silent PC.. as a musician..

sherbet012 · Post by **sherbet012** » Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:35 pm

1st of all, thank you for the great articles and infos, SPCR!

as a musician, i really find these articles helpful.

these days, even though Mac is still pretty much 'it' for the professional field, more and more DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) users 'get in touch with' PC because it's getting more powerful to catch up the Mac's performance. and it's more flexible, too!

anyways, here's my experience with noise..

there are lots and lots of home recording studios now, thanks to the powerful PCs, and these days, you can make a pretty decent DAW with $5000 or so..

but many of the home recording studios don't have enough budget to make a another isolated room, so in many cases, they either have to seperate a room in to two different regions, or just recording everything in the room.

so many semi-pro musicians started to look for the silent parts, and i dare to say that almost everything in PC parts can be silenced. cool so far.. i said 'almost', because there's just one little guy who screams inside of PC : Hard Drive.

i used lots and lots of drives, and for that, i agree very much with SPCR's articles.. but i think that the 'seeking noise' is a bit overlooked..

in studios or semi-pro home recording studios, we use very, very very sensitive condenser mics; that can literally pickup the conversation in the next room, or even downstairs! and that means it can surely pick up the HD noise.

recording in DAW means saving the musician's performance without any dropouts, and that means accessing the HD continously, means lots of seeking noise..

i have Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 and Western Digital Caviar WD800JB. i think that 7200.7 spins quieter, but WD's seeking noise is definitely lower.

unless if it's a real loud humming noise, the spinning noise can be easily gated (means cut the certain amount of low volumed sound), using noise gate.

but the 'seeking noise' is a big problem for the sound recording. it contains LOT MORE frequencies than a 'spinning noise', so that it's harder to gate the recorded seeking noise than a spinning noise.

that's why i'm recording my sessions into the WD Caviar WD800JB; it's a bit slower, and older, but at least it doesn't throw lots of frequencies to my sessions.

in my opinion, Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 is a very quiet HD, but also at the same time, not very quiet for the musician's sessions. Maxtor HD with 'quiet access option ON' had the quietest seeking noise i've every heard. though i didn't heard the Samsung's PATA HD yet; it's too old..

we computer musicians want silent for seeking noise, but also want the latest technology; being HD is one of the slowest part of the computer, we like it fast!

so i wish that in the future article, there was a review of latest (fast) HDs which has very low seeking noise, but also has a relatvely low spinning noise..

i think it would be a great, great article that can help many musicians all over the world!

just my personal opinion though..

thank you very much again for the very best website about silent PC. since i (finally) found it, i'll visit website and forum more frequently.

Cams · Post by **Cams** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 12:47 am

Hey sherbet012, from one musician to another, let me be the first to say:

Welcome to SPCR!

I recently built a new PC, one role of which is to serve as a DAW. I record acoustic guitar and some vocals using condenser mics and so, as you mention, the noise level of my system was of great importance. All I can say is thank you SPCR!

Suspending hard drives is by far the most efficient method of reducing seek noise. My new system has two SATA 160GB Samsung Spinpoints and they're fast enough and quiet enough for my recordings. Besides, with cardioid mics, one can point them away from the noise source when recording, although I appreciate that omni-directional mics are preferable for some applications.

Adding AcoustiPack can help to reduce high-frequency hard-drive noise too.

sherbet012 wrote:there are lots and lots of home recording studios now, thanks to the powerful PCs, and these days, you can make a pretty decent DAW with $5000 or so..

Five grand! You're kidding, right? Mine was about $1500, although I admit that that was without a monitor, studio monitors, mics, OS, soundcard, DI box or audio software. If you include that lot, then $5000 could actually look cheap!

sherbet012 · Post by **sherbet012** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:44 am

thx for your warm welcome!
never had this kinda welcome in any forum, anywhere! heh

the thing about DAW is that you also have to buy a sequencer (if you wanna sell your recordings legally

) with a decent PCI soundcard that has mic/line pres. and last but not least, very high quality RAM helps a LOT too. i say 1~2GB is fair enough.

well, if we wanna build a DAW for a good hobby, $1500 can be more than a average budget. E-mu (now owned by Creative) just released the new soundcard that's full of features for under $600 (same series without breakout box, $99 even!). i'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing though.. hehe

it's cool to see another musician on the site.

