I love the look of your graphite unit. Black and silver would work as well imo. My thoughts on the front panel FWTW.

1) I hate the idea of a touch screen LCD, but a larger 5" LCD for displaying information would be great. Along that line, on the display, I would have all line level inputs be relabelable. After all one person's CD is another person's Squeezebox and a third's Media Center PC.

2) I would get rid of the glowing LCD on the standby button and go with an unlit power button. Conversely I love the lcd indicator on the volume knob like in your first drawings.

3) I would either eliminate the glowing LCD that the RR2150 has on the tone button, reverse it so it is off if the tone controls are out of the loop, or make it a selectable option. Better yet replace it with a number for a configuration option after tuning the hopefully included full range eq.