shelves.

When space is at a premium, consider drilling a 1.5 to 2 inch hole or two near the back of each shelf.  If you're going to go that route, please make sure that there are either two medium-sized holes near each back corner or one giant one near the middle rear.

I think that the best solution is to have rear or side access and  groove the back of the shelf.  We need a slot or groove wide enough to accommodate a number of interconnect cables and power cords, and deep enough to accommodate varying  wire sizes.  

More expensive, but also an excellent solution is the slide-out tray with a groove cut into the back for the cables.  With a slide-out tray, we can install and de-install components very quickly.   As you may wish to point out to your customers, adding trays and access panels might be more expensive up front, but service technicians and custom installers bill by the hour and aren't cheap either!  And keep in mind, now that you've put together this gorgeous cabinet, do you really want US to be drilling holes and looking for ways to fish wire through it?

One other word about access.  Big-screen televisions are heavy!  When designing for big-screen televisions think about adding an inexpensive removable platform that can be placed in front of the cabinet for easy rollout.  A piece like that will earn my gratitude!

Then there's VENTILATION.

All electronic components generate heat.  Some, like receivers, DVD players, and power amplifiers generate a LOT of heat.  Throw a component into a wooden box and turn it on and you have a fine convection oven.  Components react to overheating pretty much the same way that we do.  They shut down. 

Certainly we can add a small fan that will help to circulate the air inside the cabinet, but the hot air has to go somewhere and we would really like to see that heat driven from the cabinet.  That means vents or openings somewhere on or near the top of the cabinet (remember that heat rises) as well as near the bottom to allow cooler air to enter.

Now, how you incorporate these principles into your design is up to you; after all you're the artist!  But if we are going to work together in making our customers happy customers, these issues have to be dealt with.  And it is in the long run less expensive and more beneficial to all of us if they are dealt with in the design or shop stage rather than at the "Help! My system just shut down in the middle of GLADIATOR and all of my friends are leaving the house laughing at me!" stage!

And finally, DEPTH.  Most components are about fifteen inches in depth, but some, such as carrousel cd changers, can be as deep as twenty inches.  Add in some room to accommodate the usual assortment of cabling protruding from the back of the components and twenty-four inches of cabinet depth works out to about right.  Give me plenty of depth (and don't forget to figure the depth that cabinet doors might take away) and room on the sides to move stuff around and you have a friend for life!  AND someone who will be referring customers to you as a designer/woodworker who understands what makes a successful home entertainment center!

PLEASE READ THIS!!!!

It is 6PM on Wednesday and I just returned from a re-installation in which the the cabinet-maker went wrong on all four of the above principles!  The projection TV was a quarter inch too deep for the front panel of the cabinet,  the components were to be located inside a completely enclosed wood structure, access to the gear was severely limited to "from the front only", and there was only one power outlet for the a-v gear.  There was a second outlet, but that was being used by a small refrigerator.  You do not want your a-v gear sharing a power line with appliances that use motors (microwave ovens, refrigerators, etc.).   And worse, the customer had watched a home-remodeling television program over the weekend that covered these exact issues and pointed all of them out to me!  

Unfortunately, I had been hired to de-install the old gear and re-install inside the new cabinet and I had not been brought onto the project until just before the new cabinet was ready to be installed.  Look, folks, I try to be diplomatic and not throw criticism at any of the other trades, but this was like Custer stumbling into five thousand Sioux warriors along the banks of the Little Bighorn.  Needless to say, had I been brought into the project during the planning stage I would have been able to work with  the designer and cabinet-maker to address these issues before they became problems.  

Please don't make the same mistake. Call me as soon as your customer mentions audio or video!  Even if I am not involved in selling or installing the gear to your customer, an hour of my time now can save you hours of your time and numerous headaches down the road! To be blunt, making changes with an eraser is a lot cheaper than with a Saws-all!

Tim Campbell 

7/24/01

Send mail to tcampbel@en.com with questions or comments about this web site.