Hot Damn Boy. Your tearing it up.

If you want to get insane with it, check out [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.ocworkbe…"]ocworkbench.com[/]="http://www.ocworkbe…"]ocworkbench.com[/] for more ideas.

Hope that helps! :)

There's a CHEAP, easy way to do this. It provides excellent cooling and noise reduction. It aint pretty, but it works REAL well...
Materials needed...
*Cardboard box
*Some 1" styrofoam
*Blue plastic picnic cooler ice packs
*Elmers glue
First, find a cardboard box, preferably made of the thick, heavy cardboard, that is just about 4" taller than your tower and wide and deep enough to allow about 10 inches extra around the sides and back when your tower is set inside it. For a G4, a good-sized box would be about 22" high, 28" wide, and 28" deep. Line the bottom and sides of the box with 1" styrofoam, glueing the styrofoam to the cardboard, and also glue styrofoam on the two top flaps that fold down first, leaving about 1 1/8" on the sides and 1 1/8" from the folding crease so that the flaps fold down flat. So, now, you basically have a picnic cooler glued to the inside of a box.
You now need to cut two holes in the box...one in the front, the same size as the front of your tower, and one in the middle of the back, a 4" square to accomodate cables.
Ok, now installation...
Slide your tower in the box through the hole you cut in the front of the case. This will be easy for a plain, squared-off PC case, but more difficult for an odd shaped case or a G4 case. You may have to do a little extra cutting of the cardboard and foam to get it to fit. You may want to remove the handles from a G4 case. The object is to get a good tight fit around the front of the front bezel of your case. Once done, the front panel of the case should be basically flush with the outside of the box.
Next, feed all of your cables through the 4" hole in the back of the box and connect them to your tower.
Now comes the cooling...hehehe. First of all, before you put your ice packs in the freezer, make sure they are dry. When you remove them from the freezer, wipe them off real good with a towel to make sure that no frost or moisture remains on them. For further safety, just in case of the blue plastic case leaking, place the ice packs in good ziplock baggies. Don't skimp and buy the cheap baggies! Put your frozen blue plastic ice packs inside the box along the SIDES of your tower, but not touching it, against the sides of the box . Do not put them along the back of the tower. It's up to you how many ice packs you use, the more the better. Also, you need to have two sets of ice packs, so that one one set is in the freezer while you are using the other. Switch them as necessary.
Now, close the top of the box and let it sit for about ten minutes before you start the computer.
Use the puter for a half hour to an hour, then check the inside of the box ... still cold? If not, you need more ice packs in there. The ice packs should keep it cold for three to four hours with the puter running. Obviously, the drawback with this is that you have to rotate ice pack sets every few hours, from the puter box to the freezer, as long as you're running the puter, but it only takes a few minutes.
So for less than $30 you can super-cool your puter. It keeps your whole case cool, and keeps the air which your fans circulate cool. The styrofoam also deadens the noise to just about zilch, since the only opening in the box is the 4" square in the back. DO NOT seal that hole. You need that hole to accomodate air flow and avoid pressurization which could render your fans less effective.
THAT'S IT. It's a cheap "fix-it" that I learned from one of my guitar students, and he's had absolute success with it for about a year. The only problem that he's had is that one of the ice packs leaked once, that's why you put them in ziplock baggies...that's important. He caught the leak quickly, so the liquid didn't do any damage, but it's a possibility for a problem.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and indeed that was the case here. A 16 year old kid who wanted a better puter to play games bought a big bad Athlon CPU and motherboard, stuck it in his mid tower, and found out that it was hotter than hell and sounded like a wind tunnel. He had just shelled out a lot of money (for a kid), and came up with this cheap solution. It looks funky, but it works.

Thank you Bob Villa!!!
:D

It seems to me that it *should* be easier to just put the computer in another room, and use extension cables. Unfortunately, there are issues relating to doing this, and I'm sure it wouldn't be cheap even if the issues could be addressed. In my case, I would need 2 video, a keyboard, a mouse, *plus* a USB cable for my TASCAM US-428 (I think USB has a finite allowable length...), *plus* I would need to find a way to extend the cable for the Layla interface that I use. This is obviously impractible.

I saw some sound-proof enclosure boxes in a recording mag, but they are pretty pricy...

