I think I wasted some money,

  • Thread starter Thread starter Halion
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Halion

Halion

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Ok, here's the deal. I'm a 1-room-recording person, meaning, the place I got my mics it the same place I have my computer. Infact, when I mic, they are probably only about a meter way from my computer, and my computer humms quit a bit. So what I did was by some of this foamy nobstuff, ya know, the kind that makes your room sound dry? What I didn't know back then was the diffirence between sound isolation and sound absorbtion. So basicly, now I have a computer humm that is really, really dry, but loud none the less. Bummer. I think I'll just take out the foam and stick it on the sealing and cabinet when I record to make a sound a little more dry. Then I'll probably build some kind of door to actually stop most of the sound coming from the computer.

Does anyone have any idea's on how to reduce the noise my mic picks up from my computer? Moving the mix or changing the polar patern are not options. I've thought about silent cooling or even water cooling but I really don't know if that will help enough.
 
The only help I can give is to suggest you build an ISO box.

There are plans around this forum....
 
There are two approaches to your problem.

First you can build an iso box. This is a matter of a tight box with a zig-zag air path lined with absorbent material.

The other approach is to make a more silent PC. The two approaches to this are quieter fans and power supplies and water cooling.

A variation on this, depending on how many tracks you are recording at one, would be to track onto something completely silent like a Fostex MR8 while the computer is turned off and then upload to the computer for mixing later.
 
If you're a do-it-yourselfer, and like monkeying with stuff, there are some PC modifications you can do.

Mount the hard drives using plastic screws, with a thin layer of rubber between the drive and the drive carrier. Instead of plastic screws, wire ties actually work if you get long ones, but some people will say thats crazy. I used plastic screws, and it made a huge difference.

My HP computer had two 4" fans, one on the power supply and one on the back of the machine, both blowing out, so air gets sucked into the front of the machine in the many, many holes and vents it has, across the processer and drives, then out the back of the machine as well as the power supply. What I did was seal up the metal chassis in the front, under the plastic face plate, using duct tape. Then, I replaced both fans using 120V 4" muffin fans, which flow much more air than the toy 12V fans computers normally use. Wired them to a dimmer switch that I mounted on blank space in the back of the chassis, and ran a new 2-prong cord out the back through a grommet.

Dimmer?

Yeah, dimmer, it works well, and I slowed both fans (120V) down to about 2/3 the speed, and the PC is as cool as it was before, including the pentium 4 which has its own fan which I left alone. When the PC is under the desk, you can't hear it, except for when it opens or closes the DVD or CD burners, then you hear the drawer move whrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

The PC sits on the floor, on a floormat from a car that I got for a dollar at a junkyard, and washed off. Its a boring, rubber floormat with no fuzzy carpet stuff on it. Nice and quiet.
 
frederic - Those muffin fans you mentioned, any particular brand or source?
 
Halion said:
I've thought about silent cooling or even water cooling but I really don't know if that will help enough.
Click to expand...

Have you been to Tom's Hardware for computer component reviews? http://www.tomshardware.com/ They've tested some water cooling systems.

I've read plus and minus on water cooling a cpu, though. An external pump may make as much noise as a cpu fan. Zalman makes some quiet, heatsink style, fans.

The noisiest fans are on the video card and cpu. I swapped out my video card for an older one that didn't need a fan.
 
The pumps in water cooled system are almost always of the submerged type and nearly noiseless. The noise comes from the fan blowing air over the radiator. But with a large enough reservoir or large enough radiator you don't necessarily need a fan or can go with a very low speed/noise one.

Zalman produces some of the most interesting quiet computer gear.
 
Unfortunately, "interesting" doesn't always mean "quietest." In fact it never does, does it?
 
But not in Zalman's case. They have some seriously quiet stuff like a fanless watercooling system and some zero passive cooling noise PC cases...no pumps or fans whatsoever! They use heat pipes and turn the outside of the case into a huge radiator.
 
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