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Quieting Your G5?
metajunkie wants to take a bite out of this issue: "I recently set up an at-home recording studio with a DP G5 and a ProTools mBox. Problem is, I can't record (like, say, a voice over) anywhere near the computer because when the cooling fans kick in, it comes in way too loud over the mic. I can't move the computer into another room, and while I'm tempted to throw a blanket over the thing, I don't think that'll help. Does anyone know a place that sells a silencer box for the G5 or some good DIY way to cut out the noise?"
Use a directional microphone.
I've had this sig for three days.
I've never cracked open a G5, but most of the standard tricks should apply. Replace all of the fans with the hydrobearing Panaflo L1A s, adding more if necessary. If possible, run them low at 7v or so... Pay special attention to fans under 80mm, as those tend to be the loudest. Line the case with the heavy, stinky lining used by car stereo installers. This will increase your case temps but will reduce the audio significantly more than a standard computer case liner. You may need to make an audio absorbative box (with it's own fan) around your HDD, or try replacing them with hydro-bearing drives from Maxtor or Seagate mounted with rubber.
For general purpose quieting tips, check out Silent PC Review. You'll see me on the boards there sometimes.
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
This is an odd question. I've never used ProTools, but I have had no problem at all with fan noise while recording voice overs in Final Cut Pro.
That being said, here are a few notes that should help you.
The G5's fans are very nicely fine-tuned to CPU usage and temperature. The more heavily you use your G5, the louder they are.
So you might be able to solve this problem by minimizing usage. Quit your email program, your web browser, and any other programs you have open. Many of them burn CPU cycles even when they appear to be doing nothing. Quit every program other than Protools.
I don't know much about ProTools itself - I use Final Cut Pro and After Effects - so this is just general advice. If you're playing tracks through your headphones that you don't need for the voiceover, turn them off. If ProTools has a draft playback mode to minimize CPU usage, turn it on.
If you don't already have it there, put your PowerMac G5 under your desk. It sure looks pretty on top of it, but it will make a lot less noise if it's even a little further from your microphone. In an extreme case, you might want to run long cables to it and store it in a more distant part of the room.
If you are running a lot of programs on your system, quit everything but ProTools while doing the voice over, and tell it to play a bare minimum of tracks through the headset.
Put your microphone on a stand and make sure it's close to your face. Get one of those absurd looking anti-poppers (someone at Guitar Center or similar stores can find one for you). Then make sure you're using the bare minimum recorrding volume needed to get a strong signal from your voice.
Put your PowerMac G5 in back of your microphone. Most microphones are pretty directional. If yours is not, get a shotgun mic designed to pick up mainly what's in front of it.
I've never had any trouble recording from Final Cut Pro's voice over tool, but it's possible that is less CPU intensive than Protools. If ProTools is the CPU hog, you might want to use your copy of Final Cut (Final Cut Express is just $299) to record the song and then transfer the audio track to Protools. Final Cut is not the be all and end all of audio, but you can certainly lay out other audio tracks and play them into your headphones.
Hope this helps.
D
"I can't move the computer into another room"
Is the reason for this simply that cables are too short? It may seem a little unprofessional but why not buy an extension cable for your monitor and keyboard so that you can move away from the computer?
I know a musician who keeps his tower in the closet next to his desk, and all peripherals are connected via long cables. I also remember reading an article about some band in Sound on Sound magazine that has this kind of set up as well.
Powerbook G4/1.5GHz 12", Toshiba Satellite 1135-S1554
Rather than trying to quieten each individual component, this guy made a surrounding box which has a sound baffle so that everything is silenced.
He does seem to consider the importance of airflow as well, since what point is there in putting your shiny new G5 in a soundproof box if it cooks itself?
1: ideal siuation
If in any way possible AT ALL... i would either place your computing station , or your vocal area in a seperate room (a closet will do just fine), this is by far the best solution for a multitude of reasons... in all honesty you want a recording booth (large closet) with padding (bubble wrap works well, foam, etc...). If that isnt possible, you can do the inverse (a very small computing room with the main room being the recording environment.
2: A strong possibility ... or an extension to your monitor cable from behind the closet/divider to a monitor on the other side (in the main room)... wireless keyboards and mice are very helpfull for this.