Cams · Post by **Cams** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:49 am

Yeah, I guess it depends on your requirements and it can be a real money pit if you're not careful. I guess the same maxims apply to buying recording equipment as to buying PC gear: work out what you really need, do a lot of research and buy the best you can afford.

For example, I knew I only needed two mic inputs: three would be nice, but two is enough. I wanted good preamps and good ADDA conversion. I wound up with a DI box made by MindPrint called a Di-Port. It has two really clean pres and takes care of the AD conversion so the sound is already digital when it hits the soundcard. No need for CPU cycles and less likelihood of latency issues. It also provides phantom power for my condensers and has monitor outs. That cost me 237 euros.

As I had the Di-Port, all I needed for the soundcard was SPDIF I/O and 24/96; converters weren't important so I was able to go fairly down-budget and get a Terratec EWX 24/96. That cost me about 150 euro. Two cardiod condensers and one large-diaphragm condeser, cables and mic stand -- all in, 860 euros.

Just got to get myself some studio monitors now and I'm all done. I reckon I've done not too badly for such a solid system that produces some really nice recordings.

As I said, research is the key, after deciding what you need.

Software-wise, I was lucky. I've a mate who works at Adobe and he got me Audition 1.5 and the training DVDs. Good score!

So what do you use, sherbet012?

mshan · Post by **mshan** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:36 am

Have you looked at hard drive suspension or isolation inside a noise reducing enclosure?:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/section14.html

I would be very interested to see how much difference it makes to your microphones vs. how much difference it makes to you while using your computer live vs. listening for seek noises on your recorded music tracks.

Green Shoes · Post by **Green Shoes** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 7:46 am

Greetings!

Drive suspension is indeed the best way to get rid of seek noise. Just be glad you're not using external SCSI, those would be a serious pain to silence

. Actually, if you're willing to....

....I used to work in a studio that had a ProTools 5.1 room. The computer, I/Os, and hard drives were all in this small, temperature-controlled, totally soundproof box. I did a quick search w/ musician's friend and zzounds and couldn't pull them up; I wish I could tell you the name of the manufacturer. They're not cheap at $1500, but this studio had 2 G4s and a Glyph rackmount SCSI unit with 4 15,000 RPM drives

.....it was dead silent.

Anyway, suspension is a much more realistic option. If you have a gobo or baffle or something that you can put between your computer and recording area, that'll help to; I actually record my vocalists in a walk-in closet full of winter coats

Let us know what you do, regardless; we'd love to see how it turns out.

P.S. off-topic, but what sequencer are you using? Cubase, Sonar, Nuendo...?

sherbet012 · Post by **sherbet012** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 9:56 am

Cams // hey, that Di-Port doesn't look bad; it doesn't look and bad at all! i say that was very good move using AD/DA + pres with Terratec EWX 24/96.

i started composing long time ago so my gears are really old.

use Delta Omni Studio (that has 2 pres and which sounds ok). i'm thinking of upgrading to MOTU or RME interfaces and a good pres because soon i can go out there and get a job in studios (i'm currently in recording engineering school) and that'll help me a bit more for cash flow..

and lots of the other gears like AKG headphones, mics, power amp, MIDI module, MIDI controllers, monitors etc.

mashan // yeah i should really try the drive suspension; i still have some doubts. i will get it by next week and i'll make sure to post the result!

Green Shoes // i heard about those soundproof box. i'll get that box as soon as i get my new soundcards first. everytime i think of buy one of those, i always end up upgrading my DAWs. it's crazy how fast PCs are evolving these days..

and for the software, i love Adobe Audition 1.5 for multitracking. it's just very well layed out with very powerful features.

and for sequencer, i have to say Sonar is pretty decent software. i like it because it it's fast with my soundcard's settings. i use 64 samples DMA buffer size so i can get less than 2ms of latency, and only Sonar ran smoothly with 64 samples settings with 1.5ms latency. but the bad side is that VST plugins support is still not the top-quality.. well, it's getting better anyways..

nuendo/cubase ran smoothly with 256 samples, which equals to 5ms. 5ms latency is never too much; most of musicians uses 5ms without any problems. but they couldn't reach that 1.5ms latency without any pops and clicks. i just found out that you gotta have faster system to get that 1.5ms latency; had to be faster than a 2.0Ghz Dual G5s or 3.2Ghz 800 bus speed Intel system (64 bit cpus recommended).

