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Why put your gear on the floor?

Tapehead47

Tapehead47

Addicted Member
I just don't get it. Seems like some kinda trendy thing with audiophiles setting their amps and preamps, even turntables, on the floor between the speakers :scratch2::scratch2::scratch2:

Okay, speakers on the floor, no problem. Putting a turntable down on carpet? Why would you ever do that? Doesn't bending over and having the blood rush to your head while changing vinyl present a problem? And carpet fibers all over the lp.

And air circulation beneath the gear? What's the secret of that?

As you can see I like my schtuff in a rack with the turntable and cd player at a convenient level. Maybe the floor-level listeners prefer the prone position? It's so difficult to change records propped up on your elbows. Or is it for the exercise? Like doing deep knee bends or pushups to adjust the volume, or a sit-up to get to the record cabinet?

I just gotta scratch my head....:D
 
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I dunno- I have a dog and a cat... all kinds of potential there. Also I'm tall;the ground is a long way down and I HATE stubbing my toe. It is invariably the pinkie-toe that gets stubbed and then spontaneously aborts the entire nail after it turns purple. That's more than anyone wanted to know, but them's the facts.
 
dosmalo said:
It's all about the head rush:smoke:
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Ya know, I secretly thought that. These stereo-heads get off in any way possible.....

Ths364 said:
I dunno- I have a dog and a cat... all kinds of potential there. Also I'm tall;the ground is a long way down and I HATE stubbing my toe. It is invariably the pinkie-toe that gets stubbed and then spontaneously aborts the entire nail after it turns purple. That's more than anyone wanted to know, but them's the facts.
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In my experience I've learned that cats LOVE turntables. And don't even care who the manufacturer is! A Rega, a Pioneer, Dual, they'll lay on it with impunity.

And, hey, the pinkie-toe syndrome has both my feet in casts. It's important to remember where the gear is when you get up in the middle of the night. And once I tripped over my dog in the dark and fell on my turntable. Which woke up my cat. It was hard to stand up with my casts, too.

that's why I use shelves now.:yes:

Edit: and I don't know if my nails are gone until the casts are removed....
 
When i see Audio Porn shots with the gear on the carpet like that i scratch my head too. (!?!)
All my stuff is up off the floor/easy access. Given a choice, i would rather higher than lower.
 
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libertycaps said:
When i see Audio Porn shots with the gear on the carpet like that i scratch my head too. (!?!)
All my stuff is up off the floor/easy access. Given a choice, i would rather higher than lower.
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Glad I'm not the only one. We'll get to the bottom of this!
 
I like my gear neatly in racks when possible, with the stuff I use most at easy eye level or slightly above. Turntable's at waist level now, but that's still not too bad.

Only components I put on the floor and actually need to fiddle with often are cart-mounted R2R decks, but those are intended to be there.
 
vinyldavid said:
I like my gear neatly in racks when possible, with the stuff I use most at easy eye level or slightly above. Turntable's at waist level now, but that's still not too bad.

Only components I put on the floor and actually need to fiddle with often are cart-mounted R2R decks, but those are intended to be there.
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Geez, David, I have r2r's too, but it's a pain in my back to thread a tape in that position. And what's a cart-mounted R2R deck? Cart mounted....cart mounted....hmmmmm
 
Tapehead47 said:
Geez, David, I have r2r's too, but it's a pain in my back to thread a tape in that position. And what's a cart-mounted R2R deck? Cart mounted....cart mounted....hmmmmm
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Well...cart-mounted is a catch-all for me for all decks which are about waist height. Some can be put into racks and be much smaller...

...like the Ampex AG-440B:
Ampex%20AG-440's.jpg


And some are just huge, like the Otari MTR-12:
65385428477880767.jpg


Both of which are sitting in storage right now.

I also have an Otari MX-55 which came with a metal cart that was much more minimalist than the 440's, but I soon removed it once I moved to the much smaller place where I live now.
 
