Yeah, it depends, BUT...
- I like all of the connections on the front OR the back, not both. That way when the show is done you can unhook everything and easily roll the racks out of the way while the cables are being pulled up. Also, it makes it easier to roll in a replacement rack if it comes to that. Also also, what everyone else said about putting a rack near a wall, etc.
- Put the connections at the bottom of the rack. It looks cleaner and it doesn't put strain on the connectors. If you can't bend down to make 4-12 connections (or hire someone to do it) you're in the wrong line of work in the first place.
- While we're at it, there a lots of good solutions for captive lids that don't make racks much bigger or heavier. Mac mentioned the clamshell racks, for instance. You don't have to buy a $2,500 R&R rack to avoid a mountain of rack lids. It takes forever to matchup a couple dozen rack lids with 4 butterfly latches per, and it wears racks out too quickly to mix and match wrong lids, even on a good case, all the worse with a cheap one. It might not be ALL about the out, but it should at least be a consideration.
While some of that doesn't apply to some of the little guys following along, when you're doing shows with a dozen or so amp racks it does start to matter. Every big company that does these kind of logistics badly does them because they started inefficient practices when they were smaller and got stuck once it became too labor or time intensive to change it once they grew. Everybody should design infrastructure for where you want to be.
Just my $0.02,
thomas d.
+100, it is a general sentiment that I over engineer our designs and use too good a gig for the level gigs we are doing. I don't want to have buy this stuff twice so for anything that will travel upward in our line up is bought/wired/managed for where we want to be in the future. Anything that will play the same roll in he future is simply bought as best in that segment, will exceed customer expectations and is best in class.
If you are in the game for the long run you account for this in your capital plan.