Place the machine in a closet or place a large and strong divider in your main room... extend a KVM
3: Remote access ... or you can use open source VNC to remotly connect).
extend only the audio cables needed from the box behind a closet/divider... and use a seperete computer (a laptop is best) to remotly access your G5... since wireless will work with this connection... your laptop can roam wherever you want, and you can control your session as if connected localy. (apples RDP
4: if there is no other way
If you cannot in any way place the box into a closet or a seperete room, then you can build a computer box. I dont recomend this because it can be dangerous to your computer. Basicly create or buy a large box big enough to fit your G5 inside. Create TWO large holes in it (2 inch diameter). Before placing the computer inside, youll want to pad the walls of your new case with carpetting, foam, bubble wrap, cloth or some other sound absorbant material... once complete use one hole to route all your cables through minding the power cable not to be to close to any aound cables (with the mbox, the mbox should be OUTSIDE of the box, connected by the USB cable), once your cables are routed... seal the hole as best as you can with more cloth if possible. For the second hole you can leave it as is... however it's purpose as a ventilation is not well suited to the G5 and should truly be accompanied by a Fan (on the inside of the case) blowing out air through a tube.... which most people fit to go out of their window.
Many tweaks on this setup have been done depending on the needs of the environment... some people put a real AC inside their computer-box, others simply run their machines in the box, but when not recording, open the front of it. I personaly recomend getting the computer into a seperete room somehow. even if its just a small closet.
YMMV
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
Have you opened up your G5? It is (fairly) common for people to put their G5's together incorrectly. A slight mis-alignment of all the sound-related parts can cause the fans to run amok.
Check out the gCab . It's huge and expensive, but man, does it cut down the sound. I'm using one with an older Shuttle cube, and the noise level has gone from maddening to a mere whisper. The iMac next to it is a lot louder.
This was sorta covered back in A Practical Approach to Shushing your PC, especially in the many replies.
These guys make sound deadening boxes for AV people.
Ditto here. Very quiet. In fact, I had originally purchased an XServe to host my stuff in the house. But after I heard rumors of how loud they are, I switched to a DP G5 and I'm glad I did. We actually have it the living room where we watch TV and I don't hear a peep out of it.
Bark less. Wag more.
I have a friend with ProTools - and the damn program runs 100% cpu all the time - whether you're doing something or not. It does that so that it's always "ready to go" when you need to do something intensive. I find this unneeded, but what do I know, I'm not a sound tech.
There was a guy I knew, he did not use macs so I do not know how much this applies, but he had a studio that he set-up when he was in California. From what I saw and what he explained to me, it was set-up where all the analog instruments, mixers, mics, etc fed into boxes that sent digitized signals to a computer that was on the other side of a wall. The boxes sent the digitized audio over usb and optical connections. The reason for this set-up was because the computer was loud, and with it being in another room, the mics would not pick it up in the studio. With essentially a hole in the wall, he fed his mouse, keyboard, and monitor cable to the other room on the other side of the wall. He also used the special boxes (I do not remember what company made them) to digitize and send the audio that way to the computer, because he learned that using a board in the computer itself was a bad idea because of all the electrical (hissing and pops) noise that crept in. He noted that the optical connection was the best because there was no possible way for electrical noise to interfere.
I wish I could remember more details, I am not a musician. I thought that this might help though. I am a computer professional and it is probably a bad idea to put things like speaker dampening material in/around your case like others seem to have suggested. You really do not want to interfere with the cooling system for of computer unless you do not want it last long.
... if I needed to get rid of fan noise, what I've planned on trying is piping in air from a relatively far removed vibrational air pump -- an aquarium pump -- and shut off the internal fan. It could be in its own enclosure if need be. Some of them have a pretty fair output. Using rubber hose instead of plastic would help damp any vibration coming up the hose. Another hack that might not be suitable for everyday use, but could be used for those sessions where silence is necessary, if the pump helps but isn't enough, run some of the hose through a bowl of ice water to cool the air on its way to the machine.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Mic cables (professional ones) are available in REEEEALLY LONG LENGTHS.
I've recorded a lot. In pro, semi pro settings and in converted barns. Especially when doing voices, you want a SILENT room. A little acoustic padding on the walls, but perhaps not. I've taken dead rooms (too dead) and hung maple plaques up to liven it a little bit.