The only other options that I can see are:

1) to record in another room
2) sound-proof the computer case and use quieter fans (like what Tommy P. described above).
3) Build your own sound-proof enclosure like what SOS describes...It just seems like a pain in the butt to have to use the ice packs...I'm sorry, it just seems too funky! :)

There appears to be a need here to come up with a simple cost-effective enclosure that works for the "average" home studio user without going to the extent (or cost) that the pro boxes go to, yet is a bit more high-tech than a cardboard box with ice packs in it (sorry...no offense SOS!).

I'm going to talk to some engineering friends of mine and see what I can come up with...anyone else got any ideas or want to finance a small start-up company? :)

DH

Well...if you look on my website one of the features on the Computing section is coming soon is custom DAW enclosures!! I have a few ideas and would like to sometime soon start it indefinately...if anyone is interested lets start something...I think it would be a hot commodity indeed!!
Gary@OpusAudioProjects.Net

Yup, I know "the box" is sorta funky, but I think it's pretty amazing that a 16 year old came up with such a cheap, successful solution. Granted, it's ugly and the ice packs are probably a bit of a bother, but ya gotta give the kid credit...the damn thing works!

I haven't personally used the stuff for a computer yet, but Dynamat http://www.dynamat.com is some pretty amazing stuff for getting rid of vibrations. they even have a little flash movie for this type of application.

just my 2c

1) Buy $59 dorm-room style refrigerator bigger than your computer tower.

2) Cut one hole off to the side of the door the same size as your tower's front panel

3) Cut an additional hole over towards the other side about 4" square (like SOS' student's box, but in the front).

4) Pull a trash bag (or two) bottom first through the big hole until one of the bottom corners is coming out the little hole. Snip a hole in that bottom corner

5) Tape the edges of the bag to the edges of the two holes, so you have a big plastic tube starting at one hole and coming out the other.

6) Stick a bunch of those silicon absorbent packages in the back of the bag.

7) Pull your computer cables through from the big hole out the little hole, and stick the tower in the big hole as far as you can- flush, if you bought the right refrigerator. Plug in and rock.

I have no idea if this would work, but it seems workable. You could probably put the whole assembly inside *another* box if you still hear too much noise.

I think it's still worth trying to get a computer into another room- it doesn't really have to be that far away- if you're near a wall, you could arrange the computer just on the other side of the wall, and you'd probably only need 6 or 8 feet of cable, which should work for anything. If you're on a second floor, and you're above a room where this is feasible, you could create a little built in cabinet downstairs that was right up against the ceiling, and again, you'd only need 6-8' of cable.

I believe computers should run as quiet as high-end sound gear, especially when they're being used as high-end sound gear!

So far the ideas and concepts that we've come up with are very good:

Soundproofing
Lower noise ball bearing fans
Remote location of main unit
Box within a cooled box(that 16yr old gets an "A")
Put it in the fridge(condensation?)

Heres some more stuff.

First VIA makes a C3 CPU that fits in a socket370 motherboard, requires no fan, just a passive heatsink. At 800Mhz its about $54, is dog slow(no offence to anyones dog), and its VIA, (they are on my personal blacklist for the damn 686B southbridge and lackluster PCI and subsystem bandwidth in all products except the ENVY24 sound chip and they bought that company).So scratch that for me at the moment.

Seagate and Maxtor drives both in IDE and SCSI flavors are the quietest around with IDE being quieter than SCSI.

Water cooling. Anyone here tried it yet? Also Peltier cooling.

I think a combination of a lot of things will add up to one quieter computer.

This is an interesting point. Computers built to be high end sound gear really aren't the problem- at the high end, we'd all have the state of the art cooling and quieting rigs, and the couple extra grand would just be the price of admission.

None of us are talking about the 'Vintage Neve mic preamp of computer setups,' exactly- we're all trying to get bang for the buck with comparatively cheap gear. That's what makes it interesting! Anyone can spend a couple grand and get a great sounding mic pre, but it's a different road to buy a Bellari and hack it into quality sound!

Originally posted by Tommy P.:
I believe computers should run as quiet as high-end sound gear, especially when they're being used as high-end sound gear!
.

oh boy,

now I'm all psyched about the ASUS A7M266-D. I've done a bit of reading into this great mobo.

