New option, 19" racks!

Dear all,
I would like to do a request to the creators of this amazing site.
What about a new option after modulars and pedal, the 19" racks, so we can plan and share our studios and how we integrate outboards in our productions and workflow.
I'm sure there could be a lot of people interested in it, from who use vintage gear to who use more updated versions of outboard as well as mixers, converters and so on.
It could be an interesting feature for this site? or I'm the only one interested?

Let me know what you think and maybe the great people behind modulargrid will take this in considerations.

Cheers!

Let the bass be with you!

Yes please

I'd like put this discussion up.
Anybody that could be interested in this option?

I am afraid that sharing my personal opinion that I don't see that much use in this feature seems not to be very helpful at first glance as people have different needs and wants and views and so on. Though I'd like to say it anyway for some reasons.

One is, that I find that planing a modular system is way more complicated than planing a 19" rack due to the lack of standards for module sizes, the sometimes cumbersometopic of power consumption and the complextiy of modular systems, like how many VCA's one would need and if there are enough modulation sources than. Ups, no room for oscillators anymore...

A second thought is that I am not sure if people really plan their 19" rack in that way? At least it is easier because devices usually only differ in a minor amount of Heigth Units and mostly are designed as independent entities.

So why do I bother about something I am not interesting in? Basically because I am a bit afraid that it will consume a lot of work that would be better invested in maintaining the current state and my personal impression in other situations was, that when an idea is worded in a community and just a few people love it, things get momentum, things get more and more complicated, like troublesome and expensive to maintain and only a few people are actually using it but of course the majority of people would not participates with their views to prevent sounding negative.

As long as I open racks and suddenly modules are missing which I might find beneath other modules later, I would prefer prioritizing maintance over extension.

This came up in another thread a few months back. And I can tell you right now, the answer will be "no".

The reason it's "no" has to do with the sheer amount of 19" rack gear that's been part of recording all the way back into the late 1930s. You'd have to find images and specs for things such as the Collins 26C, Federal AM-864, Cinema Engineering 4031-B, RCA BE-1A...the list goes on and on, really, and that's without ever getting past the late 1950s. In fact, you'd wind up with a database that would rival the Eurorack modules for sheer size. And then, what would you do about fractional rack devices...things that take up LESS than 1U of rackspace? I use a number of these (several halfrack Boss units, 1/3rd-rack Alesis Microverb IIs, etc), and they're not necessarily "unusual" pieces of gear. And then, what about classic outboard devices that DON'T fit into a rack normally, such as the Roland Space Echo/Chorus Echo aside of the RE-555, which was the only one intended to be rack mounted. So there's that, as well...where do you stop, exactly?

This is one of those "can of worms" things...if the site developers did this, it would massively expand the data storage requirements for the site, and add a huge additional maintenance headache. I'm not saying that it's not a good idea, mind you...I DO think something like that IS needed, but right now the MG crew has loads on their plates, so it won't be here, more than likely.

Well there are lots of guitar pedals missing from that section too, but it's still a feature. 19" for planning racks would be nice.. but in the short term I mainly want it for use cases such as BARP 2600 racked in 19" next to 19" 84HP eurorack cases that will interpatch with each other.. so if width is 84HP (or 168HP) then allowing a blank X U gap and letting us upload a custom image to fit in that gap would be better than nothing for now