Albertm
Member
I have small studio in bedroom. Sonar 5, tascam 1082. Roland v drum kit and keys. Its now humid in Jersey. Should I keep room always air conditioned and dry. Can humid air actually hurt equipment. Any thoughts on this? thanks
drossfile
nope
I never would have guessed that my day job of heating/cooling guy would come in handy at this bbs! The answer is yes, heat and humidity are enemies of your equipment, especially while it's operating. Your electronics generate heat as they run, and rely on the existing ambient air to stay cool enough to not overload and burn up and/or shut down. I work on several computer/server rooms for telecommunications companies, and they all require their rooms to stay around 70 degrees Fahrenheit at 50% humidity. Now, your stuff isn't as critical as all that (there's less of it to generate heat and you're not running it 24/7), but I would suggest that you keep the room air conditioned to no warmer than 76 degrees while in use. Humidity isn't quite as critical either, just because as your a/c runs, it will dehumidify at the same time. My studio is in my basement, so all I have to run is a dehumidifier, which runs around the clock. When your equipment isn't in use (while you're at work or whatever), you could just leave the a/c set to maintain 78 or 80 degrees so your equipment stays at a reasonable temperature/moisture level even in extreme conditions. Have fun! 
Albertm
Member
thanks for the reply. I will do.
J
Janesaid2me
New member
How much is too much humidity and can a room be too cool....i work out of my basment which in the winter get down to 30% humidity and 62-65 degrees...in the summer it hovers at 60-70% humidity and 70-72 degrees...this is with no regulation as the basement has no real heating or cooling system...i do have a dehumidifier though but idk if i really need to use it or not...what do u guys think?
A
AGCurry
New member
Well, the humidity is not likely to harm your software...
And it generally doesn't hurt hardware either, unless it's extreme.
The exception would be condenser microphones.
And it generally doesn't hurt hardware either, unless it's extreme.
The exception would be condenser microphones.
J
Janesaid2me
New member
Is the humidity too high for condensers....how bout my guitars and stuff...right now im at 68% humidity...is that bad....? I keep everything in cases...and i have those lil absorbant bead things in with my SDC...not sure if that helps...????
M
mixsit
Well-known member
I'm pretty sure the beads are a chemical (desiccant?) that can absorb only a certain amount of water. Once that happens they're done. Their effect is likely only when installed fresh in a sealed package.Janesaid2me said:
mentalattica
Just a Home Recorder
You can actually put them in the oven to dry them out, and reuse them. But once they have absorbed the maximum amount of moisture, they are actually more harmful to your equipment than good (unless they have been dried out).
If you store your equipment in a sealed container with fully moist silica gel, heat will draw the moisture out of the gel and guess where it'll end up?
If you store your equipment in a sealed container with fully moist silica gel, heat will draw the moisture out of the gel and guess where it'll end up?
drossfile
nope
Janesaid2me said:
electronics can't function well (sometimes not at all) below freezing, but other than that, too cold really isn't an issue. anything over 40 degrees is fine. Humidity is always relative to the temperature (hence the term "relative humidity"). 50% at 90 degrees is very dry air, whereas 50% at 30 degrees is quite moist.
As for condenser mics, the only reason extreme moisture is dangerous is that any condensation on the capsule, transformer, etc can cause electrical shorts (condenser mics carry high enough voltage to use moist air as a conductor to arc through, causing a dead short or ground-out). like i said in my original post, just don't let it get out of control. if your dehumidifier has an adjustable range, just set it for the lowest setting to be safe. that will minimize run time/energy consumption while protecting your gear. 72 degrees at 70% humidity isn't going to cause all of your stuff to burn up by any means, but better safe than sorry. conversely, air that's too dry makes it easy for static electricity to build up. the human body is a capacitor that can easily store 10,000 volts DC (you can look that up if you don't believe me). This is something to keep in mind when handling any naked DC circuits (such as sound cards)--a static discharge can cause irrepairable damage to a circuit board. just make sure if the air's really dry to "discharge" yourself into a ground immediately before handling. destructive discharge is really a rare thing to happen, but it would suck if it happened to you, no?