One interesting thing I found, is that it doesn't come with onboard USB (they had problems with stability) so a 4 port USB 2.0 PCI card is included with the motherboard. I wanted to know if this pci card has support for internal USB. I sent off an email to ASUS on this issue, as I couldn't find this information elswhere. Note USB 2.0 is backwards compatable.

This may be common knowledge to most of you, but I have read that you can use a single ADM MP processor at a time. This is cool because, now I can go over-budget, without going WAAAAY over-budget - then when the Visa bill gets a little friendlier I can add another MP, heat sink, fan etc.

oops,

a7m266d post was for a different thread. I'm all cracked out from benchmark reading. sorry, blargh...

Originally posted by Tommy P.:
I believe computers should run as quiet as high-end sound gear, especially when they're being used as high-end sound gear!

You're my man, Tommy! My current PC DAW is a studio-only rig, and lives in my machine room, otherwise known as the closet under the stairs. All it took was some high-quality video, keyboard, and mouse cables.

But now I'm planning to build a rack-mount rig for location recording. The trouble is, the machine will often be sitting within arm's reach, because I'm crammed into a dressing room or projection booth. This rig must be very quiet! I'm doing classical recording, and I need to hear if a bus goes by during the take or a stage light clicks. Is this at all possible?

So far, the only rack-mount cases I've seen seem to be designed for server use, and they sound like industrial vacuum cleaners. I'd willingly pay a premium for something better, if I could find it. Large soundproofed racks and whatnot are simply not an option here.

So far the ideas and concepts that we've come up with are very good:

Soundproofing
Lower noise ball bearing fans
Remote location of main unit
Box within a cooled box(that 16yr old gets an "A")
Put it in the fridge(condensation?)

You folks have probably seen some of the "quiet" studio racks with special fan plenums. A local room has a ProTools rig installed in one of these, and my opinion is that the rig is
still too noisy to be in a control room. But I saw an interesting line of racks at AES that use nofans! Instead they use heatpipes connecting to large heatsinks on the back or top of the rack. The size and weight of these means they won't work for me, but perhaps they'd be of interest to some of you. Here's the link: [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.norenpro…"]AcoustiLock[/]="http://www.norenpro…"]AcoustiLock[/].

David L. Rick
Seventh String Recording

I just found a site that offers cables and such for remote operation of a PC or a Mac. For me, I would have to keep my Layla breakout box with the PC (in a closet or another room?), but everything else could be kept in the studio.

Check 'em out:

http://www.gefen.com

DH

I've been using a Koolance watercooled case for about a year now with A7M266, 1.4Ghz and it is very quiet. With the new .13micron CPUs coming out from AMD we should be able to virtually run silent.
Rumors are that up to 1Ghz they won't even need a fan over the heatsink. VIA and Intel haved released the first ones and AMD should be soon to follow. Would be ideal to be able to run as quiet as those iMacs.
Allen :)

Let me see if I understand this correctly Allen...

These water-cooled cases don't provide any sound-proofing per se, but rather provide a cool environment for systems that don't use fans? So if I stuck my noisy fan-laden system stuck inside one of these cases, it would still be noisy (but cool!), is that correct???

DH

Laden? Are you swearing in here?!! lol
Give that man a cigar...cooling case plus noisy fan=noisy cool case...lmao!!
I saw at the Namm show a very cool sound proof box for computers but the friggent thing was huge!! I asked about smaller systems but he said then it would be too expensive at that point..it works by some metal rod technology and fan circulation..the guy pretty much attacked me as I was walking by to show me the product!! lol
Nice design but way too big for my needs. Unless I had two computers to shove in it side by side..thats how big it was!!!
Opus

Here's another kewl cooling system...
Toms Hardware

David, those heat pipe cooled rack cases with "Custom-tuned acoustic labyrinth cooling" [="http://www.norenproducts.com/acoustilock/AcoustiLockpage.html"]AcoustiLock[/]="http://www.norenpro…"]AcoustiLock[/]are cutting edge. So I did a search and found someone who built a homemade heat pipe in a server case, [[url=http://="http://www.benchtes…"]benchtest.com[/]="http://www.benchtes…"]benchtest.com[/]. There must be a way to get this technology into an affordable, mobile home-done rig.