maybe i'm just a low latency freak.. and nuendo/cubase are really really solid programs. and many companies are supporting VST systems very well. it's just that Steinberg never worked right for me; dual Opteron in shcool system always gave us some kind of errors, including good ol' BSOD! those systems were built by Steinberg too; they sponsor out PC computer lab.

then there's our mighty Pro Tools! it's just that i was very surprised to see the Mac OSX crashing once in a while! my PC was more solid than the school's dual G5s. but for the multitracking/composing program, it was very solid. MIDI sequencing is getting better and better with every revisions. and TDM and HDs are sweet too; though host-based LE systems are fine these days since computers are getting faster every minute.

thank you for your great suggestion guys!
i can't wait to get the drive suspension system!

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 9:24 am

Building a soundproof box to contain a DAW should not be difficult-if size/space are no big deal. Think of it like building a subwoofer cabinet. Use thick particle board. Line that with high density foam-I'd use backpacker sleeping pads,cut and glued. Consider all the in/out cabling a fixed part of the housing-seal them up using silicone or construction adhesive. Below the chamber the puter is in is a chamber for the airflow. this is partitioned so there is a path for intake and one for exhaust.

Cut a hole in the FLOOR of the puter's metal case for a low rpm 120 to vent to the outflow chamber. a front fan sucks in via an indirect route,the inlet bottom chamber. The box has a front door so here is access to any optical drives,the on/off button etc. , but when in operation-it's closed.

The bottom airflow chambers get lined with acousic foam,carpet-some absorbant material-the deal is sound waves have no direct route out-get deflected and absorbed. You need to see that the bottom -rear opening of the lower airflow channels do not let the intake suck in the warmed exhaust air-so the divider extends a bit.

In the machine....for PC's the A64 Venice line is a sweet mix of power and cool/quiet operation. Audio work is not that CPU demanding,a 3000 or 3200 should suffice,though there may be some advantage to the dual core X2's if there's a fat budget. Samsung Spinpoint HD's are a favorite for quiet-and their new SATA2 200gig is claimed to actually be a bit quieter.
As Wave files are big,especially if 24/192,you ideally have 2HD's so one just has the content and he other has the OS+software. Then each drive's read-write heads can stay on one job witout needing to alternate.

ECS and MSI each have mobos that have a special PCI slot optimal for a soundcard. On many mobos,some or all slots can have circuit noise. The ECS KN-1 Extreme has a specific,color coded slot said to be especially clean. I have never seen a review fully test that,but it's a plus that ECS at least saw fit to do something. The chipset on that ECS board has plenty of room for an aftermarket cooler,such as the coolermaster Blue Ice...minus its fan. The ECS also has a rear duct with a small loud fan that can get removed. Minus that fan,the vent can become a secondary intake-if the system exhaust fan has a little more CFM than the intake fan.

Audio folks often are into a soundcard for personal reasons. One to look at is the ESI Juli@,24/192,great sn ratio,nice price,i/o options-but only 2 channel.

halfpower · Post by **halfpower** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 11:22 pm

I've been wondering how to silence my hard drives. I'm considering mounting 2-5cm thick pieces of foam around my hard drives (partially enclosing them)in an attempt to cut hard drive noise by 50%. I didn't realize that noise gates were a practical solution to the spin noise problem.

these days, even though Mac is still pretty much 'it' for the professional field

True, but I imagine it will all end in a few years when Apple starts using Intel chips. It's funny that no one on these forums has a silent Mac.

Shadowknight · Post by **Shadowknight** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 4:14 am

Enclosing the drive in a SmartDrive 2002C can help. Suspending it/putting it on foam can help as well. Samsungs have some of the quietesat seeks available, IMHO.

benx · Post by **benx** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 4:48 am

first of all i can recommand the silentmaxx-HDD-silencer Rev. 2.0 for reducing sound levels, and i am interrested in something, why do you use a pci sound cart when you can buy a firewire/usb2( cant recommand usb2 ) sound cards? more preformance, better sound quality?

halfpower · Post by **halfpower** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 2:28 pm

I'll have to look into enclosures. I looked at one but was a bit put off by the $60 price tag, as it will cost $120 for two of them. I've been looking into suspension, but few setups are rugged enough for the computer to be transported.