I have a power amp on the (hardwood) floor. It was getting too hot under the preamp.

I would like it on a rack, but the floor works too.
 
This exact thread was done about a year ago, but here are some reasons:

Gear between your speakers can screw with your soundstage. Instead of having my gear on the floor I have it all to one side for this reason, but putting it down low gets it out of the way as well.

Many people like to run longer cables from preamps to amps, and shorter speakers cables. If the preamp is on the side (it often is) that leaves the amp in the middle. So why is the amp on the floor....?....well....

...many of these amps are 100+lbs. The Levinson 432 that I had was over 125lbs. It was too big to fit in a rack and I didn't feel like lifting it onto my console-rack anway. The only place it would go was on my short amp stand. And it broke the giant spike off of my amp stand it was so heavy. So it sat close to the floor. Sometimes it was just on a board on the floor, as the board would slide. It was so big and annoying to move that I sold it, and replaced it with a better-sounding amp that weighs less than half of what it weighed. Sometimes this amp is on a low stand, sometimes not. Depends on what speaker cables I'm using, some are short and since my rack is off to the side, it gets put in the middle on a low stand with long RCAs running to it.

Another thing with that amp, it needed a LOT of cooling (as does my smaller Class-A Pass Labs amp). Racks crowded with gear do not offer adequate ventilation for some of these types of amps. The Levinson's convection heat sinks needs basically nothing about it, and little if anything around it, to work adequately. It was a 400wpc amp and it didn't run cool.

People that run mono-blocks especially (and a lot of high dollar stuff involves an amp for each channel) seem to like putting the amps close to the speakers and running as short of speaker-wire as possible.

Also, some people (including myself) just like the look of amps on amps stands. It generally presents less clutter in a room than a big ugly rack. But my room doesn't really allow it so usually everything is in my old mono console that's been re-purposed for stereo gear.

Hope this explains some of it. BTW, my avatar is proof that height does not equal safety from cats.

The final reason is: some people just like it that way. Everybody has different taste. I know I have to remind myself of that when I see a mountain of speakers shoved right up against a wall, speaker that couldn't possibly image or present a soundstage like that, or a preamp sitting right on top of a power amp that needs cooling, leading to the power amp overheating and possibly leading to serious damage, with a turntable on top of both of them for good measure.

I've gotten more use out of the pair of these that I bought than almost any accessory...

 
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I agree with John on the sound stage aspect, while I have my gear up high ATM i did at one point have everything on the floor, on some form of isolation (bamboo breadboards ect'), and the sound staging was better.
Best sound staging I have had in this respect was with it on the floor in an otherwise empty room.
 
Fair enough. Good explanations.
I've got a ~20" deep, ~3.5' tall concrete poured ledge that horseshoe's around three walls of my basement. I put everything (except the subwoofer) on top of the South side ledge facing North. Works pretty well, esp. 15" woofers at chest level.
 
I would think pet hair,dust,crawly insects,drunken friends,children and just a waste of space outweigh the benefits.If the sound stage is an issue put your gear in a rack off to the side.
 
I don't have it on the floor, I have it on a board that is raised an inch off the ground.

Why? There wasn't any space elsewhere. Damn TVs... :p

t8vuhi.jpg
 
Just for clarification, are we talking about putting equipment on the floor or not? That's what I read in the OP, and I've certainly seen more than my fair share of equipment right down on the floor itself.

Putting equipment on stands (even if they're not very tall) is a whole different thing. I'd think many of the negatives of equipment down on the floor are alleviated with stands, even if they're only a few inches tall. Protection from errant shoes and feet, a little distance away from dust and dirt, and quite possibly the difference between 'near miss' vs 'total disaster' for people who have their equipment in the basement and encounter a water leak.

In prior discussions about this, the reason folks put equipment on the floor seemed to be that they thought it looked cool, and because it allowed for shorter wiring runs. I contend it will look just as cool on short stands.
 
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