quick lesson on relative humidity: in the summer, as your air conditioner removes heat, it also removes moisture (by moving the air across a surface that is at a lower temp than the dewpoint, causing the moisture to condense out of the air, run down the coil, collect in a pan, and drain out). in the winter, air is heated in your furnace by an electric or fossil fuel DRY heat exchanger, that raises the temperature, but adds no moisture (unless equipped w/ a humidifier). since humidity is relative to temperature, as heat is added w/ no moisture, your RH drops considerably. so if your basement gets into the 30% range in winter, that's really not a problem for your equipment running, idling, whatever--but remember to discharge yourself to ground before handling any exposed circuitry (sort of like when you used to slide around the carpet with socks on so you could zap your sister--or was that just me?). most equipment is in a plastic case (insulator), so it doesn't matter--although metal mics might call for a little more caution.
sorry so long, just trying to be helpful (and feeling pretty good about actually knowing something for once around here--too bad i know so little about recording. i have to wonder about my priorities...
).
drossfile
nope
mentalattica said:
the important thing to remember here is a simple law of physics: neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed, only converted to different states--or, for our purposes--transported.
it's true, if you have a hermetically sealed chamber which your fully saturated dessicant and your moderately dry electronics cohabit, the moisture will transfer from the wetter to the dryer material.
however, most home studios (unless newly constructed in the past 10 or 15 years--newer houses are crazy tight) are not hermetically sealed, but instead subject to the ambient air (heat--energy, and moisture--matter) both outside and inside the house. if you have a tight house, less maintenace is needed. if an older house, or a room that is open to a larger area and/or the outdoors, then a higher dehumidification capacity is required.
so, a dessicant is only designed as a substance that is more hygroscopic than its predicted surroundings, so it will "share" the moisture in the air by sucking it up.
example: have you ever spilled rubbing alcohol on yourself? it felt cold, and it dried up quickly. this is because it has a lower boiling point under atmospheric pressure than water, or most other commonly used liquids. relative to what you're accustomed to, the alcohol felt cold and evaporated quickly, because its chemical properties afford it a perceivable difference to the human senses (only at an open, or atmospheric, volume--closed, fixed volume is the variable that allows bottled alcohol to not disappear from the bottle).
the same is true of dessicant for electronics. it has a "higher than normal" hygroscopicity--ability to absorb moisture--than wood, concrete, clay, brick, carpet, plastic, metal--pretty much everything in your studio. which means it will absorb the moisture before everything else does, but you'll need to exchange it from time to time--our matter (moisture) is not destroyed, it's just been transported. so we need to further transport it out of the studio.
the question of whether a dessicant can be reused is simply a question of whether or not a chemical change took place when it absorbed the atmospheric moisture. if such a change did take place, the dessicant is materially different than it was in its originally designed form, and cannot be reused. chances are, no such change took place, and it can be dried out in an oven. just make sure it comes out of the oven hot and immediately goes into your studio. how one would go about checking out the chemical properties of each dessicant is beyond me. i'm just stoned and rattling on, generally engaging in self-indulgent, masturbatory ridiculosities because this website allows me to. do bear in mind that everything i've said is true, but just ridiculous for its unwarranted, rigorous explanation.
bottom line: my basement dehumidifier was under two hundred bucks, and unless the power goes out for the entire month of august (in which case none of my gear would be working anyway), i have absolutely no reason to be concerned with any of this. get a dehumidifier (or central air), and you've nothing to worry about.
ps: lets get really ridiculous: instead of an oven, you could put the dessicant in a jar, seal a 1/4" flare fitting to a hole in the jar lid, attach a vacuum pump and evacuate the whole assembly to 500 microns--of course this would also requre a micron gauge and more fittings--perhaps a gauge manifold...all in all you could create a $1000-dessicant-drying-system, or you could just replace the shit as it becomes pasty. or you could get the aforementioned dehumidifier...