I have a music studio here in my home, for my own personal use. It's fairly common for high-end studio hardware such as signal processors, and synthesisers to be made in rack-mountable format. At some point I figured I could save some desk space by building a studio PC in a 2U rack mounted case. This meant I could keep it directly together with the rack-mounted power conditioner, audio, and MIDI interfaces that it connects to. I figured this was hitting a studio ergonomics home run, as the heart of my studio now fits in 5U of rack space. As the years have gone on, I've found it less and less convenient to build my studio around a bulky 19" rack. These days I'm looking at ways to shrink this setup further. Less and less mid-range hardware is rack mounted these days too. I'm not about to get rid of my setup anytime soon, but I won't be building another one like it when it comes time to upgrade.

In the home studio world this kind of setup is much more common. I think a lot of people are attracted to the aesthetic of rack-mounted studio gear. I know I definitely am. I personally don't find this setup as ergonomic as desktop modules though. I think manufacturers are coming to the same conclusion.