My sound card has is rated with a 120db SNR and a dynamic range of 120db. It also has a recording latency of 2ms. I have not come across any USB or firewire interfaces with superior quality that are in the same price range.

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 1:18 pm

With HD's you want to isolate,as regards vibration. Rather than a web of elastic cords you can get a stretch material and make a pouch. You can susped a pouch,yet have it achored so the drive won't slide free.

HD's are built to lose some heat from the sides,so screwing a strip of aluminum or copper to the sides helps lose the heat. Wrapping a HD in foam alone holds the heat in,foam on just the top-with side heatsinks should do okay-then poch it,suspend and every issue is covered.

halfpower · Post by **halfpower** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 11:58 pm

I don't think I'd want to put my hard drive in a pouch, put my computer in the trunk of a car, and then drive 600km. I'm not so much worried about having a hard drive slide free, as I am having a hard drive forcibly collide with my motherboard. It's really the motherboard that I am concerned about. Maybe some foam, could solve the problem.

Even with suspension and some foam acoustic installation, I could still have problems. I imagine in a very good situation I will still hear more than 50% of the airy whoosh noise. Has anyone solved this with out (or with) using expensive enclosures?

Post by **MikeC** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 12:11 am

Anyone posting here about what elastic suspension can and can't do without actually having done it should be shamed. Just try it. If you choose a quiet HDD to begin with, the seek noise goes down to just about nothing -- certainly below the lowest sound levels of any music you'll be recording -- save perhaps ultra delicate classical.

The NoVibes suspension bracket velcro'd to the bottom of a case would be my recommendation for something that needs to be transported. You could even take the HDD/mount off, transport, then put it back in place. I'm sure with a bit of ingenuity, you could devise a homebrew suspension that's secure and effective.

alleycat · Post by **alleycat** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 7:58 am

Suspension will make a dramatic difference, but an enclosure is the ultimate. I made my own hard drive enclosure, and it is impossible to tell that the drive is operating at all.

Post by **MikeC** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 8:02 am

alleycat wrote:Suspension will make a dramatic difference, but an enclosure is the ultimate. I made my own hard drive enclosure, and it is impossible to tell that the drive is operating at all.

This would have to mean you've effectively decouple mounted as well, as seek noise is not possible to remove without decoupling.

alleycat · Post by **alleycat** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 8:11 am

I can feel vibration and seeks when the enclosure is in my hand, and these are audible at very close proximity. The unit is not hard mounted to the case, which as you point out, is essential for "silent" operation.

cotdt · Post by **cotdt** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 9:29 pm

Suspending still won't kill the seek noise. You also need a quiet hard drive.

For hard drive get WD Scorpio, they are far more silent than any 3.5" drive by a large margin. I mean, they are really really quiet! Blows away Spinpoint and Barracuda, beleive me I've went through very many hard drives to search for the most quiet one. An enclosed and suspended Scorpio is dead silent.

For CPU, get a Dothan. The difference between Dothan and Venice is that Dothans can be passively cooled, so you don't need any fans at all in your computer. Clock for clock, they are about 10% faster than Venice. The motherboards for them, however, are quite expensive.

Make sure that you have a passive PSU as well. Remember that you don't want anything louder than the blood circulation in your veins inside your computer if you plan to do recording! Beleive me!

I do recording too btw!

halfpower · Post by **halfpower** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:58 pm

What would really be nice, would be a way to completely stop ones hard drives and just record straight to memory.

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 7:25 pm

When I suggested a pouch-the idea is the HD in a sack is suspended in multiple axis so it has limited travel. A big Needle and some fishing line and you can do "guy wire" suspension that actually gives better shock protection than a rigid mount. It's about as easy to do as to describe I guess. You can heatsink the HD before pouching it (copper plumbers straps). Ideally you cet the pesky 3 1/2" bay out of the case,build a frame closer to 5 1/2".. It should be viable to do 2 HD's back to back,with a slab of Aluminum or copper between,bind them togather-pouch and suspend the whole thing. The point of a pouch is just that your drives can be very secure,decoupled-yet easily removed.