But machines with fans go OUTSIDE, even if temporarily. I've tossed a laptop out of a room because the DISK was non-silent.
That might mean you rig up a closet as a voice room (you can even leave the clothes in it). It might mean you run the mac in the hall for 5 minutes while you record.
But no fans near mics. And no deep mods to your case. A dual processor 1GHz machine in a tight space needs lots of airflow.
It's the mBox.
Yeah, you heard me. The mBox. The inputs on those pieces of crap are so noisy you have to use a separate pre-amp if you want any kind of range. Seriously, I own one, THEY SUCK.
Now, enough trolling about the mBox, that horrible horrible toy. Tinkering around inside the G5 is a phenomenally bad idea. But there are many products that let you quiet a machine w/o oh, melting it. I can't find a link, but there're a number of thin (4mm) foam materials you can put on the inside of your case walls that have great sound dampening ability. Now, the fans are the tougher problem. I'd recommend the venting idea proposed in another post. All external, all cheap.
One last note: To save the recordings you have made, try out Sony/Sonic Foundry's Noise Reduction plug in. I've used it to remove the machine noise from my DAW and it's really, really good, especially for voice. Now, yes, it's on a PC, but it'll run FAST on any relatively new (P3 or better, Athlon) desktop.
But dump the mBox if you want to be taken seriously. I can't stand the damn thing, but it wasn't my purchasing decision...
"Life's funny sometimes." "And sometimes it isn't." --Cat's Cradle
First: I recognise that its a real pain to be away from the computer while trying to do any sort of tracks. You end up going back and forth. Truth be told, this is the best solution though. Try setting small section "punch ins" so that you can keep at a section until your happy and move the mic to a different room. Use of omni directional mics will also help.
Second. Baffles are cheap and they work great. Any good studio will have lots of free standing cubicle walls hanging around. You can pick these up for a song at any used office store. Then, either box in your CPU or your mic. The more baffles, the quieter the sound.
Yes, that's right, children... any LF or HF hum can be squeezed out with a bandpass filter. ProTools has em, so does Final Cut Pro. So use it.
So, we've got four viable steps, none of which include screwing with the heat management of the G5:
1. Bandpass filter - the ultimate weapon. A combination of low-pass and high-pass filters with the right tweaking will narrow the frequency range right down to the envelope you need. Combined with limiters, compressors and other standard ProTools post-production weaponry, you can make even Britney Spears' asinine voice sound bearable (if it weren't already so obviously post-processed to hell).
2. Mic placement - If you need to be near your monitor but not near your box, get an extension cable for the monitor and keep the box as far away from the mic as possible.
3. Dead room - an acoustically-padded portable chamber for recording vocals... you can get these but they are quite expensive. If cost is a factor, try the cheaper solutions first.
4. Unidirectional mic - In other words, don't use a Shure SM58 or some such omnidirectional piece of crap. Get a good unidirectional mic and place its head diametrically opposed to the direction from which the fan noise is coming.
Anything from Avid or digidesign is going to suck your CPU dry, even if it's a 14THz quad with the cosmic quantum option. [cynic] Means they can leverage their proprietary hardware better. [/cynic] It also means they can guarantee throughput and latency.
Another option for voiceovers is to use a simple recording tool, there are some free and or cheap programs on freshmeat or versiontracker, and they won't use the entire energy output of Hydro Quebec to do it.
Damn those pesky terrorists
- don't mess around the internals. ... like putting your computer in another room.
- you can remove the hard disks and actually put them over a network (gigabit recommended) line using a Apple Server and a NetBoot
- you can remove the hard disks by using a 15ft firewire cable or a very long and very expensive fiber channel cable
- you don't need much speed unless you are using active plugins. If you only do recording, consider doing the record and then applying the plugins
- you can cancel-out some noise using Spark XL 2.8 sound recording software (by TC Works). There is a VST plug-in called DeNoise where you give it a sample up to 3 seconds of your noise (and ONLY your noise, as recorded... for example, just before or after your official recording session) and it will remove it. It's of very decent quality.
- I suggest you do not put your G5 under your desk, as it will simply make the air hot all around... and the fans will kick-off more often. Instead, put it some place where it will get a lot of air. You can put noise cancelling panels between it and your mic though.