Anyway, I did a search for "quiet" at [="http://forums.anandtech.com/index.cfm"]Anandtech forums[/]="http://forums.anand…"]Anandtech forums[/] and found out about the software utility for making Maxtor drives run even quieter than they already are [[url=http://="http://www.maxtor.c…"]Advanced Utility for Acoustic Management of the following Maxtor hard drive families[/]="http://www.maxtor.c…"]Advanced Utility for Acoustic Management of the following Maxtor hard drive families[/].

So far out of this:

Soundproofing
Lower noise ball bearing fans(pabst, panaflo)
Remote location of main unit
Box within a cooled box(that 16yr old gets an "A")
Put it in the fridge(need a good condensation workaround)
Kryotech(they have temporarily stopped production)
Water cooling
Artic Silver heatsink compound
Fan control devices(slow em down a little)
Heat pipe fanless racks(a modest economical, portable version would be great if they would make one!)
Large flower heatsink by[="http://www.zalmantech.com/CNPS-3100G%2B.html"]Zalmon[/]="http://www.zalmante…"]Zalmon[/] that has a "silent mode" measured at
20d/BA . The review of it at[[url=http://="http://www.icrontic…"]Icrontic.com[/]="http://www.icrontic…"]Icrontic.com[/]
I may put something together in a few weeks.

I've been leaning towards some kind of portable rack that would be the cooled box within a box(with something other than ice packs for cooling) using my old Rackcrate or a lightweight aluminum frame and some layers of 1/2" wallboard and acoustic foam surrounding it (wish I had the expertise for the heatpipe). The UPS can go in the garage (its an old Exide Powerware unit thats loud as hell).

Tommy P.

The Koolance case cools the CPU without the use of a fan over the heatsink, so it eliminates the loud CPU fan/heatsink units and super cools the CPU to around 84F. The fans over the radiator are adjustable and I recommend using Enermax Whisper fans in the case that can be adjusted manually. Also the Enermax low noise and no noise PSU are great. There are about 5 Pro Tools LE users using these cases and loving them. http://www.koolance.com
Allen

DoubleHelix, how short is your Layla cable ? Mine came with a 15 footer, if yours isn't that long you could order one from Echo - If I remember, that is the longest they recommended at the time I bought mine.

Here's my $.02 worth - later when I get drawings done I'll try to convert them to something people without CAD programs can look at. Probably upload them to ProRec's site, if they let me. Haven't found another site of this type that lets you do that. If they allow it, I'll also upload the spreadsheet I wrote a few years ago for charting the axial modes of a rectangular room. Handy for a couple of things.

