How to size your stereo cabinet. 

3 choices start the sizing of your stereo cabinet.

Budget....Size....and Style

Budget will determine how your cabinet is made. 

Particle board with laminate will be lowest price. It's a good starting point if money is tight. Particle board is not a structural material (It doesn't have an ICBO number!). Consider it a single use. If you're careful with your set up it will look good. Just be aware shelves will warp with weight, it chips easily, doesn't hold a screw, and when you move it's quite likely to fall apart. So consider particle board a one time solution. Sauder is the uber source.

Plywood with real wood veneer is a different story. It's absolutely the strongest way to build a cabinet. The ply layers are at 90 degrees to each other for strength and stability. A great stable surface to bond a veneer to that won't expand and crack. (Louis the 14th antique cabinetry was handmade plywood with glue made from melted horse hooves and gorgeous hand scraped marquetry...still as good as ever in a museum near you!) A wood veneer is an efficient use of solid hardwood, which is a scarce resource. An added benefit is it's light weight, which will save you shipping charges. deciBel Designs makes excellent home theater cabinets

Solid wood will be the most expensive and slightly harder to find. A properly made cabinet won't expand and crack. Take a close look at the joinery before you buy. You want to see dowels or dovetail joints, glue blocks and screws. It needs to be sound and workmanlike. Solid wood moves, expands and contracts with the weather. So the joinery needs to be suitable to allow this movement. Clear Creek offers Amish crafted furniture from several builders.

Metal and glass is often seen as the open rack with shelves of glass and tubes separating the levels. Two things to consider is you'll need to dust frequently, and for those of you with golden ears the surfaces are a hard acoustically reflective surface. (Your high notes will be sharper.)

There's no limit on what you can find in steel and glass. This type of audio cabinet will be in the top price range, but it will balance your cost by having a very long service life

Budget isn't just about buying your cabinet. There's shipping to consider, or transport if you buy it locally. And the extra setup to get it situated in your home properly. 

With shipping if the stereo cabinet is of any size there is weight (It's a heavy!) to consider, an oversize package carries an additional charge from the shipper. A local purchase needs to be brought home. Maybe local store delivery, or rent/borrow a truck if your cabinet's large.

Setup can be you and a friend, or professionals you pay to assemble the cabinet. And then there's setting up the electronics of your system. A technician from Best Buy Geek Squad can get your entertainment center running flawlessly.When you pick up a remote you want it to work, right?

Size is driven by how big you think your sound system will get. What electronics you have now and what you might get. Will it also be a gaming center? Will you store your music collection in it as well? And of course budget plays a big part here.

Style

What's your living space like? If it's tight you want to go vertical;

Small footprint, efficient, stores a lot of components or media.

For a widescreen Tv you can go low and wide;

Fits nicely below a window or sofa. Space for plenty of components depending on how wide of a cabinet you buy. Some have a center space under the Tv for center channel speakers. Some have drawers which might prove to be a favorite way to organize a media collection.

If you have the space and inclination a complete wall system can not only store your sound system and media collection but even give you room for a print library and some of your artwork.

Cabinetmakers love wall systems. The skies the limit on how simple or complicated you want your shelving to be. You can even go so far as to have a wet bar and kichenette built in.

So you can see that there is a wide range of choices for housing and displaying your audio components and media collection. It is just a simple matter of personal taste. Big or small. On display, or hidden.

But for goodness sake do set up some sort of entertainment center. It will give you hours of enjoyment, and it's legal!