Turtlerock Forum

Long cables and a tiny hole through the wall, put the drives on the other side of the wall...that's what I did, dead quite.

As with Andy's suggestion, if it makes noise, put it in another room... Machine room for noisy bits, Studio for quiet bits. There are some reasonably priced KVM extenders/switches available these days,($150,check Ebay) you could put both PCs in the Noisy room with an extender on a switch and flick between the 2 (or more).
Taking this to extremes, we sit KVM dongles on all On Air machines , console controllers, core-routers etc and via IP remote can look at/control any screen from anywhere with an internet connection. It is fun feaking out the kid on the mid-dawn news shift when you "remote In" and type "wake up Neo" on the screen at 2 in the morning

ditto on kvm extender

[quote="Alastair Reynolds"]It is fun feaking out the kid on the mid-dawn news shift when you "remote In" and type "wake up Neo" on the screen at 2 in the morning[/quote]

Hahahaha!!!!! Thats friggin great

The hole in the wall is a great idea, but that would mean I put my PCs and power supplies outside

.... so I'm going with the homemade soundproof box option - 2 PCs in one box and 2 power supplies in another...... I'm thinking sandwich timber (like a door) and insulation inside and underneath....

Don't forget you will need to factor in cooling/ventilation. Esp if you put 2 machines in the one box.

Basically you need a lightly insulated box with front-back airflow. If you use large low speed fans they are very quiet. Silent isn't possible but it should be reasonably easy to get quiet enough that you won't hear it most of the time.

If you're a bit experimental you can try water cooling your computer There are lots if web sites dedicated to quietening computers, from simple tips and tricks right through to exotic cooling solutions.

Click me!

Hi Angus

Just found your post while trawling the Turtlerock Forum.

Somewhere in my archives I have a design I did for Ch 9 many years ago for a dual rack cabinet designed to house a variety of equipment such as betacams, umatics, dats and pc's.

If I remember correctly it had glass doors with Raven door seals and a15cm ducted aircon split from the room airconditioning. I think there may have also been an inline 15cm duct fan on the supply and return wired in series so that the fans ran at half speed... less noise. The heated air was ducted out of the top of the cabinet and fresh air entered at the bottom of the cabinet on the opposite side. As I remember there was never a problem with equipment overheating and no complaints from the engineer about equipment noise.

This may be overkill for your situation.

If I can find the drawing I'll upload it or email it to you... does the Turtlerock forum have a place for uploading and storing files?

Cheers

Greg Hooke

Another quick, cheap, easy method to reduce your PC noise is to use one of those cheap yoga mats - like a himalaya mat but only about 1/8" thick from the "$2 shops".

I cut one into pieces and glued them to the inside of each of the side covers of my DAW PCs. As it's very thin it doesn't foul with the works inside and it doesn't cover the air vents either.

$12 did 2 PCs and the leftover piece works as dividers in my traps bag

Hi Angus

You'll have to wait a few weeks as I'm away from home at the moment and those plans were drawn on earlier CAD system that I'm no longer using, so I'll have to find the hard copy and scan it for you. If you can wait that long I'll definitely get them to you.

Cheers

Greg Hooke

I knew a guy that made his own computer enclosure (computer coffin), told him not to put it in there, but he did and ..............

What about quiet fans and solid state HD's, can build very very quiet computers these days, not sure if the SSHDD's are fast enough for recording though, hav'nt read up on the new ones. But I'm going to build a new computer soon and will be looking into it.

SSD = MUCH faster than HDD.
As I said earlier in the thread, it is possible to build a silent computer. There are companies that specialise in supplying parts to do so.
Having said that though, how bloody loud is your computer? Once I get music playing I don't hear mine at all, it's just a bog standard HP under the table (not touching the table though, it hums!)

heathen wrote:I knew a guy that made his own computer enclosure (computer coffin), told him not to put it in there, but he did and ..............

What about quiet fans and solid state HD's, can build very very quiet computers these days, not sure if the SSHDD's are fast enough for recording though, hav'nt read up on the new ones. But I'm going to build a new computer soon and will be looking into it.

Yeah I'm using a G.SKill Falcon 256GB in my Macbook Unibody (not pro). SSD's leave HD's way, way back. Unless you build a really killer RAID system etc.

If my memory serves me correctly it's something like:
265 MB/s read
190MB/s write

But, the difference is amazing.

I needed that fast read speed for virtual instruments. Things like running BFD2 at 40 sample size buffer for minimum latency. I can also run BFD2 with lots of LA Scoring Strings instances etc.

A dramatic improvement in performance. Kinda like upgrading your CPU.

I run my full system, sample libraries and record to the one 256GB SSD. Cost me $800 though, but I believe they're coming down.

Oh, if you want to run your system off it, a 64MB buffer is essential.

They are much cheaper and much faster now i believe Dwayne.