On the subject of quiet - First, I will build a box for outside the control room - base will sit about 18" off the floor (cement slab, control room will be floated on slab inside shell building.) box will be open on the bottom, except for steel mesh for equipment to sit on (rubber pads between mesh and case) There will be channel under the mesh bottom for two 20"x20" Hepa style furnace filters (20"x40" total surface area for intake.) two computers will sit beside each other equally spaced on one end of the box, with their fronts toward one end. Both ends will have a full access door (3/4 ply)with foam camper tape gasket all around, piano hinged, padlocked (just in case) - other end of the box (remember, at least 20x40 inside) will house 1.5KW Equitech balanced power, Smart UPS2200, and extender modules (right now, looks like Belkin Cat5 Extender) - Then, above the gear will be another expanded steel mesh (security, small animals, bigger chunks ) the sides of the box will come up almost to a point in the center (think gable roof house with a 12" wide flat ridge) Then, where the "shingles" would go, will be two 20" window fans blowing up and out. There will be a flat "roof" over the fans, to keep chunks and birds out, should one ever find its way into the outer shell building. This will fasten to the 12" wide flat "ridge". All pieces of this will be isolated from the building with neoprene and foam, to prevent structure borne noise from entering the studio rooms. The fans will be on a cheap baseboard heat thermostat, fed to a double pole double throw relay to reverse the action to cooling mode. (cheaper than buying an AC thermostat which is usually 24 volt, then a power supply to run it, yada yada...)The other reason for doing it this way is called "failsafe" operation. If the relay fails, the fans will go to high speed, not turn off. (And relays DO fail, guaranteed) I plan right now for 2, maybe 3 cabling baffles between this box and the room - One for power, one for audio if I have any that gets that close to the 'puters, and 1 for Midi/WC/DigAud, etc. Talk about your shitty ideas - these pass-thru's will be 3" or 4" ABS sewer pipe and fittings - you can get all this at Home Depot; short piece of pipe epoxied into a hole in the side of the cooler box, then a rubber "coupler" normally used to repair sewer lines,(used here for vibration isolation) then to a 90 degree elbow, piece of pipe long enough to reach thru the wall plus at least 2", then another elbow, really short pipe (2-3"), elbow, maybe 6" piece of pipe. Reason for the large pipe is so you can fish computer cables with humongous connectors on them thru the maze. If you were a mouse marching thru this maze, you would come out of the cooler thru the pipe, take a left, 2 steps, right, thru the wall (inside the pipe) then another right, 2 steps, a left, and be going the way you originally started (meaning perpendicular to the wall) the pipe thru the wall will have to be caulked with the super 10,000 year guaranteed silicon so it won't crack until even your ashes don't care, then after all cables are in place you reach in as far as you can on both ends and stuff soft foam around the wires, then do it again near each end. If you have cats, as I do, and they would be able to get to the pass-thru,get caps for the outer ends, and cut just enough of a slot from the side to the middle to accomodate the wires. Put the caps on after all wires and foam are in place. I know my cats well enough to know they love digging foam out of anything they can get to. (also, need to line the pipe with glued in foam at least near bends, for absorption to further minimise sound leakage. Do this before gluing everything up.) This plan gives you 4 90's for the sound to get by, and with 4 "dams" and lining it should be pretty quiet. I have at least 15' cables for everything that needs to be exiled "to ze cooler, Hans", so I should be able to get everything to reach to the mix position of the control room ok. Any removable drives will be firewire, and go IN the studio. (CD-RW, DVD-RW, client drives) All projects will be mixed to internal IDE's (4 in raid 0+1, 1 "scratchpad") then copied to firewire drives as needed. If this transfer proves to be too slow, I'll put the firewire HD's outside and use them during the mix instead of after.

Oh, yeah - this was a "quiet" thread, not a DAW thread - Sorry. Well, part of it was about quiet... Steve

I'm not sure what can be done to make your existing computer quiet. I have been researching a new computer that is designed to be quiet and is rack mountable. I found one that is also made just for the audio field. You can even buy it pre-configured with your choice of software and audio hardware.

http://www.carillondirect.com/cln_us/index.html
http://www.carillondirect.com/cln_us/clnwebsystemsindex.html

I am going to purchase the Nuendo Workstation from this company for my next system. From what I have read and seen on their web site, the support is excellent.

mbowen

Steve....can we call you Rambling Red Kneck Man!!
Woo Woo Woo
Mo Larry Cheese..No, Limburger
Opus :D

I was wondering if anyone had maybe tried something like I am planning to do. I want to build a simple box, open on two sides (the bottom and the back side) with enough clearance around the computer case to allow it to breathe. I then plan on carpeting both the inside and outside of the box. With the bottom and the rear of the housing open, it would not cut down ALL computer noise but it should reduce it some.

You could even put a hinged door on the front to allow access to the CD drives and the power switch.

Just an idea I'd been considering...

Frank,

Every little bit helps.

I went through several revisions of an iso box. As for your idea, it'll work. With an open back, as long as you have a few inches of space all around the computer, your cooling should be OK...provided the computer has internal fans front and back. It'll be significantly quieter...
but, before you undertake it, you might want to consider how quiet you need it to be.
It certainly won't be near quiet enough to record anything in the same room. And even if your control room is strictly a control room, the noise level from the computer will make it difficult to hear low level stuff like hiss on your recordings.

I built a complete iso box, with solid 2" thick walls-one layer of particle board and several of sheetrock, some fancy zig-zag vents, layers of carpet type felt, and it's really pretty quiet, yet the noise still bothers me...and it took way too much work. I think a separate room is really where it's at.

I'm hoping the computer companies get hip to the idea that there's a market for truely quiet PCs.

Watercooling kicks ass.

I've just built an AMD based watercooled DAW, and picked up a huge (8" square) radiator for it. The rad is so huge, I usually don't even need to put the fan on. CPU temp doesn't get much higher than 45C. With the rad fan on, it stays only a little above room temp (25C).
I've planned on this computer to be out of the control room, but if that wasn't possible for you, just have the rad & rad fan outside the control room.