- Use some third party sound input hardware (like firewire devices) They are better isolated than your computer's sound input (even if it is really excellent).
- If you have to change your equipment (microphones) for your recording gear, consider alternatives
Mike
Unless your sequencer pegs the cpu at 100% just iding away, and if you're a one man show laying down one track at a time, try this:
Bounce your tracks down to a single two channel mix for overdubbing, then mute all the others. Record the output of any software samplers to these tracks and mix in effects and eq so you won't have to tax the cpu with them during playback.
I use Digital Performer. It has pretty low cpu requirements, except, oddly, for the time counter. I move the fractional beats part of the counter winodw off screen, since it just counts to 480 every second.
Use the Activity Monitor cpu history icon in the dock to see how you're doing.
And while you're at it, don't forget to send back your G5 to Apple and build a PC from scratch so you don't void the warranty or fuck up the carefully engineered insides and cooling system with shit from Staples.
As many others have said here, don't mod the box. The key is keeping the noisy (though G5s are pretty quiet, really . . . have you looked into the power supply replacement program yet?) hardware away from the sensitive microphone(s).
Drop your cardioid and omnidirectional mics and get a good unidirectional Shure or something. Then run the mic cable (via big-time extension cableage) to another room with NO hardware in it for recording purposes.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
> The only time the fans were really loud was when I removed the case; they seem to be able to sense air flow, and adjust their speed accordingly.
Actually there's a microswitch that senses the plastic shield being removed and turns the fans up to make sure that the cooling is preserved.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G5/G5_noise_tips.html
Go into System Prefs/Energy Saver and set the processor(s) for low performance.
Apple Computer sells the XtremeMac Xrack Pro 12U Enclosed Rack to solve the sound problem, be functional and look nice in the process.
, , , , ,
It offers many nice features,
Acoustically engineered to reduce server noise by 75%,
Heavy Duty Casters for complete portability
Engineered for positive airflow
Ideal for Audio/Video creative environments
Integrated cable management system
Built-in 6-outlet power distribution
Platinum finish, etc....
While designed for a 21" tall stack of loud Xservers, The PowerMac G5 is only 20.1" tall. It seems to have everything one could want, except possibly a low price.
Apple Computer has an exclusive on this. It is listed under Server Accessories at the Apple Store for only $1799.00
1. Make sure the case is properly closed, with the clear plastic air deflector in place.
2. Turn down the thermostat in the studio a bit.
The G5 tower is normally extremely quiet as fan-cooled computers go, and if you hear the fans spinning up it means that the processor(s) is(are) running abnormally hot. The machine is designed to draw air in through the entire front, push it though a restriction near the processor(s), and exhaust it through the entire back. The restriction causes the air to speed up momentarily, and the net result is that you get a lot of air moving over the processor(s) quickly, but entering and leaving the machine fairly slowly, which keeps the noise down.
If the clear air deflector inside the case is removed, then there's less of a restriction to direct and accelerate the air, and that would be a problem. And when the case door is opened while the machine is on, the fans speed up immediately for similar reasons. So check that you've got that deflector installed, and that the door is closed properly.
If the air in your studio is a little on the warm side (perhaps the studio is in your attic?), then it obviously won't cool the machine very effectively. Run an air conditioner, open the window, or turn down the thermostat for a few hours before recording to cool down the air in there.
From what I've heard, Weird Al first recorded "Another One Rides the Bus" in a radio station bathroom...
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Archive of the PDF file where Wladi details how he changed his G5's power supply's support for one made of rubber.
And here is a photo of the thing before he put it back in the computer. No wonder it's a lot quieter now.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Our G5s whirred like guinea pigs fornicating while under the influence of copious amounts of amphetamines.
Then we installed the firmware update.
Now they make about as much noise as a slug on ketamine.
Simple solution, really.
Sound Construction and Supply make a little box that is supposed to muffle all sound produced by a powermac, called the "isomac". I own one of their IsoBoxes, and I can tell you that it definitely works. Their website is: http://www.custom-consoles.com/ If, by chance anyone out there wants to buy a 16-space ISOBOX, mine's for sale and in great condition, I just don't need it anymore. e-mail me if you're interested.